American Airlines

Tariff and other documents incorporated in the contract

Background

When you buy a ticket from American Airlines, you are bound to a contract. American calls this contract “Conditions of Carriage,” and it contains the following provision:

All terms, fare rules, and tariffs are incorporated herein by reference and constitute part of your agreement with American Airlines.

All terms, fare rules, and tariffs are incorporated herein by reference and constitute part of your agreement with American Airlines.

“Incorporated by reference” is a legal tactic that allows a company to make other documents part of the contract, just as if they were written directly into the agreement you accept.

After years of publishing the General Rules of the International Tariff (an incorporated document) on its website, American stopped doing so in early 2020 and formally told the Department of Transportation that it would no longer make them available online, forcing instead customers to send an email request and wait up to 8 hours for a response.

We feel that it is fundamentally unfair and deceptive for you to be bound by a contract without having access to all of its terms before you agree to it. So we created this website on October 19, 2020, started making almost daily requests to American for the latest version of the document, and made it easily available to all here. At the same time we formally complained about American’s deliberate anti-consumer tactic to the DOT. As a result, American quietly reversed its position and resumed publishing the latest version of these rules on its website.

We continue to maintain this site as a public service because the contract that applies to your ticket is the one in effect on the date of purchase, and, when you need it most, may no longer be available on American’s website, replaced by a newer one.

While incorporated documents are often filled with dense legalese, having access to them is crucial. When an issue occurs, the full contract allows you, or someone assisting you, to read and understand your rights. For example, American Airlines buries many of your essential rights exclusively within documents incorporated by reference. Critical details—such as your rights to a refund, how compensation for a downgrade is calculated, and what the airline owes you during flight disruptions—are not listed on their main website and are only found in the separate Tariff document. Having access to these documents empowers you to advocate for yourself, rather than leaving you at the mercy of airline staff who, as thousands of annual complaints to the DOT show, does not always provide consumers with complete or accurate information.

List of documents incorporated by reference

Document incorporated Notes View
General Rules of the International Tariff No. AA1, DOT:465, CTA:273 Applicable to all international flights. Current:
aa.comopen_in_new
(archive below)
Maximum Permitted Mileage Tariff No. MPM-1, DOT:424, CTA:239 Governs the Tariff, as per first page of the General Rules above. Requested from AA on 19 October 2020.
Never provided.
International Passenger Governing Tariff No. IPGT-1, DOT:581, CTA:373 Governs the Tariff, as per first page of the General Rules above and contains the list of participating carriers. Requested from AA on 19 October 2020.
Never provided.
Aircraft Type Seating Configuration Tariff No. TS-2, DOT:220, CTA:111 Governs the Tariff, as per first page of the General Rules above. Requested from AA on 19 October 2020.
Never provided.
Fare Rule Provisions Are part of the Tariff as per Rule 5(A)(5). Partial fare rules1 reformatted to be hard to read2 are available by manual download at purchase. They are not retrievable online at any other time3.
Example picture_as_pdf

1American Airlines does not made available to purchasers the following categories of Rule 2 of the Tariff, which are a binding part of the contract and can be relevant post-purchase as they determine the flexibility for changes of itinerary:

  • Stopovers (Category 8),
  • Transfers (Category 9),
  • Permitted Combinations (Category 10),
  • Accompanied Travel (Category 13),
  • Travel Restrictions (Category 14),
  • Ticket Endorsements (Category 18),
  • Children Discounts (Category 19),
  • Tour Conductor Discounts (Category 20),
  • Agency Discounts (Category 21),
  • All Other Discounts (Category 22),
  • Miscellaneous Provisions (Category 23),
  • Fare by Rule (Category 25),
  • Groups (Category 26),
  • Tours (Category 27),
  • Visit Another Country (Category 28),
  • Deposits (Category 29),
  • Voluntary Changes (Category 31),
  • Voluntary Refunds (Category 33),
  • Negotiated Fare Restrictions (Category 35),
  • International Construction,
  • Permissible Routings (Tariff Rule 140).

2American Airlines has programmed its systems to remove all existing indentation and formatting required for the interpretation of the limited amount of rules made available to purchasers.

