Not content with letting Chase hog all of people’s negative reactions to the upcoming changes on the Sapphire Reserve card, American Express has gotten in on the act by announcing a major devaluation for Business Platinum cardholders.
One of the card’s popular benefits is a 35% points rebate when booking flights with the airline you’ve selected for your annual $200 airline fee credit, as well as for tickets on any airline in business or first class. Unfortunately it’s that latter part of the benefit that’ll be getting nixed in a few months.
Reader Ryan gave us a heads up about this as there’s now a notice about this change on the benefit’s landing page.
Effective September 18, 2025, eligible flights will no longer include First and Business Class tickets booked on an airline that is not your selected qualifying airline.
That’s a significant negative change to Business Platinum card because this benefit is one of the key reasons that many people have found it to be worth paying the card’s $695 annual fee. Getting a 35% rebate for flights booked this way meant that you were effectively getting 1.54 cents per point of value on the redemption, not to mention the fact that you’d also earn miles for the ticket.
Devaluing the benefit so that it’s only valid for flights booked on a single airline renders it as being far less useful. It also means that you’re limited to flights with a solitary US-based airline, rather than being able to utilize the benefit for premium cabin flights the world over.
Note that once you’ve maxed out the $200 airline fee credit each year, you can change your selected airline. That means that you could potentially still use the benefit for more than one airline, but even then it’s adding hassle and removing value from the card.
Amex shared the other day that they’ll be revamping both their consumer Platinum and Business Platinum cards later this year. The fact that this 35% airline rebate change will take place in three months time suggests that might be when the other yet-to-be-announced changes get launched too, but that remains to be seen. Amex will need the revamp of the Business Platinum card to add a number of legitimately valuable benefits to make up for the loss of much of this benefit’s value, not to mention the almost inevitable annual fee increase.
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I can see the direction AMEX is going. They will probably drop it to 25% or less back in a year. The Plat card fees are positioned to move to 995. I see them having a real goal of $1500 within a few yrs. That will require more stacking of things that a real business doesnt always need like indeed credits or something. How about credits for AI monthly fees rather than hiring companies or Adobe which has outrageous costs.
That amex responds to CSR’s update with a “major devaluation” tells you all you need to know about the updated CSR.
I was barely interested in high annual fee cards to begin with. Now, as they all seem to be racing to the bottom, I might be out on them entirely.
Stephen, I was under the impression you can change your selected airline as often as you want before you start using the $200 credit. It sounds like you are saying you can also change as often as you want after you finish using the $200 credit. Can you confirm? I’d never heard that before. And is it also true that you can change before using the credit (so the only time you are “stuck” is while spending the credit)?
this is also my understanding
Yep, you can definitely change it before using the credit. I’ve not changed it after using it before, but Tim shared it was possible.
Definitely one way of reducing overcrowding of the Centurion lounges. Was planning to cancel my personal Platinum card and just retain the business card specifically for business class flights on middle eastern carriers with the 35% rebate… With such a wide selection of good lounges available, I will now get rid of both of them. Will probably retain the business gold for the 4x points generation and use points transfer in future.
No more Platinum for me!
I am not happy with AMEX due to the club policies and they have been pretty surly with me. A business AMEX rep keeps calling me to get more of my business. I have not taken his call yet. If he calls me, ill let him know. I hate wasting time on the phone.
This doesn’t seem that bad to me, mostly because each time I’ve used this benefit internationally, you can trigger it as long as the first flight is with the selected airline (so that it tickets through them). Example: Newark to Tokyo (United) to Kuala Lumpur (ANA) to JFK (ANA), which was cheaper than a routing that started with ANA at JFK. It probably requires more creativity/planning now to use for Biz/First now.
It doesn’t actually matter who the operating carrier(s) is/are as long as the ticket is issued by your selected airline. I’ve booked Delta codeshares operated by Aeromexico and Virgin Atlantic with no DL segments and gotten the rebate
Right, that’s a better explanation. When I asked Amex agents, they didn’t know what exactly the rule was, so I used “first flight has the correct airline code”.
So they’re killing the main differentiating benefit for the card? And they expect people to keep the card because…?
This is a loss of a valuable benefit for the tiny percentage of cardholders that are aware it exists and use it. But it’s hardly the “main differentiating benefit” for the card.
