Major deval: Amex Business Platinum ending 35% points rebate on business & first class flights

Not content with letting Chase hog all of people’s negative reactions to the upcoming changes on the Sapphire Reserve card, American Express has gotten in on the act by announcing a major devaluation for Business Platinum cardholders.

One of the card’s popular benefits is a 35% points rebate when booking flights with the airline you’ve selected for your annual $200 airline fee credit, as well as for tickets on any airline in business or first class. Unfortunately it’s that latter part of the benefit that’ll be getting nixed in a few months.

Reader Ryan gave us a heads up about this as there’s now a notice about this change on the benefit’s landing page.

Effective September 18, 2025, eligible flights will no longer include First and Business Class tickets booked on an airline that is not your selected qualifying airline.

That’s a significant negative change to Business Platinum card because this benefit is one of the key reasons that many people have found it to be worth paying the card’s $695 annual fee. Getting a 35% rebate for flights booked this way meant that you were effectively getting 1.54 cents per point of value on the redemption, not to mention the fact that you’d also earn miles for the ticket.

Devaluing the benefit so that it’s only valid for flights booked on a single airline renders it as being far less useful. It also means that you’re limited to flights with a solitary US-based airline, rather than being able to utilize the benefit for premium cabin flights the world over.

Note that once you’ve maxed out the $200 airline fee credit each year, you can change your selected airline. That means that you could potentially still use the benefit for more than one airline, but even then it’s adding hassle and removing value from the card.

Amex shared the other day that they’ll be revamping both their consumer Platinum and Business Platinum cards later this year. The fact that this 35% airline rebate change will take place in three months time suggests that might be when the other yet-to-be-announced changes get launched too, but that remains to be seen. Amex will need the revamp of the Business Platinum card to add a number of legitimately valuable benefits to make up for the loss of much of this benefit’s value, not to mention the almost inevitable annual fee increase.

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