Each calendar year you can receive $100, $200 or $250 in statement credits for airline incidental fees, such as checked bags, seat selection, in-flight wifi and refreshments, charged to eligible American Express cards:
- $100 for the Gold Card® from American Express;
- $200 for all versions of the Platinum Card® from American Express;
- $200 for the Business Platinum Card® from American Express OPEN
- $250 for the Hilton Aspire card
You can see the different American Express cards here, including ones with signup bonuses of over 100,000 points (I may receive a commission if you apply for a card through my link)
It’s a new year and it is time to claim your 2019 Amex airline fee credits!
The reimbursement is usually automatic, but you have to designate the airline of choice during the month of January. You can only change it once a year during this period.
[SEE: How to use your Amex Platinum $200 airline credit.]
One advice related to The Business Platinum® Card from American Express OPEN. Choose your airline choice wisely so that you can take advantage of the card’s 35% point rebate benefit. For coach tickets, the rebate benefit only applies to the designated airline. I loved this card when the rebate benefit was 50% last year and used it to book a lot of tickets Now that the rebate is only 35%, I think I would transfer the points directly to airlines instead.
Since I basically have a credit card with all major domestic airlines, I don’t get charged on luggage fees. I rarely pay for seat selections either. So to claim the $200 fee credit, I normally buy electronic gift cards. But before I make the purchases, I usually check the Flyertalk forum for my airline to make sure that the credit still works on gift cards. You can check the forum for United Airlines here, American Airlines here, Delta Airlines here, Jetblue Airlines here, Southwest Airlines here. Be sure to go straight to the LAST page for the most recent posts.
My husband and I both have the Business Platinum card. Since we can no longer get gift cards from Alaska, I have American Airlines and he has Delta as the designated airlines. The gift cards we purchased earlier this month were all reimbursed.
If Delta is your airline choice, be sure to purchase gift cards only on Delta’s desktop site. Gift cards purchased from Delta mobile app are processed by CashStar and are not being reimbursed by Amex.
Besides the changes for Delta gift cards, It is worth noting:
- Per Flyertalk thread for Hawaiian Airlines here. gift card purchase was not reimbursed as of December 2017.
- Per Flyertalk thread for Alaska Airlines here, gift certificates are no longer reimbursed as of June 2017. There were reports of small ticket purchase prices were reimbursed, so it is entirely YMMV!
Have you claimed your Amex airline fee credits for 2019 yet?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
We fly out if airports where AK is king but as my husband has status with them, we don’t have to pay for most amenities. I’d hope we’d able to take the difference, as we did in 2006, in gift cards but didn’t realize this loophole was closed until too late. We’re flying to Greece this summer in late June/early July so I’m hoping to get our airline sorted out (looks like Delta might be the winner) and choose our benefit airline based on that.
This is my second year with the Business Platinum. I just bought a $200 e gift card from Southwest on 1/13/18 and got $200 statement credit on 1/15/18. Now Amex is reminding me that if I would like to switch my airline selection for the year I need to switch by 1/31/18. So I could try Alaska for the 35% coach rebate and make another switch before the next e gift card purchase and credit next January 2019. Any suggestions beyond Alaska?
It really depends which airline you think you will fly the most this year. The rebate works the same regardless which airline you choose.
Delta is my designated airline. I’ve already gotten $150 of the $200 for my personal Platinum. Do you think purchasing a bottle of champagne from a SkyClub would code properly?
That is a tricky one, I am not sure. Can you use Delta gift card to pay for the champagne??