Our Aeroplan Wish List: 5 Features We Want to See

Anshul sent me a fun prompt last week: in person and online, the miles & points community frequently talks colloquially about which features they wish to see in any loyalty program. What if we put together our Aeroplan wish list?

We put together our own ideas, reached out to the PMB Community, and came up with the following. These are not just whimsical ideas (I, too, would like ANA first class available on every date I search), but practical, functional ideas, including some that already exist in other frequent flyer programs.

More Award Space for Elite Members and Credit Cardholders

Winning our vote by a landslide, the number one requested feature is either a fixed discount or more saver-level award space for Elite members and co-branded credit cardholders.

When the revamped Aeroplan program launched in 2020, one of the promised benefits was cheaper Air Canada award flights for members who engaged more deeply with the program. Elite members and those with a co-branded Aeroplan credit card would see worthwhile discounts when booking Air Canada flights. However, that hasn’t quite materialized, with discounts being nominal at best in its current form.

We’ve seen other frequent flyer programs leverage this by offering more award space and also discounts for cobranded credit cardholders with an even steeper discount if you’re also an Elite member. In my mind, this is a win-win: frequent flyer programs have a stronger incentive for members to engage with the program, while their most loyal members receive meaningful value in return.

More and cheaper award space for Elite members and co-branded credit cardholders just makes sense.

One of the major trends in loyalty is more award space through an airline’s own frequent flyer program than through a partner, and this aligns with the overall reward-your-most-loyal-members view.

Having a 30-Day Award Calendar

Aeroplan does offer a 7-day availability range when you run an award search: the 3 days before and after your selected date.

This feature request is pretty self-explanatory. It’s easier to find awards with fewer clicks the more dates you can view at once in a single, easy-to-scan view. A one-month, 30-day award calendar would make it significantly easier not just to search for award space but also to identify any award release patterns. Also, the existing availability feature shows the cheapest flight regardless of cabin, which isn’t very useful if you’re trying to book premium economy or business class redemptions.

Being able to pick a specific cabin to view prices would be handy

More Obvious Mixed-Cabin Bookings

One of the frustrating quirks of Aeroplan is mixed-cabin awards where only a small portion of the itinerary is in the cabin you’re actually paying for. If your short domestic leg is in business class followed by an international long-haul flight in economy, you can end up paying a business class award price despite spending the vast majority of the trip in economy. Needless to say, nobody wants to pay business class prices to fly 10% or less of the total trip in business class.

Mixed cabin awards need a better filtering system

Aeroplan already flags these itineraries as “Mixed Cabin.” Black text indicates that more than 50% of the itinerary is in the higher cabin, while red indicates less than 50%. You can also hide mixed-cabin results altogether.

The problem is that neither option solves the issue. I’m happy to fly one hour in economy before 10 hours in business, so I don’t want to exclude mixed-cabin itineraries. What I want to exclude is the opposite: one hour in business class followed by 10 hours in economy class. Ideally, Aeroplan would let us filter out mixed-cabin itineraries based on a custom percentage.

Companion Pass Improvements

The Companion Pass is a decent benefit after spending $25,000 a year on a premium co-branded credit card. However, given that Air Canada’s pass is one of the harder ones to earn in Canada, it would be nice to see it take some inspiration from other Companion Passes in the country.

First, set the companion base fare to $0 instead of $99–$499, depending on where you’re travelling. Especially in the “Within Canada and the U.S. category,” a $0 base fare is not an unreasonable request. A $499 companion fare to Europe can easily result in little or no savings, particularly when the regular base fare is already below $499. It’s only useful when you’re booking a sufficiently expensive fare to begin with.

See the following example of a flight between Toronto and Prague. Using a Companion Pass means paying twice as much for the second passenger: $499 instead of $230.01.

Sometimes using a Companion Pass increases the price…

Using a Companion Pass is not always the best dealSo here’s my main gripe about the pass: if you can’t derive value from it before it expires, there’s currently no way to exchange it for anything else or to use it when the cardholder isn’t travelling. If possible, I’d love to offer this to my friends and family on their international trips, maybe to give them some money toward their cash tickets. And if not, being able to exchange it for a small sum of Aeroplan points or two lounge passes would be a meaningful improvement.

PMB guest writer Graham also offered similar suggestions for improving the Companion Pass, including adding the ability to use it for premium economy or business class.

24+ Hour Award Holds

This feature received far fewer votes than I expected; I feel like the ability to hold awards is one of the most underrated benefits in the points game. Doesn’t holding premium cabin space without paying for it (yet) feel like a mini superpower?

On the other hand, the PMB community is more focused on ways for Aeroplan to offer more premium cabin award space on Air Canada flights (without opening the floodgates, hence making it available for Aeroplan Elite members and/or premium co-branded credit cardholders). Award holds are less pressing when Aeroplan already offers 24-hour free cancellation, and Amex Membership Rewards (MR) transfers arrive instantly.

However, award holds still offer one practical advantage that free cancellation doesn’t: you can hold multiple options and decide later which one to book. You only need enough points for one itinerary, rather than enough to book every option while you finalize your plans.

Honourable Mentions

The PMB community came up with additional feature improvements that didn’t make our top 5 list, so here’s a quick rundown of honourable mentions:

• A search function that searches an entire region, like Europe, without specifying one airport at a time
• Free changes and cancellations for Aeroplan tickets
  • Note this is an existing perk of top-tier Aeroplan Super Elite members
• Allow Companion Vouchers to be used on points bookings, not just cash fares
• Restrict points bookings to the member and a predefined family/friends pool, with the goal of improving award availability

Is it better to offer awards for 1 million Aeroplan points, or just show that no award space is available? I guess having the option is better than not.

Takeaway

Aeroplan remains one of my favourite frequent flyer programs, and I’ve redeemed more than 250,000 points for international business and first class flights in the past month alone. There’s still tremendous value to be found, even if searches for Air Canada business class can sometimes make it feel like every flight costs 400,000+ points.

What stood out from putting together this list is that many of the most popular requests ultimately come back to the same thing: members want better access to Air Canada flights at reasonable award prices. Whether you’re an Elite member, hold an Aeroplan credit card, or simply collect Aeroplan points, I don’t think that’s an unreasonable thing to want from Air Canada’s own frequent flyer program.

Aeroplan already gets so much right, which is exactly why we’re invested enough to have a wishlist in the first place. These aren’t requests to make every redemption cheap or every premium cabin seat available on points, but practical ideas that could make a program we already use heavily even better.