In late 2020, Air Canada launched the new Aeroplan program, which included a bunch of changes. One of the new aspects of the program — the ability to earn status without flying — has now gone live. In this post I wanted to take a look at how that works.
In this post:
Aeroplan Everyday Status Qualification
Air Canada Aeroplan has begun the rollout of its Everyday Status Qualification, which is a unique new way for Aeroplan members to earn elite status without flying.
With this program, if an Aeroplan members earns 100,000 points through eligible transactions during a calendar year, they’ll earn Aeroplan 25K status the following year.
Ineligible transactions for these purchases include sign-up and welcome bonuses on credit cards, purchased, gifted, and transferred points, and bonuses earned through contests.
In other words, spending on an Aeroplan credit card in Canada would count towards this threshold, while the welcome bonus, as well as transferring points from Amex, wouldn’t.
Keep in mind that Air Canada Aeroplan will be launching a Chase credit card in the USA later this year, so that should be able to help towards that. Furthermore, other partner activities, ranging from using shopping portals, to making purchases with Starbucks and Uber Eats in Canada, would also qualify towards this.
For members without Aeroplan elite status, a new tracker will be available in their member dashboard at aircanada.com, or via the Air Canada app.
Over the coming weeks, Aeroplan will be updating trackers to reflect activities completed since January 1, 2021. This process should be complete by the end of the month.
For those of you not familiar with Aeroplan 25K status, this is Air Canada’s entry level status. Status perks include priority check-in, an extra baggage allowance, priority boarding, and more.
This is an awesome concept that I’d love to see expanded
We haven’t seen much innovation to how airline elite status can be earned over the years (no, adding a revenue requirement for status isn’t innovative), short of more airlines letting members to earn status through credit cards.
That’s despite the fact that airline miles are increasingly being generated through non-flying activities, and those are often higher margin for airlines. Yet airlines have done surprisingly little to reward people for these kinds of activities with status.
Aeroplan’s new Everyday Status Qualification is the best execution we’ve seen of this at a major airline. Not only would I love to see other airlines introduce something similar, but I’d love to see Aeroplan expand on this concept in the future:
- It would be cool if Aeroplan incentivized buying miles, points transfers, etc., in some sort of a way (perhaps not at the same rate as other activities)
- It would be great if you could qualify for higher status through a combination of flying and non-flying activity, rather than it having to be entirely through one method
Bottom line
Aeroplan has launched its Everyday Status Qualification program, allowing Aeroplan members to earn status without flying. This is an innovative concept that I’d love to see more airlines introduce, given the ways that mileage earning has changed over the years.
What do you make of Aeroplan’s Everyday Status Qualification?
I need 315 more status miles to get 25000 status how can u do this without flying
25k isn’t totally worthless….you do get upgrade credits. When booking a reward flight, you can book a Latitude fare and then instantly upgrade to Bizo subject to availability. Saving points….
The changes in Aeroplan miles must have been made by a bunch of Air Canada employees who despise frequent traveller. Let me explain:
If your situation with membership is similar to mine, you would have lost your 75K Gold status under the new system and been downgraded to 35K Silver because Aeroplan has retroactively applied their new status miles regime to miles that you had earned "before" they introduced their new system in 2020....
The changes in Aeroplan miles must have been made by a bunch of Air Canada employees who despise frequent traveller. Let me explain:
If your situation with membership is similar to mine, you would have lost your 75K Gold status under the new system and been downgraded to 35K Silver because Aeroplan has retroactively applied their new status miles regime to miles that you had earned "before" they introduced their new system in 2020. (Crazy but true, check it out ).
And if you think that is crazy enough wait until you delve deeper into how they calculate their Status Qualifying Miles (SQM). Under the new system less and less flights qualify for SQM so for example a Toronto to Los Angeles flight can earn you a little over 2400 SQMs while the actual distance between Toronto and Los angeles in 1800 Nautical Miles. ...fair enough.
Now if you were to fly Air Canada on a Toronto to Munich route (3600 Nautical miles, twice YYZ-LAX), you will only earn a little over 2000 Status Qualifying Miles (SQMs):-)...Crazy, right?
ALSO under their new (anti-loyalty) program, Air Canada will count your progress from 35K status to 50K, from ZERO which means regardless of the fact that you already HAVE the 35K status, you will need to fly 50,000 NEW "qualifying miles" in a year, in order to step up to 50K status, which means your 35K K status counts for nothing at all...even crazier than how their new SQM is calculated.:-)
So if you are like me spending money on your Aeroplan credit card and fly a lot, but FAIL to get your 50K status because maybe you only flew 49,999 Miles in one year (despite your current 35K status) and you have amassed something like 250,000 miles, but Air Canada's new (anti-loyalty) program keeps you at your 35K status, then you may want to consider transferring your aeroplan points to another Airline loyalty [program, like United's which is by far the BEST loyalty program in the market today.
@Gerg well actually 25K gets some stuff... like discounted flight redemption rates, earning 2x points in the e-store.. 3x on hotels... baggage perks, upgrade credits and a 25% flight points earning.... also for example you could earn 20.5K in points if you buy the cheapest iPhone Pro without any accessories or apple care so its not hard to it 100K... not including sign up bonus for cards i've already earned over 100K this year without extreme spending
25k is pretty worthless though. The only way this might be interesting is of there's some way to combine this with status miles -- ie earn 25k this way and then a reduced number of miles flying to earn 35k or 50k
@paul they revealed it in an interview with Forbes a while ago... also comes up almost every town hall aeroplan has... nothing has changed since the inaugural announcement.... also I agree they they’ve been extremely transparent and forthcoming since taking ownership of new program... really nice to see
@mont I never heard them say 8-22 months... I remember in the Fall of 2019 it was supposed to be ready in Q1 of 2020. We are well into 2021 and no update whatsoever unless you have a source on this 8-22month talk I missed?
@Paul Aeroplan said well before, during and after the launch of the new program that it will take 8-22 months for it to become available for online... even if you don't like their pricing or earning methods you have to admit they are now by far the most transparent and engaging airline program we've seen.... especially their communication with the community.. ie giving the ability the exchange buddy pass for points after being asked to do it and in a Q and A
@steve
Not really. Aeroplan e-store frequently has 5x-7x (sometimes 10x even) e-store promotions. Stacked with an Aeroplan credit card, you can do it with ~$10k USD spend pretty easily (and you'd get 100k Aeroplan miles to boot), which isn't a big ask.
Yikes. Basically spending $100,000, more or less, on one (or perhaps two) eligible cards for entry level status is a big ask. Not that great an incentive, IMO.
So how many cups of Starbucks Americano I need to drink to get the 25k status?
“This Starbucks® Rewards account is set up with a U.S. address. We are only able to link to accounts set up with a Canadian address at this time.
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Now if only Aeroplan allowed segment-by-segment online award booking tool like you said they promised with the new Aeroplan rollout.