The new Aeroplan was made public this week, and we finally were able to see what the new dynamic / award chart redemptions would look like. As I expected, there are deals to be found, especially with the unprecedented decline in travel. The verdict? Eh, mixed reviews

The Good 

The user experience is without a doubt improved. Gone are the days of the ugly orange and in is the slick red and black interface. The search section on the home page is clear and simple - easily differentiating between points and cash. Although the query isn’t instant, the Aeroplan search function is quite powerful, returning many more results than the old system returned. 

The new Air Canada search has a sort and filter feature that’s great. Using this feature, you’re able to sort by several different metrics, including recommended, earliest departure time, earliest arrival time, shortest trip and lowest price. In addition, you can set up the interface to display the flight number, how many eUpgrades are needed and even the aircraft type (perfect for #avgeeks).

In addition, you can remove airlines that you don’t want to fly with and airports that you don’t want to connect in. This feature is extremely useful, as many clients that I’ve booked flights for have specific restrictions on where they can fly. In addition, as the world returns to travel, there will be a myriad of visa restrictions, which will mean this feature will come in handy.

Booking Flights 

Looking a few months out there is some availability on the Toronto to Vancouver route  - typically a great price in the old program. Interestingly enough, there must be another algorithm that releases seats on this route, as flight 185 (leaving Toronto at 7:30 PM) is showing business seats for 100,000 points one way (4x the previous program) but there are no confirmed seats in business or premium economy for that flight. Ultimately, January isn’t popular with leisure travellers for domestic flights within Canada, so I’m not surprised there is availability at the lower levels of the program. 

Aeroplan’s Fixable Mistakes

If you’re looking for flights to somewhere that Air Canada doesn’t fly to, and if there are no available partner flights, Air Canada currently won’t show a weekly view of dates with available flights, like in the old Aeroplan. Seems like this could easily be fixed and enhanced with a monthly chart showing the dates with available flights (and even the dates with the lowest flights)

In addition, I’m still having problems with Chrome and Aeroplan, as it doesn’t load once I sign in. To get around this I have to use safari instead. 

Another annoying feature is that premium economy flights are currently mispriced. I would assume this has to do with the fare bucket being off and the computers don’t have the right data (or enough normal looking data) and therefore pricing is currently off. I suspect that once demand returns, PY will be more reasonably priced.   This is especially the case when you’re looking at mixed flights with partners.

The Cringe 

As expected, the prices for near in travel are steep! While this was typically an advantage of the old program, near in travel (picture taken 48 hours before the flight) now costs 3x what an old Aeroplan ticket would cost. 

After looking at the load on ExpertFlyer for flight 111, the price of the flight on points has increased, even though the flight was only 40% full. 

Booking far in advance for holidays doesn’t seem to help either. Looking at flights from Toronto to Vancouver for Thanksgiving next year, there are no saver level economy flights available, although there are a few business class tickets available for reasonable prices. Right now, as there are no cancellation fees, it makes sense to lock in prices and monitor to see if the flight prices come down over time. 

Currently, demand is at an all-time low for international flights from Canada, especially to the EU. Once demand picks up to a more normal level, I expect Air Canada business class tickets to price out at over 100K one way. 

An example of what to expect is the Air Canada flights to Tokyo for the Olympics. AC 1, on the day of the opening ceremonies, is going for astronomical rates. That flight, along with those connecting through Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver, are 4 or 5x what Air Canada has on their redemption fare.

Based on the Expert Flyer Load, it seems like Air Canada has removed the lower fare buckets on these flights and they will only be selling the higher value flights to sponsors/family/fans (like myself) going to the Olympics. In the end, this is not at all surprising, and I completely expect that many flights in 2022 and onwards price out like this. 

The Point

Overall, there have been several improvements to the overall Aeroplan experience. Those of us looking to travel in the near future (not myself) will find that Aeroplan provides outstanding value compared to past redemptions. That being said, as travel returns to more normal levels, we can expect that much of the value in Aeroplan will be eroded. My advice, book speculative trips well in advance to take advantage of the generous cancellation policies.