American Airlines has dropped its plans to limit earning miles and loyalty points to passengers buying tickets directly from AA and selected partners—and the executive behind the plan is also gone.
The plan, which was supposed to take effect on May 1 and was then postponed to July 11, was meant to incentivize customers to buy directly from American instead incentivized a storm of complaints from frequent flyers who would lose their chances at growing their accounts. In particular, many business flyers are required to buy their tickets through corporate agencies not aligned with AA.
Robert Isom, AA’s CEO acknowledged the pullback at a conference yesterday, saying “That’s off — we’re not doing that because it would create confusion and disruption for our end customer.” AA has also lowered its financial outlook for the quarter ahead, while main competitors Delta and United are doing much better.
Vasu Raja, American’s Chief Commercial Officer and the chief proponent of the restriction plan and the man responsible for other corporate policies that have come under concern, resigned ‘unexpectedly’ the day before Isom’s announcement.