Then why get this card instead of the personal?
They’re not competing with themselves. They don’t care which one you get. The differentiator in choosing would be the SUB.
The vast majority of people are only looking for personal cards for personal use and only looking for business cards for business use. They’re positioning this card against Venture X business, Sapphire business, United Club business, Delta Reserve business, etc., not personal cards.
From what I’m aware, there’s a reasonable number of people who max this out each year as a way to maximize the value of their points rather than cashing out to Schwab. Granted, they’re probably the reason Amex is greatly slashing this benefit in the first place, but the number of people using it might be more than expected.
If you gave me over/under on the percentage of card owners who would even understand the sentence “as a way to maximize the value of their points rather than cashing out to Schwab” and set it at 1%, I’d take the under. Now, that said, if that very small percent are “operators” it could still be a big line item for Amex.
Well, that sucks. That benefit was the only real reason I kept this card. We used it every year on international travel. Early on, I was disappointed when they quickly nerfed it to 35% from the original benefit of 50% (which was awesome), but we kept it. I can’t see any real reason going forward to pay for it. Goodbye AMEX Biz Plat, it was a nice ride.
They will look to nerf it again probably to 20% in a year. They are trying to pull some programs that we favor and replace that with higher card fees and more coupon things that favor them.
The sticky point is US airlines are the only ones you can choose. You can’t even choose Lufthansa, British Airways, Singapore,…. even if that is your primary airline.
Good job making a benefit mostly work for domestic travel while more and more people have international jobs > target missed big time
I’d wager that the number of small to medium sized businesses in the US whose *primary airline* is a non-US carrier is vanishingly small, and there are even fewer who can’t effectively book that carrier via a US partner airline
That is all fine as primary is/was for the $200 airline credit. But the first/business tickets were for all airlines. So the once in while international travel now needs to be booked as codeshare? This just adds complexity etc. during rebooking/irrops/…
And if you define a benefit by how many of the SME in the US it applies too/would use it …. then you can throw out almost everything. Indeed credit, Adobe credit, …. useful if you use the service, but won’t get many people to change providers.
Wouldn’t this be a benefit that should be grandfathered in for at least until next renewal for existing cardmembers (something about 1-year notice for changes if fee has been paid)?
I used to say that the Business Platinum was the most valuable card in my wallet. And, the 35 percent rebate was part of that value. But, over time, its stable of benefits became less relevant to me. And, the competition evolved. I found myself using it less and less. I cancelled my Business Platinum a couple months ago. This news supports my decision. I’m also at the point of cancelling my personal Platinum.
As the article suggests, Amex needs to make some significant changes to catch up to the industry . . . and that need is accentuated with the elimination of this benefit.
I cancelled a personal Platinum earlier this year and regret not downgrading it to green after hearing the Tim did so with about 7 Platinums and within 6 months had upgrade offers on all of them.
I agree with you 100%, Similar for me.
I think your Major is really a Sargent.
Yeah, I couldn’t find any stock images of a Major and so ended up going with this
i find it offensive
this is ironic. i ran into a very very drunk alaskan fisherman who was offended by “all the greek and italian immigrants” he was seeing the evening before he was supposed to board his commercial vessel for another couple of weeks at sea making decent money. there were of course no greeks or italians present. but about 60 minutes later, there were police and he was in cuffs, face down on the ground, begging one of us in the audience to “tell them who swung first. damn it you people need me! i get the food you eat!!!!” yeah, i found that man offensive. and he got fired during that 72 hour hold in the county jail.
I find your comment that the image is offensive, offensive.
Major Deval serves in the same unit as Private Hell and General Disgust.
Just really hope they keep the 35% on your selected airline long-term, that’s been a benefit I’ve been concerned about them nerfing. Honestly, it seems like they would’ve been more likely to nerf it for economy flights than premium flights. If that ever happens, I’ll definitely be ditching my business platinums and also deprioritizing MR points generally.
My Amex Biz Platinum is coming up for renewal this month and this was the *only* reason I was going to keep the card. Now I’ll for sure get rid of it unless they offer me a huge retention bonus (one year they offered me a 100k point retention bonus, so it will have to be similar).
And dont forget this was originally a 50% rebate which they devalued to 35% with an even shorter notice.