Amex Airline Reimbursement: Did You Know You Can Select the Airline AFTER the Purchase?

For the Amex Airline Incidental reimbursement, you can even select the airline a few hours AFTER making the purchase.

Amex Airline Reimbursement

Many of us have the Amex Platinum cards and PRG card that gets an annual reimbursement from Amex for airline incidental expenses like upgrades, baggage, etc.

The hard part is that once you choose an airline, you’re locked in with that airline for the rest of the year. Each calendar year you can choose again.

Choosing After-the-Fact

I wondered what would happen if the airline was chosen a bit after making the charge. In my case, I made a small United purchase on my Amex Platinum Mercedes card, and around seven hours later I selected United as my choice airline.

Sure enough, a few days later the airline credit came through.

Upon research, there’s a similar data point on Reddit indicating that a few minutes later still works. In my experience, even seven hours later worked.

How long do we have?

It might be until the charge goes from pending to complete or it might be that at the end of each day it all processes internally. Your guess is as good as mine.

I guess that at least if you’re still on the same day it will turn out fine.

Why should we care?

The main thing to know is that if you forget to set your airline you can do it afterward. Also, if you simply don’t know where you’ll be making incidental charges, you can just select the airline after making the charge.

Of course, there’s always some risk in using this method since it might not always work or something could change. Still useful to know.