Aeroplan News: Changes To Flight Reward Refunds, Changes, And More

Aeroplan has been making steady progress this year in their bid to win over skeptics.

First, they announced you can earn Aeroplan miles when you book hotels and car rentals through the Aeroplan site.

Then, they announced that you’ll need an average of 15% when you redeem for Market Fare flights.

Now, they have changes to flight refunds (good) and multi-city flight rewards (not so good).

For Aeroplan members, you’ve probably gotten an email that looks like this:

Let’s unpack this email and go over how the changes are different.

New Aeroplan Rewards Flight Refund changes

Let’s start with the good news.

First, you can now cancel your booking and get a full refund within the first 24 hours. This is a great feature that was previously lacking and aligns Aeroplan with aircanada.com.

You can also now get a full refund of your flight rewards if you cancel up to 2 hours prior to departure. Previously, you could only get a full refund if you cancelled 22 days in advance. If you cancelled between 21 days and 2 hours prior to leaving, the miles, taxes, and fees you paid could only be used towards a new booking within the next year.

Finally, the refund fee has been lowered to $125 (it was previously $150).

These are all good changes, helping give more flexibility to your rewards flights if anything comes up.

If you happen to be an Air Canada Altitude Super Elite 100K Member, all changes and refunds are complimentary. You won’t have to pay any fees on your rewards tickets.

Changes to multi-city rewards bookings

Unfortunately, today’s news isn’t all positive.

There are changes coming to multi-city trips and around the world flights. But Aeroplan has stated that only 0.3% of flight rewards booked would be affected by this.

These changes also don’t take effect until September 1st 2019, and according to the email we received, they’re only temporary so they can make some system upgrades.

You can continue to make multi-city bookings, but will be limited to one stopover or open-jaw section. For travel within the same continent, one open jaw is permitted but stopovers are not.

Around the world flights are also discontinued as of September 1st. These are rewards tickets that start at 200,000 miles and permit you to travel in one direction around the world, with up to 5 stopovers.

Overall, these are minor changes that won’t affect many bookings.

Thoughts on the changes

How do you feel about these updates?

Are you encouraged by all the recent Aeroplan news?

Let us know in the comments below!