Amtrak Limiting/Ending Some Fare Discounts - AAA and Student Now Gone

[GrnMtnMan]

Caveat Emptor: Amtrak made some internal announcements back in 2017 that they would be eliminating some discounts. The changes according to a Flyer Talk thread:

- Reduce the senior/disabled discount from 15% to 10%;
- Increase the senior discount eligibility age from 62 to 65;
- Decrease the allowable number of 50% child fares (age 12 or younger) from two per adult fare paid to one per adult fare paid;
- Eliminate the AAA discount program (effective sometime 1st quarter 2018)
- Eliminate the student discount on all trains

It looks like these changes have finally been made in the ticketing system as the Student Advantage and AAA discounts are now gone. They were there a week or two ago when I changed an Auto train ticket. I assume they'll be honoring any tickets already purchased, but I bet that people will have to pay full price if they have to change tickets.

 

[bumbershoot]

Wow.

 

[SteveH]

Hate to see it for your sake, but if they make changes that gets them to stop being subsidized by the tax payer then I'm all for it. But I really don't see any of these changes making a significant dent in the $1 Billion+ dollar subsidies. Maybe the cuts were in anticipation of the Presidents proposed cuts.

 

[GrnMtnMan]

Yeah, the discounts were minor....something like 5% for AAA. I posted because neither AAA nor Amtrak made any public statement about this discount ending. I think this discount had been available for 25+ years. I know the Student advantage discount was available 25 years ago when I was in college....

And when you Google AAA and Amtrak today, you get lots of hits mentioning the discount.