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About Aeroplan Miles
Long time no see. OneMoreDay is back with miles again—didn’t you miss me? (Bring flowers and eggs if you want, just send them flying over!) Today’s focus is Aeroplan, Air Canada’s mileage program (it has already separated from Air Canada and is operated independently), known as AC. So what does it matter to our friends in the U.S.? As OneMoreDay keeps repeating over and over (how many times can I say this?): we need “alliance awareness” — Air Canada is part of Star Alliance, which includes UA, Air China, EVA Air, ANA, Asiana, Singapore Airlines, and many other airlines we often fly. Because of the alliance, we can earn AC miles on those flights, and we can also use AC miles to book flights on these carriers.
How many AC miles are needed for Star Alliance flights? (China-U.S. routes)
AC mileage redemption standards are similar to UA redemptions. The required miles depend on the regions of origin and destination, and not on the specific routing. AC’s redemption table can be found here: AC redemption chart. China is in Asia 1.
2016 update: Air Canada devalued in Dec 2015. The devalued routes are listed in Aeroplan devaluation — how should we respond?
From the U.S./Canada (including the U.S. mainland, Canada, and Alaska) redemption table, as shown below:
For the China-U.S. routes most people care about, AC miles needed are Economy 75,000 (round-trip, same below), Business 150,000, First 210,000. Let’s compare with the most commonly used UA miles: for round-trip China-U.S., UA requires 70,000 in Economy, 140,000 in Business (UA-operated) / 160,000 (non-UA), and 160,000 in First (UA-operated) / 240,000 (non-UA). So if you want Economy or UA metal, UA miles are the better choice. If you are, like OneMoreDay, a food-and-sleep obsessed food lover and comfort-focused traveler, and you want to redeem premium business or first on airlines known for service and meals such as ANA, Asiana, EVA, and similar carriers, then AC miles can require fewer miles than UA miles (this does not mean UA miles have no advantage on these flights—why? Because of fuel surcharges, which we’ll get to later).
Another row to note is Premium Economy, which sits between Economy and Business in mileage requirement. If you want to exchange for ANA’s high-quality premium economy, you may be disappointed, because this row is for redeeming Air Canada’s own premium economy only. AC miles for Air Canada-operated flights include fuel surcharges; whether it is worth it is up to you.
Stopover and open-jaw policy
In this article on stopover and open-jaw policies for major airlines, we introduced Aeroplan’s stopover/open-jaw rules (if you’re not sure what open-jaw and stopover mean, you can also read this article): AC miles can be issued for one-way tickets; no stopover on one-way, and one-way costs half the miles of a round-trip.
For round-trip cases it’s more complex, and can be split into the following:
- Intercontinental travel (travel between two continents): the official website only allows one stopover or one open-jaw, but if you call Aeroplan you can issue a ticket with two stopovers or one open-jaw plus one stopover. (Two stopovers can be very useful—see Alaska Airlines mileage redemptions for a concrete example.)
- Travel within U.S.-Canada: one open-jaw or one stopover.
- U.S./Canada to Hawaii/Puerto Rico/Mexico/Caribbean/Central America: if only Air Canada is included, you can have two stopovers or one open-jaw plus one stopover. If a Star Alliance partner is included (such as UA and COPA), you can have one open-jaw plus one stopover.
- Other travel within one continent: no stopovers, but one open-jaw allowed.
Redemption highlights 2: U.S.-Europe round-trip
Europe 1 includes these green-marked countries, including the major countries in Western Europe:
The rest of Europe (including the European parts of Turkey and Russia) is placed in Europe 2. Continuing to roast and praise Aeroplan’s backend creativity—hey, this is a zone map that finds its own logic. This map reminded me of Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech:
“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the European continent. On the far side are the old capitals of Central and Eastern Europe—Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, and Sofia—all of these hard-lived cities and their inhabitants all fall under Soviet control, each in some form and increasingly under rising pressure from Moscow. Only Athens, radiating its immortal splendor, before the eyes of Britain, America, and France alike, freely decides its own destiny.”
For Europe (excluding Northern Europe), Aeroplan’s regionalization, as Churchill described, is indeed split into two blocks by that Iron Curtain. As for Athens’ immortal splendor, the economic crisis has already dulled that glow, and even Aegean Airlines A3 has lost its halo in the frequent-flyer world.
If you want to go from the U.S. to the west side of Aeroplan’s Iron Curtain, you can redeem one-way tickets for 30,000 in Economy and 55,000 in Business. In comparison, using UA miles requires 30,000 Economy and 57,500 Business (UA flights) / 70,000 (non-UA flights). So for Economy, UA is still better (if you ignore those terrible fuel surcharges); for Business, using AC miles is excellent, and you can even get two stopovers. If you choose UA with carriers like LOT or Swiss, for example, you won’t be hit with high fuel surcharges (I’ll explain which carriers are and are not exempt in the next post):
Even if you go one-way business class to the east side of the curtain, it is only 57,500, still much better than UA. If you really want to save those 7,500 miles, heading east of the curtain can also be only 55,000 one-way in Business—for example to Turkey, also 55,000:
This is just a small bug, a little bit “evil,” so it is not fully shown everywhere, just shared as a new idea. Just remember to avoid checked baggage.
Redemption highlights 3: Intra-North America flights
The biggest advantage is that a North America round-trip can include a stopover, while UA cannot, so you can visit two places on one ticket.
Intra-North America redemptions have a distinction between short-haul and long-haul, with short-haul round-trip at only 15,000 and one-way as low as 7,500. For example:
If you paid cash, it looks like this:
In this redemption, AC miles are giving more than 3-cent value. Note that short-haul is limited to redeeming Air Canada and its affiliates, not UA or UA affiliates.
Is this the best option? You can see the total is not just 7,500 AC miles but also $53.60 in fees. We already covered BA miles as a short-haul weapon; for BA, using BA miles to redeem from ATL to YYZ requires a transfer in Chicago because there is no nonstop AA/US service, so it costs 15,000 Avios + $5. In OneMoreDay’s opinion, after BA’s devaluation, AC’s short-haul redemption value has increased a lot.
But because Aeroplan has a quasi-monopoly in Canada, if the Canadian city you’re going to has no AA/US flights, Avios is no help, and using AC is still more cost-effective than using UA. And with AC, short-haul redemptions can include a stopover and connections; for example, you can book a route like this:
The surcharge is a nasty $171... It includes not only Air Canada fuel surcharges, but also high Canadian airport improvement fees and the U.S. International Transportation Tax. These two parts are unavoidable with UA too. For the same itinerary, the price with UA is below; because UA does not allow stopovers within North America, this is calculated as three separate segments:
So in this example, even with higher taxes, AC short-haul redemption is still a very good choice. Which flights count as short-haul then? You can check here (search for “Short-haul Fixed Mileage Flight Rewards in North America.”). For example, departures from the listed U.S. states to Ontario and Quebec (including Toronto and Montreal) are also Short-Haul, meaning 7,500 AC miles one-way:
Seeing such a patchy map, allow me to once again admire Aeroplan’s backend imagination.
Related reading:
Air Canada Aeroplan Intro (2) - earning, redemption advantages, and fuel fees