The American Airlines Low Fare Guarantee

AAPhoto by Cubbie n Vegas

Something unexpected happened earlier today when I was booking a weekend trip to visit a friend — the American Airlines website was not offering the cheapest price for one of their own itineraries. I usually use a site like Orbitz to search for the cheapest airfare but then book with the airline directly; as a general rule, the airline should always offer the same basic fare.

American is so confidant that they will always offer the cheapest fare, in fact, that they guarantee the lowest fare — so I saw this as a golden opportunity to test the system for the first time personally.

American’s Lowest Fare Guarantee

The idea is simple: if you can find the exact same itinerary on a competing travel website, they will refund the difference and give you a $50 credit. As they say, however, the devil is in the details:

  • You must first book the (more expensive) ticket on AA.com – that is right, in order to invoke the guarantee, you have to book the more expensive ticket first and hope that the request is approved. I think this is probably the most annoying aspect; if American declines your request, you are stuck having paid for the more expensive fare. 
  • You must then find the exact same flight, itinerary, cabin, and class on a competing website. Not only that, it needs the same fare rules and restrictions.
  • The guarantee only applies to tickets originating from the domestic United States.
  • You must then file the claim by midnight central time on the day you purchased the ticket.
  • The Lowest Fare Guarantee does not apply to unpublished fares — so student airfare, consolidator tickets (Priceline “name your own price”, etc”) do not count. What this effectively means is that to have the best chance of success you should limit yourself to sites like Expedia, Orbitz, etc
  • The Guarantee only applies to lower fares you find on the same day at other websites; American won’t honor price drops from their own AA.com

This makes the entire process fairly complicated, although I can understand why it needs to be this way. Unfortunately, the requirements concerning fare rules, restrictions, and unpublished fares, combined with the requirement that you buy the ticket on AA.com first, makes this risky in all but the most certain situations.

Submitting the Request

Nevertheless, I was fairly confidant that I had found a valid lower fare; Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity were all showing a lower price than AA.com, and it seemed to fit the same fare rules. So I decided to buy the ticket from AA.com and submit a Lowest Fare Guarantee.

Within minutes of submitting the claim online, I received an automated response from American that included more information on the process. The email said that if they could not verify it themselves, they would need to see:

- a screen shot of the competitors web site, showing the identical AA
flights, travel dates and the lower fare showing all taxes and fees
- a screen shot of the Fare Rules & Restrictions page (not to be
confused with the competitor web site s rules and restrictions for site
usage)

The first requirement makes sense, but the second one is likely to trip people up — they want to see a copy of the fare rules associated with the ticket. Here’s a hint to make sure you actually find the fare rules: the rules usually look overwhelming and are difficult to decipher in their all-caps block format. So remember — American needs both the itinerary from the competing website, but also a copy of the fare rules!

In addition, please note that our e-mail system is unable to accept attachments, and
faxing is the only way to relay your information to the processing team.

Setting the other requirements aside, this I think is the most annoying part. They don’t mention this on their website, but if they can’t verify the lower fare, they want you to fax them the screenshots. Do you have easy access to a fax machine? I certainly don’t. That seems like it is a poorly designed email system if they cannot accept attachments.

Success!

Thankfully, within an hour, I received an email advising me that the request had been approved. The email advised that I should expect a refund to my credit card in the amount of the difference, and the email contained a promotion code good for $50 off a future flight. Of course, American left a few more surprises:

  • I am supposed to expect the refund to my original form of payment in “2-3 billing cycles” - I really hope that this is their way of covering their bases, and that it won’t actually take this long — I’m not going to be thrilled if I have to wait three months to get my $40 back.
  • The $50 promotion code they give you has a bunch of embargo dates that are not advertised in advance: for domestic flights, that includes Jan 1-5; Mar 13-15 + 20-22 + 28-30; Apr 10-13; Jun 27-28; Jul 5-6; Nov 20-25 + 28-30; Dec 19-23 + 26-30.  For international flights, there is a separate set of embargo dates that in some cases is less restrictive — I’m not sure if these dates are meant to be in addition to or instead of the domestic embargo dates (why would they embargo spring break domestically, but not internationally?).
All things considered, I am happy with how this turned out — I have my $50 discount code for a future flight, with a minimum amount of hassle involved. In fact, in my case, it was exceptionally easy — but I was lucky that they were able to verify it themselves. It would be pretty easy to get tripped up, so be careful if you are planning to invoke American’s Low Fare Guarantee.
Update: Someone just pointed out to me that the great team over at FareCompare put the guarantees of the major airlines to the test last year on their blog. A nice overview of the system at the major domestic carriers.

October 9, 2008 • Filed Under Travel  • Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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