It's too early to call it dead (for certain), but it sure looks like some of the best workarounds for using the $200 airline fee credit on the *amex platinum* and *biz platinum* have bit the dust.
On paper, this credit is intended to cover things like checked bag fees, lounge passes, and in-flight refreshments. But in practice, there have been some sneaky workarounds you can use to cover the cost of a flight, making it far more valuable for most travelers.
If you selected Delta as your preferred airline, you could reliably trigger this credit by partially paying for airfare with an eCredit, gift card, or SkyMiles and then putting the rest on your Platinum Card. Or even use it to cover the taxes and fees on an award ticket. But times have changed.
Based on our own data points and recent reports from FlyerTalk, those methods stopped working around March 25. Given the amount of time that's passed, this is starting to look less like a routine processing delay and a lot more like Amex quietly closing the door on all of the above.
We're not ready to close the casket just yet – but this workaround is certainly on life support. Here's what we're seeing … and what still works.
How the Amex Airline Credit Works
Before getting into what changed, it's worth understanding how this credit actually functions.
The Amex Platinum and Business Platinum each come with an annual airline fee credit of up to $200 per calendar year.
You designate one airline in the benefits tab of your American Express account, and the credit will apply only to charges from that carrier. You can switch airlines mid-year by chatting with Amex, but otherwise, your selection carries over automatically.
All the major U.S. carriers are eligible – Delta, United, Southwest, American, Alaska, JetBlue, Spirit, and Hawaiian.
But here's the catch: Buying airfare outright won't trigger the credit. Amex designed it to cover incidental fees – things like checked bags, seat selection fees, and airport lounge passes.
Over the years, savvy cardholders found plenty of creative ways to stretch this credit well beyond its intended uses – triggering reimbursements on actual airfare through methods Amex almost certainly didn't intend it to.
Read More: 9 Crafty Ways to Use Up Your Amex Platinum Airline Credits This Year
What's No Longer Posting
The FlyerTalk thread tracking Delta credit data points tells a consistent story: Credits were posting reliably through mid-March.
The last confirmed successful charges using some of these popular workarounds came in between March 11 and March 18. Come March 25, the credits stopped posting entirely.
Before getting into the data, it's worth explaining exactly how these methods worked.
The eCredit Method
If you had a Delta eCredit sitting in your account – from a canceled flight, a price drop rebooking, or any other Delta travel credit – you could apply it toward a new booking to bring the total charge below $250, then pay the remaining balance with your Amex Platinum.
Because the final charge to your card was under $250 and coded as a Delta transaction, Amex would treat it as an incidental fee and reimburse it. Book a $350 flight, apply a $101 eCredit, charge $249 to your Platinum Card, and a few days later, a $200 credit would post to your account.
The Gift Card Method
You could do something very similar with Delta gift cards. Buy a Delta gift card, apply it to a flight to bring the balance below $250, and charge the rest to your Amex Platinum.
The credit would post just as reliably as it did with the eCredit method.
The Pay with Miles Method
Co-branded Delta American Express cardholders with a stash of SkyMiles could use the airline's Pay with Miles feature, which lets you apply miles toward the cash price of a ticket at 1 cent per mile, to reduce the ticket price below $250 before charging the remainder to their Amex Platinum.
Apply enough miles to knock a $350 ticket down to $200 (or so), charge the balance, and historically, the credit would trigger.
Why They Stopped Working
All three methods worked reliably for well over a decade – widely documented across the points-and-miles community. Then, sometime late last month, they just stopped.
Amex's own cardmember agreement has always been explicit: airline tickets, gift cards, and award tickets are not deemed incidental fees. The eCredit and gift card methods were never technically supposed to work … and neither was Pay with Miles.
These were all loopholes, and Amex appears to have simply started enforcing the rules it always had on the books.
There's a key line in the terms worth reading closely: the airline must submit charges under the appropriate merchant code or product identifier for them to be recognized as incidental fees. Amex doesn't independently determine what qualifies … rather, Delta submits a code, and Amex matches it against its criteria.
That means this wasn't a passive system gradually catching up to what cardholders were doing. Someone at Amex, Delta, or likely both made a deliberate decision to change how these charges are coded and processed.
A FlyerTalk moderator active on the Amex board confirmed as much, stating that Amex appears to have made backend changes to screen out transactions that “did not actually qualify.”
What About Award Ticket Taxes & Fees?
Where it gets more complicated is with award ticket taxes and fees, which sit in genuinely different territory than the gift card and eCredit methods.
When you book an award ticket, your miles cover the flight. The taxes and fees associated with the ticket are charged to your card, and that is the only money you're actually spending out of pocket. That's a real cost, and a reasonable argument for what this credit was designed to offset.
Whether Amex's “award tickets” exclusion in the terms covers those taxes seems like a grey area … but what isn't a grey area is that they're not posting right now either.
I can speak to how this used to work based on my own experience. I booked four Delta award tickets from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Amsterdam (AMS) back in February. The taxes and fees on each came to $124.13 — charged separately to my Amex Platinum. Two days later, two Amex Airline Fee Reimbursement credits posted, covering the full $200 allotted.
That's how fast this used to work, which is why cardholders now sitting at two, three, or even four weeks without their credits posting likely aren't experiencing a normal processing delay. This feels different.
Our founder and CEO, Jared, tested this directly after rumors first started circulating. On April 7, he booked two SkyMiles award tickets to Puerto Vallarta (PVR) and paid $171.40 in taxes and fees – exactly the kind of charge that has historically triggered the credit without issue. As of publication, his airline fee credit still hasn't posted.
This Has Happened Before
Unfortunately, Amex doesn't announce when it closes a loophole like this … it just stops working.
Earlier this year, the United TravelBank workaround disappeared the same way. Cardholders could deposit money into a United TravelBank account, and Amex would reimburse it as an incidental airline fee. It was a clean way to apply the credit to any United flight.
Then in February, it stopped, with no email, no policy update, and no warning to Platinum cardholders who had been counting on it.
Rumors started circulating on Reddit and FlyerTalk – the same way this Delta news is being pieced together now. And the pattern is nearly identical: A sharp cutoff without any announcement from Amex.
To be clear: Most (if not all) of these methods weren't really supposed to work, so it's not like Amex totally pulled the rug out from underneath travelers. But considering this was (almost certainly) a conscious decision on Amex's end, a little acknowledgment wouldn't hurt.
What Still Appears to Work
While the easiest options appear to be all but dead, there are still a few options that will work.
Baggage fees still appear to be triggering the credit. One FlyerTalk member had a checked bag fee reimbursed on March 29 and specifically noted it as “one of the intended uses of the credit,” which aligns with Amex's own description of the benefit.
Another FlyerTalk member noted that Delta Sky Club® guest passes appear to be working as well. You can pay $50 to bring a guest into a Delta Sky Club with you, and that $50 charge should trigger the credit. I used this to get my wife into the Chicago O'Hare (ORD) Delta Sky Club back in February on both our outbound and inbound flights, and the credits hit within a few days each time.
But beyond baggage fees and Sky Club guest passes, it gets murky. If you haven't used your 2026 credit and were planning to use one of these workarounds, it's probably best to hold off for now.
Baggage fees and Sky Club day passes are the safest bets at the moment. Everything else seems to be a gamble.
Bottom Line
Some of the most popular methods for triggering the Amex Platinum Card's $200 airline fee credit with Delta appear to have stopped working as of late March 2026. Paying baggage fees and for Sky Club guest passes – both intended uses – are still business as usal.
While we're not ready to declare this officially dead, many cardholders have been waiting weeks for a credit that used to post in a matter of days. That's a pretty telling sign.
