When you buy a ticket from American Airlines, you are bound to a contract. American says that this contract is their “Conditions of Carriage”, a document that says:

We strongly believe that you or your representatives should have access to all contractual documents at any time before entering into a contract, including for the contract for transportation that is an airline ticket. This is doubly so since American does not list all of your rights on their website, and many are detailed only in the tariff (e.g. when you are due a refund, how downgrade compensation should be calculated, what should be offered to you during irregular operations, etc.).

These documents may be thick with legalese that you may not understand, but they might be useful to someone else trying to help you. Having access to the full contract when a specific problem arises lets you or representative read it, reflect on it, and understand your rights far better than hoping that airline staff correctly advise you.

When this website was created on 19 October 2020, American Airlines had told the Department of Transportation that it would not make these documents available to you on their own website, but only via email, so we did the requesting and posted the documents received here for easy availability (see Exhibit E here, page 35). American then reversed their decision, and is once again making the latest version of the general rules on their website, so we link directly there, but archive old versions here as the tariff applicable to your ticket is the one valid on the day of its purchase, which may no longer be available on American's website when you need to refer to it.