American Airlines Receives Budget Travel Magazine's 'Extra Mile Award'
Magazine Says American's One-Way Flex Awards, Along with Enhancements to AAdvantage Award Booking on AA.com, Helped Earn Distinction
With its continuing commitment to improve the travel experience for customers and revolutionize award travel, American Airlines has earned yet another accolade, this time from Budget Travel magazine. American is being recognized with Budget Travel's "Extra Mile Award," which will be announced Sept. 22 in the magazine's October issue.
"The fifth annual Extra Mile Award is a celebration of companies and destinations that are working hard to improve travelers' lives," according to Nina Willdorf, editor-in-chief of Budget Travel. "Our Extra Mile Award winners have demonstrated real innovation over the past 12 months."
Budget Travel said that American was chosen for going "the extra mile," specifically with the introduction of its AAdvantage® One-Way Flex Awards. Introduced in May of this year, the One-Way Flex feature enables AAdvantage members to combine different types of travel awards to best fit their preferences. For example, customers can fly one portion of a roundtrip on a MileSAAver® award, which requires the least amount of miles to redeem - with an AAnytime® award - which has greater flexibility but requires more miles to redeem. Or, customers can combine Economy class award travel with First or Business class travel. They can even travel one way using a one-way mileage rate. American was the first major domestic airline to offer this flexibility, which Budget Travel calls "truly valuable for travelers."
American's innovative changes to the AAdvantage program - coupled with technology enhancements to AA.com - make redeeming One-Way Flex Awards quick, easy and convenient. Now on AA.com, members can book multi-city award trips, which is especially helpful for members who need to travel to more than one city in a single trip or who need to travel into one city and return from another. For example, a customer can use One Way Flex Awards to travel to London and return from Paris.
"We're honored that Budget Travel has recognized our efforts to lead the industry and keep the AAdvantage program at the forefront of the best loyalty programs in the world," said Rob Friedman, American's President - AAdvantage Marketing Programs. "We designed our One-Way Flex Awards and enhancements to AA.com with customers in mind. As always, we're striving to deliver the convenience they so greatly value."
