American Airlines to continue with preferred agency programme

American Airlines intends to move forward with its plans to reward agencies it designates as “preferred”, according to copies of emails the carrier sent to corporate clients and travel agencies which have been reviewed by BTN.

The US-based carrier last week announced it was cancelling plans to differentiate eligibility for earning AAdvantage loyalty miles based on booking channels.

This came as American’s CEO Robert Isom that the carrier had made errors in rolling out its New Distribution Capability (NDC) strategy and vowed to change some tactics. 

The memos about the airline’s plans for its preferred agencies programme, signed by American’s SVP of partnerships and retailing Scott Laurence, do not provide any specifics about the programme.

But they noted that agencies would “soon receive additional information about our preferred agency programme and upcoming incentives to reward agencies who continue to promote and book travel through New Distribution Capability technology”.

Corporate clients were told they also would “soon receive additional information about our preferred agency programme, and our sales and distribution strategy”.

American’s preferred agency programme was announced in February, with an initial start date of 1 May which was later postponed to 11 July. This would have required agencies to book at least 30 per cent of their American volume through NDC channels by 21 April to qualify to achieve preferred status.

That figure would increase to 50 per cent by 31 October and 70 per cent by 30 April 2025. It was unclear how those percentages would be measured. 

The emails reiterated Isom’s comments last week at an investor conference that the carrier no longer planned to change how AAdvantage members earned miles or points based on how they booked. Isom also noted that the carrier had moved “faster than we should have” in terms of its NDC strategy, and it “didn’t execute well”.

That mea culpa came one day after American announced that chief commercial officer Vasu Raja, a key architect of the carrier’s distribution strategy, would leave the company in June.  

In the memos about the preferred agencies programme, Laurence noted that American is “holistically adapting our approach to prioritise that no matter where travellers book, they shouldn’t be negatively impacted by our policy changes in the future. The decisions we make are with our mutual customers in mind, and making our agency and corporate partners’ experience the best it can be”.

American did not provide any further information about the preferred agency programme.