How To Add Air Canada Miles To Aeroplan

For the less familiar, Aeroplan is the once spun-off but now recently-acquired loyalty program for Air Canada. So if you are earning Air Canada miles, you lot are actually accumulating miles with Aeroplan.

I know many bewail the devaluations we've seen with Aeroplan over the years — perhaps, rightly so — but in that location's plenty of swell ways to employ Aeroplan miles if yous know where to look. Value can be found in everything from complex sugariness-spot awards to just leveraging the routing rules and partner network.

With that in mind, I wanted to put together some info to make redeeming Aeroplan miles a bit easier then you don't have to dig for info when yous have questions. We'll cover how to book, laurels regions, stopovers and open jaws and more.

With that, let's dig into information technology!

Redeem Aeroplan miles on Air Canada and Star Alliance partners

Unlike some programs, Aeroplan uses the same award chart for both flights on Air Canada and its Star Brotherhood partners. Information technology might non seem like a big bargain, only it certainly makes it easier to call back what to expect when booking.

While Aeroplan offers "stock-still mileage flight rewards" — due east.thousand. saver level — and "market fare flight rewards," we're going to focus on saver level equally that's what y'all'll want to book in almost all cases.

Aeroplan Saver Awards Versus Market Fare

Market fare awards are only bachelor on Air Canada flights and are similar to American's AAnytime awards and United's Everyday awards. As you tin can see in the example above, rates tin can be over 3X the saver rate.

You can redeem Aeroplan miles on the following Star Alliance airlines:

Aegean Airlines	Austrian	EVA Air	Swiss
Air Canada	Avianca	LOT Polish Airlines	TAP Portugal
Air Mainland china	Brussels Airlines	Lufthansa	THAI
Air Republic of india	Copa Airlines	Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)	Turkish Airlines
Air New Zealand	Republic of croatia Airlines	Shenzhen Airlines	United
ANA	EGYPTAIR	Singapore Airlines	Juneyao Airlines (Star Alliance Connecting Partner)
Asiana Airlines	Ethiopian Airlines	South African Airways

Star Brotherhood Airlines

It'due south besides worth noting that Aeroplan members accept access to boosted "saver" level space on Air Canada, which tin can come in handy, but you lot'll pay more in cash to redeem miles on Air Canada than other partners, every bit we'll hash out afterwards on.

Keep in heed that Star Alliance partners Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and SWISS restrict access to some premium motel awards.

Lufthansa merely allows partners to book get-go class awards about 2 weeks prior to departure.

SWISS will only allow Senator and HON Circle Miles & More members to book first class on their flights. Yous might remember the debacle when Aeroplan showed SWISS get-go form award space and and then didn't honor the bookings.Yikes!

Finally, Singapore Airlines won't allow partners to volume business or commencement form awards on their long-booty routes — occasionally, we've seen business class space on an A350 but information technology hasn't lasted long.

How to find honour infinite and volume with Aeroplan

Y'all can use Aeroplan to search for award space on whatsoever Star Alliance partners, and their website is one of the better ones. However, if yous don't have specific dates yous need to travel, I would suggest starting your search with United'southward flexible date search choice as you'll be able to meet award availability across two months of dates.

Once you've found award infinite on dates that piece of work for you, it's easy to login to Aeroplan and run a search to ostend availability. Unless United is showing phantom award space, the main thing to proceed an middle on is that United provides more award space on United flights to its ain members at times.

If your routing volition have connections, you might have to search segment by segment with Aeroplan every bit it's not the best search engine if you need connections. Only in general the pricing engine works well, and you'll be able to run across the costs in miles, taxes, and surcharges before booking.

Calling Aeroplan

Aeroplan has evolved from having the worst concord times imaginable, and nowadays phone queues are very brusque.

If you tin can't get a route to show upwardly with a unproblematic search, but can find space searching each segment, requite Aeroplan a call (1-800-361-5373) to book. The C$30 (~$24) phone booking fee is worth it.

Keep in heed that the Aeroplan call center is non 24 hour — their operating hours are 7AM to Midnight Eastern.

