- The Platinum Card® from American Express charges a high $550 annual fee, but some of that cost is immediately offset by up to $200 in annual airline fee credits.
- Airline fee credits are for incidentals including checked bag fees, seat selection fees, onboard food and beverage purchases, and ticket change and cancellation fees.
- It no longer works to reimburse airline gift cards, but even when you use the credit for things like checked bag fees and ticket changes, the value becomes clear immediately.
The Platinum Card from American Express is one of my favorite credit cards, even with its $550 annual fee. With an annual fee that high, though, the benefits better be worth it! In my opinion, they are, and that’s why I keep this card around.
One of the easiest ways to offset a good part of the $550 annual fee each year is through the Amex Platinum’s annual airline fee credit. Each year, cardholders are eligible to have up to $200 in airline fees reimbursed. If these are things you would pay for anyway, it effectively brings the annual fee down to $350.
But, before you get too excited, it’s important to fully understand how this benefit works.
First off, before you can use your annual airline fee credit, you must select which airline you would like the benefit to apply to. Unfortunately, it has to be one airline, and it is not possible to change your selection midway through the year.
This does somewhat reduce the usefulness of this benefit, but it can still go a long way toward offsetting the annual fee. Your airline options include:
- Alaska Airlines
- American Airlines
- Delta Air Lines
- Frontier Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue Airways
- Southwest Airlines
- Spirit Airlines
- United Airlines
The airline fee credit applies only to airline fee incidentals, not to airfare purchases. These incidentals include checked bag fees, seat selection fees, onboard food and beverage purchases, and ticket change and cancellation fees. More types of purchases may be included as an incidental fee, but it depends on the airline. The TPG Lounge Facebook Group is a great place to check to see what has been counting for other people at any given time.
The Amex Platinum's airline fee credit is not supposed to apply to ticket purchases, upgrades, or gift cards, but in the past it's been possible to use the credit for airline gift cards that you can then use to purchase airfare.
However, gift cards for all airlines are no longer triggering the Amex Platinum fee credit, or the fee credits on other Amex cards that have this perk. So this is effectively no longer an option. It's unfortunate, but it's not a huge surprise - since airline gift cards were never officially eligible for the airline fee credit, we knew this could stop working at any time.
Even now that we're no longer able to buy gift cards with the airline fee credit, this benefit remains a quick way to offset nearly half the annual fee. If you travel even a few times a year, this credit can help you cut down on out-of-pocket expenses like checked bag fees and ticket change and cancellation fees.