Basic Economy fares no longer earn AAdvantage miles or Loyalty Points with American Airlines for tickets that were purchased on or after 12:00 in the morning Central Standard Time on Wednesday, December 17, 2025 — and no advance notice or warning was issued pertaining to this change.
Basic Economy Fares No Longer Earn AAdvantage Miles or Loyalty Points With American Airlines
Prior to this change, passengers earned two base AAdvantage miles per dollar — and each eligible AAdvantage mile equalled one Loyalty Point towards elite status for the next year — on the ticket price on flights that were marketed by American Airlines.
According to a statement that was posted on the official X account of American Airlines:
We routinely evaluate our fare products to remain competitive in the marketplace. Customers who purchase a Basic Economy ticket on December 17, 2025 and beyond will not earn AAdvantage miles or Loyalty Points towards AAdvantage status. Basic Economy customers will continue to receive one free personal item and one free carry-on bag, free snacks, soft drinks and in-flight entertainment. Main Cabin fares continue to earn 5 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent.
The responses to that message have been blistering, as most of the respondents oppose this new policy and are quite angry about it.
This change has been viewed as one of many steps of elevating American Airlines to achieve its quest of becoming a more premium airline.
Basic Economy fares were initially created to compete with the fares of ultra-low-cost airlines — but are Basic Economy fares basically false advertising these days?
Final Boarding Call
What better time of year is there to implement such a surprise policy that is generally unfriendly to customers than during the holiday season between Chanukah and Christmas?
American Airlines is apparently slowly following the lead of Delta Air Lines, which pioneered a similar policy on its Basic Economy fares effective as of Saturday, January 1, 2022. Similarly to Delta Air Lines, I find this new policy rather petty of American Airlines and unnecessary. When the AAdvantage membership program changed to base rewards on the airfares paid by customers of American Airlines rather than the miles — more accurately, “butt-in-seat” miles — being traveled, that already significantly impacted AAdvantage members starting in 2016 in a negative manner because Basic Economy fares are usually the least expensive fares which are sold by American Airlines…
…and although this new policy will supposedly not affect relatively many frequent fliers, some will be affected. My flight with a Basic Economy ticket purchased from Delta Air Lines round trip between Atlanta and Denver earned a whopping 532 SkyMiles on that trip — including bonus SkyMiles which were conferred upon my membership account due to my Medallion elite status.
Whether this policy is designed to save costs for the airline or is a hard sell to get customers to spend more money for minimal benefits, it gives even less of an incentive for infrequent customers to have any semblance of loyalty to American Airlines — or, at least, consider American Airlines as their first or top choice of airline for their travel plans. Rather, it gives them more of a reason to simply shop for flights on other airlines based on price only.
Main Cabin tickets are not always much better, according to my experience: imagine paying for a Main Cabin fare with American Airlines but being required to pay for advance seat assignments with a partner airline via a codesharing agreement on the same itinerary. I thought that was incredibly petty.
Have too many members of the AAdvantage membership program benefited substantially from purchasing Basic Economy fares to cause this change in policy? Will this change in policy be an incentive for those customers who are members of the AAdvantage program to purchase more expensive economy class fares instead of Basic Economy fares? Perhaps American Airlines somehow wants to reduce its balance sheet pertaining to people who earn a minuscule amount of AAdvantage miles?
Worst of all, this is yet another change in policy which was announced with no advance notice or warning, which is a poor practice when dealing with customers, as it tends to erode trust, in my opinion…
…so how long will we wait until other airlines — such as United Airlines — act like lemmings and adopt this draconian policy with their least expensive fares?
All photographs ©2025 by Brian Cohen.