Surcharges on Aeroplan awards

While some carriers don't laissez passer on surcharges for mileage tickets, Aeroplan is more than of a mixed handbag. Before yous book, you'll want to know what you're getting into then use this listing as a point of reference.

To avert high fees when redeeming Aeroplan miles, fly the following carriers:

Aegean Airlines
Air China
Air India
Air New Zealand
Avianca
Brussels Airlines
Copa Airlines
Croatia Airlines
EgyptAir
Ethiopian Airlines
EVA Air
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
Shenzhen Airlines
Singapore Airlines
South African Airways
Swiss International Air Lines
Turkish Airlines
United Airlines

Yes, y'all read that correctly. Air Canada is not included. Aeroplan will impose surcharges on award flights on Air Canada — this is merely silly to me, only considering the somewhat antagonistic history the two companies take had is perhaps not that surprising.

Aeroplan routing rules

While the surcharges can jack up the cash cost of your awards, Aeroplan has generous routing rules that can let you put together some fun trips. It helps that, dissimilar American AAdvantage, Aeroplan allows you to transit multiple regions on awards.

What does this mean practically speaking?

As an case, American wouldn't let you volume an honor on Finnair with a connection in Helsinki (HEL) on your style to Bangkok (BKK). Only Aeroplan will let you book an award on SWISS that connects in Zurich (ZRH) on your fashion to BKK.

The previous MPM (maximum permitted mileage) restrictions accept been replaced past more full general guidance and point-to-indicate allowances. For the almost role, these limits aren't a major factor — if you are trying to book a very complex itinerary with backtracking segments you might run into them, only otherwise it's not something I'd stress about when planning to employ Aeroplan miles.

Stopovers and open jaws

Note: The Aeroplan program is changing stopover rules as of September 1, 2019.

Aeroplan's stopover and open up jaw rules are where the real fun begins! You can employ the same kind of routes we discussed above to run across destinations on different continents on the same ticket.

On round-trip awards, y'all can include two stopovers or 1 stopover and i open jaw. No, you can't include a stopover on a one-way like yous tin with Alaska Mileage Programme, merely this can however be very useful thanks to Aeroplan's routing rules.

If you lot're similar me, you're probably thinking about how you could book a trip effectually the world. Off the top of my caput, hither's a fun instance you could try to piece together:

Los Angeles (LAX) to Taipei (TPE) — stopover
TPE to Istanbul (IST) — destination
IST to Stockholm (ARN) — stopover
ARN to LAX

This round-trip laurels ticket — pretty much a round-the-world honour with fewer stops — would require 150,000 Aeroplan miles in business concern class, with no fuel surcharges.

Come to retrieve of it, perchance I should look into booking that.

If you want to book two stopovers or a stopover and an open jaw, you're going to take to call Aeroplan to book. Honestly, don't be surprised if you have to call if yous want to include fifty-fifty i stopover.

Aeroplan accolade regions

Aeroplan has a simple region-based laurels chart with the following rates from the Canada / the continental U.S. and Hawaii:

If you'd similar to see award rates betwixt other regions, you tin can check out the total Aeroplan award nautical chart.

At present, when information technology comes to determining the toll of your award, the below chart breaks down which countries, states, territories, etc. are in each region.