3 We recommend that you save the partial fare rules that are made available through the link (e.g. by printing them to pdf) before clicking on “buy”. If you don’t, you will lose easy access to them as American Airlines (unlike most other airlines) does not send them to you with your ticket “receipt” or allow you to retrieve them online after purchase, even though their systems can display them on demand.

Archived General Rules of the International Tariff

Version No. Issue Date Effective Date View
672 August 06, 2025 August 07, 2025 picture_as_pdf
657 May 30, 2025 May 31, 2025 picture_as_pdf
644 April 10, 2025 April 10, 2025 picture_as_pdf
635 March 10, 2025 March 11, 2025 picture_as_pdf
618 January 23, 2025 January 24, 2025 picture_as_pdf
617 January 21, 2025 January 22, 2025
603 November 14, 2024 November 15, 2024 picture_as_pdf
601 November 12, 2024 November 13, 2024 picture_as_pdf
595 October 24, 2024 October 25, 2024 picture_as_pdf
542 May 13, 2024 May 14, 2024 picture_as_pdf
5202 February 28, 2024 February 29, 2024 picture_as_pdf
517 February 22, 2024 February 23, 2024 picture_as_pdf
515 February 19, 2024 February 20, 2024 picture_as_pdf
513 February 14, 2024 picture_as_pdf
501 December 14, 2023 December 15, 2023 picture_as_pdf
485 November 07, 2023 November 08, 2023 picture_as_pdf
466 September 19, 2023 September 20, 2023 picture_as_pdf
432 June 13, 2023 June 14, 2023 picture_as_pdf
424 May 19, 2023 picture_as_pdf
403 March 15, 2023 March 16, 2023 picture_as_pdf
399 March 14, 2023 March 15, 2023 picture_as_pdf
386 February 20, 2023 picture_as_pdf
3751 January 19, 2023 January 20, 2023 picture_as_pdf
363 December 01, 2022 picture_as_pdf
359 November 07, 2022 November 08, 2022 picture_as_pdf
353 October 28, 2022 October 29, 2022 picture_as_pdf
343 September 27, 2022 September 28, 2022 picture_as_pdf
340 September 16, 2022 September 17, 2022 picture_as_pdf
320 July 20, 2022 picture_as_pdf
283 April 25, 2022 April 26, 2022 picture_as_pdf
269 March 24, 2022 picture_as_pdf
256 February 21, 2022 February 22, 2022 picture_as_pdf
246 January 28, 2022 picture_as_pdf
234 November 24, 2021 picture_as_pdf
199 September 20, 2021 picture_as_pdf
190 August 13, 2021 August 14, 2021 picture_as_pdf
174 May 28, 2021 May 29, 2021 picture_as_pdf
167 May 13, 2021 May 15, 2021 picture_as_pdf
161 April 16, 2021 April 17, 2021 picture_as_pdf
156 April 12, 2021 April 13, 2021 picture_as_pdf
133 February 25, 2021 picture_as_pdf
124 February 05, 2021 March 22, 2021 picture_as_pdf
113 December 24, 2020 picture_as_pdf
112 December 23, 2020 February 06, 2021 picture_as_pdf
107 December 03, 2020 picture_as_pdf
103 November 11, 2020 December 26, 2020 picture_as_pdf
97 October 14, 2020 picture_as_pdf
96 October 12, 2020 November 26, 2020 picture_as_pdf
82 September 02, 2020 October 17, 2020 picture_as_pdf
62 June 02, 2020 July 17, 2020 picture_as_pdf
2Version 530 introduces revisions to the involuntary refunds section of Rule 90
1Version 375 introduces extensive changes to Rule 1 Definitions and Rule 2 Standard Format of Electronic Rules

Disclaimers

If you haven’t figured it out by now, this site is not run by American Airlines, Inc., nor does it pretend to be (we would rather prefer if American was transparent with its contract and we didn’t have to run this site).

All trademarks, web frameworks, fonts, images, and whatever else used are the ownership of their owners. By reading this text you agree that you are able to read the tiny legal stuff. If you’re a bot or an AI, please scrape away!

Wait, there must be more, right? Sure, might as well add some typically unfriendly Terms:

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