Aeroplan Has Access To Air China Award Seats Again (For Now)

Aeroplan Has Access To Air China Award Seats Again (For Now)

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Aeroplan is Air Canada’s spun off frequent flyer program (well, at least until 2020), and is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest. They’re generally a good program for redeeming miles on Star Alliance airlines, though not for travel on all airlines to all regions.

For a while Aeroplan has been having issues with accessing award availability on some of their partner airlines, including Air China, Avianca, Copa, and Swiss. Aeroplan has described these as “technical difficulties.”

At the time Aeroplan issued the following statement regarding these difficulties:

We’re aware that technical difficulties are are making it difficult to book flight rewards with four carriers – Air China, Avianca, Copa, and SWISS.

There are separate issues related to the different inventory systems of the concerned airlines. We appreciate the inconvenience that these disruptions may be causing you.

We are working closely with all stakeholders from the affected airlines to ensure that the situation is resolved as soon as possible.

Now, I have reason to believe that there were actual technical difficulties here, though what I’m not as convinced about is that they’ve been working as quickly as they possibly could to get them resolved. It’s very convenient to not be able to book award tickets on partner airlines, given the cost savings involved.

The good news is that a couple of weeks ago Aeroplan fixed their issues with Swiss, so miles can once again be redeemed for travel on Swiss. Now there’s more good news, as Aeroplan once again has access to all Air China award seats.

While Aeroplan imposes fuel surcharges on many award redemptions, Air China is one of the airlines on which they don’t impose surcharges, making them a great airline for redeeming Aeroplan miles.

A one-way ticket between North America and most of Asia will cost you 75,000 miles in business class or 105,000 miles in first class. Air China has excellent award availability on their flights.

Air China’s North American gateways include Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York JFK, Newark, San Francisco, San Jose, Vancouver, and Washington Dulles.

However, beyond that, many will find Air China useful for awards within Asia, given their huge regional route network. It was tough to get to some destinations in China with Aeroplan miles without being able to redeem on Air China.

Air China has a fully flat business class product throughout most of their longhaul fleet, though the seats don’t all have direct aisle access. Most planes have B/E Aerospace Diamond seats.

Air China also has first class on their 777s and 747s, where they have fairly private suites, all of which are fully flat and feature direct aisle access. While I’ve flown Air China’s business class, Air China’s first class is one of the few international first class products I’ve yet to try.

It’s nice to see Aeroplan fix this issue. For what it’s worth, Air China’s issues with partners go beyond Aeroplan, and this definitely had more to do with Air China than Aeroplan. They’re notorious for not playing nice with their partners, and I imagine this situation was no exception.

(Tip of the hat to Milesopedia)

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  1. jacky Guest

    this is all noise. all we care about is avianca and copa being fixed!!! tonnes of ways to get to asia but very limited to SA

  2. richard coy Guest

    I've flown Air China USA to PEK in both biz and first... In my opinion First is not worth the points or money when compared to other carriers. However I found biz class to meet my expectations and completely acceptable for the long haul.

  3. Gee New Member

    Does this mean they have fixed the issue of Air China not actually allocating the seat for an award ticket?

    I've had such a horrible experience with them in the past when redeeming UA miles on an Air China flight. DEL-PEK-IAH for 3 passengers. For DEL-PEK the seats were issued but then PEK-IAH seats were only issued for 1 passenger and not the other two.
    As far as United was concerned the reservation...

    Does this mean they have fixed the issue of Air China not actually allocating the seat for an award ticket?

    I've had such a horrible experience with them in the past when redeeming UA miles on an Air China flight. DEL-PEK-IAH for 3 passengers. For DEL-PEK the seats were issued but then PEK-IAH seats were only issued for 1 passenger and not the other two.
    As far as United was concerned the reservation was actually ticketed and even assigned seat numbers for both segments but as far as Air China was concerned they were waiting on some push from United.

    Check-in at DEL was hell because they could not see the PEK-IAH seat at all and no availability so they at first would not let the passengers check-in. They eventually gave the option of going to PEK and then figuring it out there...which we all know is HELL, especially since 1 passenger was medically ill.

    Anyway, if i remember correctly issues like this is why Aeroplan pulled Air China awards all-in-all in the past.

  4. YULtide Gold

    @Lucky

    "It’s very convenient to not be able to book award tickets on partner airlines, given the cost savings involved."

    I'm curious about the cost savings regarding a partner airline. As a separate company, it seems to me that all airlines, including Air Canada, are partner airlines. So I can't work out how not booking on one partner airline would be any cost saving in principle. Presumably Aeroplan has to buy all the tickets they...

    @Lucky

    "It’s very convenient to not be able to book award tickets on partner airlines, given the cost savings involved."

    I'm curious about the cost savings regarding a partner airline. As a separate company, it seems to me that all airlines, including Air Canada, are partner airlines. So I can't work out how not booking on one partner airline would be any cost saving in principle. Presumably Aeroplan has to buy all the tickets they book as redemptions, including on Air Canada. Unlike most FF programmes even an AC redemption isn't just a simple allocation of seats with the attendant loss of revenue. Or is it?

    I genuinely want to understand this. I'm not trying to be argumentative.

  5. Chong Guest

    Lets hope this will trickle down to Avianca at some point.

  6. iv Guest

    Lucky...

    Some Cathay Pacific flights are mow available on Aeroplan!

    But only between Hong Kong and:

    ChiangMai, Thailand
    Phuket, Thailand
    Bangkok, Thailand
    Cebu, Philippines
    Manila, Philippines
    Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
    Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
    Hanoi, Vietnam

    The catch: for now the reservation is only available by phone at 1-800-361-5373.

  7. Jordan Member

    I flew Air China First from PEK-FRA recently, the one meal service they offered was a pizza. In first class.

Featured Comments Most helpful comments ( as chosen by the OMAAT community ).

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

jacky Guest

this is all noise. all we care about is avianca and copa being fixed!!! tonnes of ways to get to asia but very limited to SA

0
richard coy Guest

I've flown Air China USA to PEK in both biz and first... In my opinion First is not worth the points or money when compared to other carriers. However I found biz class to meet my expectations and completely acceptable for the long haul.

0
Gee New Member

Does this mean they have fixed the issue of Air China not actually allocating the seat for an award ticket? I've had such a horrible experience with them in the past when redeeming UA miles on an Air China flight. DEL-PEK-IAH for 3 passengers. For DEL-PEK the seats were issued but then PEK-IAH seats were only issued for 1 passenger and not the other two. As far as United was concerned the reservation was actually ticketed and even assigned seat numbers for both segments but as far as Air China was concerned they were waiting on some push from United. Check-in at DEL was hell because they could not see the PEK-IAH seat at all and no availability so they at first would not let the passengers check-in. They eventually gave the option of going to PEK and then figuring it out there...which we all know is HELL, especially since 1 passenger was medically ill. Anyway, if i remember correctly issues like this is why Aeroplan pulled Air China awards all-in-all in the past.

0
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