Both the personal and business version of the Platinum card come with the opportunity to get up to a $200 rebate PER YEAR with an airline of your choice. This rebate is supposed to be used for incidental charges, not the cost of purchasing a ticket. To get reimbursed for the charges, you must pay for it with your Amex Platinum card. There is no call needed as you’ll see a statement credit show up to your account within the week after the charge is made. Incidental charges include checked bags, in-flight refreshments, flight-change fees, oversize baggage fees, airport lounge day-passes, pet-kennel fees, and phone reservation fees.
While I know some might rack up quite a bit of these “incidental” fees, I personally do not come close to spending $200/year on these fees. Last week I went ahead and purchased two American Airline gift cards with my Amex and have already been reimbursed by these purchases. I followed the success others had via this FlyerTalk thread. Amex states that gift card purchases do not count towards incidental fees, so your success may vary. I suggest just taking a look at the most recent stories on the FlyerTalk thread.
Here is a quick recap of what has worked in the past (based on people’s personal success story on FlyerTalk as well as my personal success).
- Alaska Airlines: Gift card purchases of $100 or less have been reimbursed
- American Airlines: Gift cards purchases of $100 or less have been reimbursed (can use up to 8 gift cards per reservation)
- Delta: eGift Certificate purchases of $50 have been reimbursed (can use 3 eGift Certificates per reservation)
- Frontier: Not sure
- JetBlue: No reimbursement for gift card purchases
- Southwest: Gift card purcahses of $200 or less have been reimbursed.
- Spirit: Not sure
- United: Gift card purchases of $200 or less have been reimbursed (expire 5 years after purchased; only one gift card can be used per reservation)
Keep in mind that some airlines charge a shipping fee for gift purchases. American Airlines and Delta, for example, sell virtual gift cards so there is no additional fee tacked on. Also, make sure to check the terms for each gift card purchase as there are different policies per airline – expiration dates, the amount of certificates that can be used per reservation, some are only available for online reservations, etc.
Remember, unless you are a new cardmember, you must have designated your airline for reimbursement by last January 31. You can select your airline of choice here. New members can still select their airline of choice and you MUST do this prior to earning any credits back for your incidental purchases. You are entitled to up to $200 in airline reimbursements (for the same airline that has been designated) per account – NOT per card member. If you have additional authorized users on your card, the account can get up to $200 in reimbursed credit TOTAL.
With a $550 annual fee for the personal card and $450 annual fee for the business card, getting $200 towards future travel helps. Stay tuned for another post soon on all the other perks for the American Express Platinum card – this includes reimbursed global entry, airline lounge access, and Starwood Gold status.
What have you used your Amex Platinum airline credit for?
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FYI on the UA $200 e-gift card. You don’t have to use this at one time. I paid $155 for a one-way ticket and have change leftover. It’s not like a regular UA customer appreciation cert. I’ll apply the $45 balance to another UA flight.
FYI — I have twice gotten reimbursement for a $200 AA giftcard. Just used the latest giftcard for my Christmas trip home.
Got $200 SWA Gift Card (4 / $50)….Got them all reimbursed within a week.
Usually your UA gift cert will apply to flights over $200, in the case like Dhammer, the balance is not forfeited. You CAN NOT thought combine more than 1 gift card/certificate or however UA terms them in the same flight booking. For example I booked two of the same flight for my GF and I, and was only able to use the gift certificate on one reservation at a time. Just a pain, if only they wised up to American standards…
I recently purchased a $50 AA giftcard; the category shows as “Airline – Travel”. Is this what everyone else had?
@Ryan Beach – Yes. You should see a statement credit for it soon.
I just bought a United e-gift card ($200) and it shows as “UNITED ELEC TICKETNG” and has a ticket number… I don’t know if that will qualify to get a credit 🙁
I also bought 2 Delta EGift certificates of $50 each and they were billed as E-Tickets, “From: LA, To: LA” and obviously no reimbursement.