Canada & Continental The states	Canada's x provinces & three territories; The 48 contiguous U.s.a. states, plus the Commune of Columbia and Alaska.
Hawaiian Islands	Big Islands of Hawaii, Kauai, Maui, Oahu.
Caribbean area & Cardinal America	Antigua, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Republic of costa rica, Cuba, Dominican Commonwealth, Republic of el salvador, Grand Cayman, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Netherland Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Kitts, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, The states Virgin Islands.
Northern S America	Colombia, Ecuador (Incl Galapagos Islands), Guyana, Venezuela.
Southern South America	Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Republic of chile, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay.
Europe 1	Austria, Kingdom of belgium, Kingdom of denmark, France, Frg, Ireland, Italy, Grand duchy of luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain (incl. Balearic Islands; excl. Canary Islands), Sweden, Switzerland, United kingdom.
Europe 2	Republic of albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Commonwealth, Estonia, Republic of finland, Georgia, Hellenic republic, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Republic of macedonia, Republic of malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, Russia (Western), Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Ukraine.
Asia ane	China, Eastern Russia, Hong Kong, Nippon, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan.
Asia two	Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao people's democratic republic, Malaysia, Micronesia (Incl Guam), Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam.
Centre Due east & North Africa	People's democratic republic of algeria, Bahrain, Canary Islands (Espana), Arab republic of egypt, Islamic republic of iran, Iraq, Israel, Hashemite kingdom of jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Kingdom of saudi arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Yemen.
Indian Subcontinent	Afghanistan, People's republic of bangladesh, Bharat, Republic of the maldives, Nepal, Islamic republic of pakistan, Sri Lanka.
Due east, W & S Africa	Republic of angola, Republic of benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Republic of burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Congo, Chad, Equatorial guinea, Eritrea, Federal democratic republic of ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Republic of guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory coast, Republic of kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Islamic republic of mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Republic of seychelles, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Republic of uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
Australia, New Zealand & Due south Pacific	Australia, Cook Islands, Republic of the fiji islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norfolk Isle, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu.

Change and cancelation fees

If your plans change and you need to change or cancel your honour, yous'll need to pay a fee to exercise so. To change your itinerary whether the appointment or destination, yous tin can pay C$100 (~$74) plus taxes per direction. This can exist done up to 2 hours prior to your scheduled departure.

Canceling an award ticket and redepositing the miles will cost you C$150 (~$111) plus taxes — this can be done up to 22 days prior to departure.

Keep in mind that at that place isn't any grace period for canceling Aeroplan awards. While many airlines permit you to change or cancel tickets within 24 hours, Aeroplan is non technically an airline, and yous'll pay change fees fifty-fifty if it'southward merely been 5 minutes since you booked.

Earn Aeroplan miles

There are many ways to earn Aeroplan miles with many credit card transfer partners. Some of those cards available are:

American Limited® Gold Card

4x points at restaurants
4x points at U.S. supermarkets, on up to $25,000 in purchases annually
3x points on flights booked directly with airlines or through amextravel.com
$250

American Express® Business organization Golden Carte

Earn 4x Membership Rewards points on airfare purchased directly from airlines
Admission to Amex Offers
Redeem Amex Points Towards Airfare
$295

The Platinum Menu® from American Express

Earn 5x points on flights purchased direct from airlines or through Amex Travel (up to $500k/year)
$200 Almanac Uber Credit
Amex Centurion Lounge Access
$695

The Business Platinum Bill of fare® from American Express

Earn ane.5x on purchases of $5,000 or more in a single transaction on up to $2MM per agenda year
Redeem Points For Over 1.5 Cents Each Towards Airfare
Amex Centurion Lounge Admission
$695

Capital I Venture X Rewards Credit Card

Earn 2x Venture miles on every purchase
No Foreign Transaction Fees
10,000 bonus miles every business relationship anniversary
$395

Capital letter 1 Venture Rewards Credit Card

Earn 2x Venture miles on every purchase
No Strange Transaction Fees
Global Entry/TSA Pre-Check Credit
$95

Capital One Spark Miles for Business

Unlimited 2x miles per dollar
No Foreign Transaction Fees
Primary Car Rental Coverage
$0 intro for first year; $95 after that

Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Menu

Earn 6x points at Marriott
Free Dark Accolade Annually
15 Elite Nights Towards Status Annually
$95

Marriott Bonvoy Business™ American Express® Card

Earn 6x points at Marriott
Gratis Night Honour Annually
15 Elite Nights Towards Condition Annually
$125

Bottom line

Like many airline loyalty programs, the key to getting value out of Aeroplan takes more than than just a quick glance at the award chart.

Past understanding the stopover/open jaw rules and which carriers you tin fly without surcharges, yous'll be able to book some nifty awards with Aeroplan miles.

What other questions do you take well-nigh how to use Aeroplan miles?