American Airlines Removes More Fares in August

AmTrav has tracked American Airlines’ fare changes since American removed many of their lowest fares on April 3 from corporate booking tools like Concur Travel, Deem and Egencia, reserving those lowest fares for NDC-enabled partners like AmTrav and for AA.com.

Through July, American averaged 37% of fares missing from those corporate bookings tools (including 39% of fares in DFW). 

But then on July’s Q2 earnings call, Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja said that American would get more aggressive and remove even more fares from those booking tools:

We'll roll out those features also over time for new distribution technology. But as this happens, we'll make increasingly less and less of our fare content available through traditional technology where customers aren't able to get that quality experience that they're looking for from us.

Lo and behold, in August American removed 50% of fares, and stayed up at 53% in September (through September 18):

So what does this mean for corporate travel programs that depend on American Airlines? This means three things:

First, a lot of lower fares are missing

If your travelers happen to check AA.com or the American app – maybe they want to see a better seatmap than your corporate travel platform offers – there’s a 52% chance that they’ll find a lower fare on AA.com or the American app than in your corporate travel platform. Ouch! And while regular Economy that corporate travelers most often purchase had be affected less often than other fare types, Economy fares are affected a lot more in August & September:

Second, this is costing your company a lot

If you don’t have access to these fares through a platform like AmTrav. Through July, companies without access to American’s lowest fares were paying 8% more on American, that jumped to 12% in August and September:

Third, American is doubling down, not backing down

Back in April many (myself included) were surprised that American implemented this strategy as promised – sometimes airlines bluff, but American wasn’t bluffing.

Fast forward to the second half of 2023, with five-plus months of results on billions of dollars in corporate spend, and American is removing even more fares.

What this means is that the pain for companies – that 12% in extra American fare cost – is going to get even worse while Concur Travel, Deem and Egencia scramble to update their technology.

It also means that the benefit of switching to a modern NDC-enabled travel platform like AmTrav has never been higher, and will only increase from here.

Thousands of AmTrav corporate customers are booking American's lowest fares today. Are you tired of waiting for access to American’s lowest fares? Schedule a meeting with AmTrav today to start saving.