(EXPIRED) Aeroplan: Get Up To 40% Rebate On Air Canada Flights Or Up To 150% Bonus Miles On Paid Flights

Aeroplan has launched a new promotion with two elements when traveling on Air Canada this summer. You can get up to 40% of redeemed miles back on award flights or earn up to 150% bonus miles on paid flights.

In normal times this would be a great deal and although it still is, it’s harder to take advantage of right now due to the US-Canada border closure.

The Deal

• Aeroplan has launched a promotion called Big Summer Miles Offers which is offering the following when flying with Air Canada:
  • Paid Flights
    • Earn 100% bonus miles when booking the following fares:
      • Economy Standard
      • Economy Flex
      • Economy Comfort
      • Economy Latitude
    • Earn 150% bonus miles when booking the following fares:
      • Premium Economy
      • Business
  • Award Flights
    • 30% miles back for Economy
    • 35% miles back for Premium Economy
    • 40% miles back for Business
• Direct link to offer.

Key Terms

• Registration required.
• Book by August 4, 2020.
• Travel by September 30, 2020.
• Bonus Aeroplan Miles pursuant to this Offer will be issued for all flight activity that is retro‑credited by October 15th, 2020
• Bonus Aeroplan Miles are not Altitude Qualifying Miles and do not count towards Air Canada Altitude status.
• Bonus Aeroplan Miles will be credited up to three to four weeks after the qualifying segments on Eligible Schedule Flights booked during the Offer Period and flown during the Travel Period are completed.

Quick Thoughts

At any other time, this would be a very generous promotion and – in theory – it still is. The main issue with this promotion is that the border between the US and Canada for non-essential travel is closed until at least August 21, 2020 and could be extended beyond then. That makes it harder to make use of this offer.

As Dan’s Deals notes though, it might still be possible to take advantage of the bonus or rebated miles if you’re simply transiting through Canada and don’t leave a sterile transit area. Per Canada’s COVID-19 travel restrictions page:

Transit passengers

The Orders exempt persons arriving at a Canadian airport aboard a commercial passenger conveyance and who are transiting to a country other than Canada and remains in a sterile transit area within the meaning of section 2 of IRPR.

Setting up the award flight portion of the promotion as a rebate rather than a discount is smart on Aeroplan’s part as it locks people in to either flying with them again in the future or having them lose the rebated miles – a win-win for Aeroplan, although not necessarily for passengers.

For example, let’s say you’d ordinarily need to redeem 100,000 miles for an award. If they had discounted the award by 40%, you’d only need to redeem 60,000 miles, so you could transfer in 60,000 Membership Rewards if you didn’t have any miles.

With the offer being a rebate though, you’d have to transfer in 100,000 Membership Rewards to make the redemption, then you’d end up receiving 40,000 miles back several weeks down the line for the same net cost of 60,000 miles. However, under the rebate system those 40,000 miles would then be locked into the Aeroplan ecosystem seeing as they can’t be transferred back to Membership Rewards. It therefore means you’ll have to book with Aeroplan again in the future to redeem them unless you want to let them go to waste.

The good news on that front is that Aeroplan announced yesterday that they’d be changing their mileage expiration policy for the better. Miles used to expire after 12 months of inactivity, but they’ll now expire after 18 months of inactivity. That’s obviously not as good as airlines like Delta, United and Southwest seeing as their miles never expire, but having 18 months to generate some kind of activity is obviously an improvement from 12 months.

h/t Dan’s Deals

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