A former American Airlines executive has admitted the airline kept collecting a $75 fee for last-minute award bookings even after the job it supposedly paid for had been taken over by computers. Maya Leibman, who led the AAdvantage loyalty programme before moving up to Chief Information Officer, made the admission on the Airlines Confidential podcast.
The charge in question was a $75 'expedite fee' levied on anyone booking an award ticket within 21 days of departure. In the days before online booking, it made some sense: a human agent had to scramble to issue the ticket manually. But once the process moved online and tickets were issued automatically, Leibman conceded the transaction was 'all done automatically' — the fee simply stayed in place until American finally scrapped it in January 2020. Elites were exempt from the charge while it existed.
Leibman raised the example while defending checked bag fees, which she argued cover real people and equipment. She chose the expedite fee as the kind of charge she couldn't justify on those grounds. The View from the Wing author takes issue even with her bag-fee logic, arguing bag fees are less about cost recovery and more a form of price discrimination — but either way, the expedite fee is a rare case of an airline executive effectively admitting a fee outlived its own story.
There was almost a sequel. In May 2008, American announced a $5 fee for booking award tickets online — charging customers for using the cheaper channel after the phone fee had already pushed them there. The criticism was sharp: members had earned miles because the airline dangled the reward in front of them, and taxing the redemption moment undercut the whole pitch. American quietly shelved the fee without ever announcing the climbdown, taking the reputational hit for imposing it and none of the credit for dropping it.
The broader takeaway for anyone sitting on a mileage balance: fees on redemptions are profit, not cost. Airlines price by demand and by what a customer will bear, and the miles currency has no competitor — you can't take your AAdvantage miles to another airline's checkout. There's an economic case for pricing close-in awards higher, since that seat could otherwise sell for cash, but that's what revenue management is for; it doesn't require an 'expedite' surcharge on an electronic ticket.
Even the fee's eventual death wasn't a clean win. When American dropped the $75 charge in 2020, United and Delta were heading the other way — requiring more miles for last-minute awards instead of cash fees. That's a worse deal for elites, who used to get the cash fee waived but don't get extra mileage requirements waived. In other words, the fee didn't vanish; for many members it just changed shape. Anyone redeeming miles close to departure should compare the total cost — miles plus surcharges versus an old-style cash fee — before assuming the industry got more generous.
