Aeroplan set to increase reward ticket levels and improve online booking tool

An interesting press release from Aeroplan today which tries to promote the good over the bad. The good is that they are once again enhancing the online booking tool for Aeroplan reward tickets to offer more flight options, flexibility and more self service functionality.

Quoted enhancements from the press release:

– An improved flight reward booking tool that augments the search

capability and results visibility on both aeroplan.com and in

Aeroplan’s Contact Centre, optimizing Aeroplan’s use of the Star

Alliance network and providing its members with more route options,

more destinations, more flexible flying times and fewer connections;

– Access to last minute seats through the Last-Minute Travel Tool

showcasing available destinations for travel within the next 14 days

(displaying outbound availability within the next 14 days and inbound

availability within the next 28 days) on some of its members’ most

popular routes at Classic mileage levels, making it easier to travel on

a whim;

– A new online calendar functionality that helps members easily view all

their flight reward availability at a glance including all economy and

business class options for both Air Canada and Star Alliance carriers.

Now to the bad, citing increasing costs of providing reward tickets to its members, Aeroplan will be increasing base reward ticket mileage levels. Overall, Aeroplan states the average increase will be under 5% for all Classic Awards and Star Alliance flight rewards. Looking at the revised chart, the majority of the increases for Air Canada flights are in business class tickets originating in Canada and the majority of tickets between other regions (eg Europe to Central America). On the Star Alliance reward side, there many more increases to bring these rewards in line with the rewards for Air Canada only flights. One of the biggest increases, takes away one the best Aeroplan redemptions, a first class ticket from Canada to Asia. Previously this Star Alliance Award ticket was only 120,000 Aeroplan miles and as of July 15 it will jump roughly 46% to 175,000 miles! So if this was a reward you were looking for you best redeem for it soon! This was a reward I had just looked at when figuring out the rate of return on the various Aeroplan credit cards and it was one of the best as on occasion it was well over 10% but that will quickly drop with this change.

Without fully penalizing Aeroplan, they did lower a few Star Alliance reward levels namely those for flights from North America to the Middle East, Africa, and India.

To see the new reward mileage requirements please visit Aeroplan.com’s Reward Chart

To read the entire press release see here.

I’d love to hear what all of our readers think of these changes, good or bad by leaving a comment below!