Aeroplan Outlines Their Vision For The Future

This will impact the way I view AmEx Membership Rewards points. I guess I'm most curious about that since I don't fly Start Alliance airlines unless it's on an award.

Well AIMIA is not a sinking ship. They still have stakes in other programs including (I believe) 49% of Aeroméxico's Club Premier. Nevertheless, the departure of AIMIA's CEO after losing their biggest customer must mean that, most probably, he was sacked from there.

Yes whenever your a card/loyalty plan mention you can redeem your miles for a seat on any airline at any time you know you know it's a points currency and not a true mileage plan.

Dead Man Walking

Better use up your mile in next 24 months as may be not worth much

Long ways to go... pretty bad website... can't search ciry codes like NYC as everyone else does, have to use JFK, EWR etc. Super annoying.

This is confusing. So after July 2020, if I'm flying a Star Alliance airline, I can credit to AC's own program, but not to Aeroplan? Are there any carriers where I can credit flights to Aeroplan? If not, sounds quite useless to me.

Man, Air Canada really fleeced those IPO buyers, didn't they? Got all that cash for the spinoff and then 15 years just blow up the value or the spunoff company. Will be high comedy if they try and spin off their newly created program in 2025.

I love commitment 6

"An altogether transformed user experience: Staying at the forefront of technological trends, we will reinvent your user experience at every level from mobile to online...."

For the last 3 years or so I have been telling them that their log in pop up box doesn't work on touch screens. And it's still not fixed. And the new system for searching for rewards certainly leaves a lot to be desired. It's all style, with no underlying substance.

I have to say that my user experience is being transform into something worse with every "enhancement". Looking forward to 2020.

Aimia sounds like politicians promising things like inclusion and social liberties. Beautiful talk, nothing really tangible. Unless Amex gives me more choices on points transfers, I'm not really keeping their cards for much longer.

So what should we do with aeroplan Miles? When do we have to use them?

So, basically, their plan is to become a competitor to Air Miles. I mean, that's about the only strategy you can have as a rewards program that loses its attachment and access to an airline and its alliance. Thing is, I don't know how much space there is for such a program. In terms of general rewards, you have PC Optimum (fka PC points and Shoppers Optimum) that gives straight-out cash. Air Miles gives cash focused on travel. Canada doesn't need another general points program floating around.

@ Neil - Here, I fixed that for ya...

Yes whenever you card/loyalty plan mentions you can redeem your miles for a seat on any airline at any time, you know you know it’s for suckers.

DCJoe, when ACE (the holding company of AC, Aeroplan, JAZZ and other units of the post-bankruptcy AC) spun Aeroplan off completely it wasn’t as an IPO. It issued all the shares to its own shareholders who could then hold them or sell them at whatever the market ultimately valued the company. Also Aeroplan/AIMIA’s first president was technically in the chair when AC made the doomsday announcement about severing ties, though on sick leave with Johnston acting in his place. AIMIA had its annual shareholder meeting in Montreal this morning thus all the “news” yesterday and today.

As for Amex MR, Amex’s primary link is with AC so it is likely to continue transfers to the new AC program (Altitude?) that will include STAR awards and drop Aeroplan.

I think the best thing is to face reality and to realize that Aeroplan is not going to be the plan that we have now. For all its faults, as a Canadian resident it is and has been my go to plan for award flights. For a reasonable number of miles, most people would be able to get a pretty good flight and if you were careful even the taxes could be mnimized.
All we can do is to make use of our points as soon as possible, get the best value possible and reassess our position in the future.
If Air Canada’s new award system is as good as Aeroplan, we will not have a lot to complain about.
Aeroplan will not have any choice but to fashion itself into a plan similar to Airmiles or possibly Amex’s miles for dollars. These are not terrible but really are not the plans that the awards clan like to patronise.

Benjamin schlappig you just explain just how aeroplan makes and spends money. That will help us evaluate how they will survive iving the future. Don't just regurgitate their press release. Add some value to it.

The customer service at Aeroplan, for the most part, is terrible.

Long waits, horribly broken website that is closed for several hours of the day at night, emails that never get answered / resolved, and 4-6 week waits for any points to credit for almost anything.

The credibility of the program is seriously lacking for continuing on with customers.

There could be a niche to be filled in a points based system that is revenue based, but the conversion rate is what matters. At 1 cent per point the model would be of little interest. But Southwest is successful in its own program because its miles are worth more than that. What if you could get 1.5 cents of travel across many airlines for any seat with each Aeroplan point? No, the people requiring international business class wouldn't be interested, but a lot of people could find value, particularly if the points are relatively easy to come by.

I don't know the economics of how that could work, but the Aeroplan management better figure it out if they want to have a business. And I do think there is increasing room for more models in the current state of the miles and points business.

Topbonus is that your bad spirit roaming around!

Sounds like they want to become more like RBC Rewards (a la Avion).

No key differentiators.

So what happens in 2020? Will Air Canada fliers have large balances they cannot use for Air Canada flights anymore and new flights will go into new accounts? Sounds like a big dip in redemptions coming.

I think the key hint to the future is in Commitment 3.

It looks like Aeroplan is trying to reposition itself as a one-stop-shopping travel portal with points. So redemptions will be for complete travel packages - flights, hotel, rental car, activities. You can already do most of that now, but I wonder how big the non-flight redemption part of their business is. That's the most obvious place for them to grow.

Flight redemptions on other airlines are somewhat problematic for Aeroplan post 2020, because Air Canada only has one domestic competitor in WestJet. Obviously there is a panoply of other airlines internationally, but it may be a challenge to sign up many of them, I suspect. But we'll see.

When the announcement of the divorce came last year, I was in the midst of working toward a Round the World vacation. For a variety of reasons it was proving difficult to coordinate vacation time with my spouse, and we decided to scrap the RTW for now. Which left me with 1.1 million Aeroplan miles. So I started burning. Several relatives had some very nice trips last year, using up 900,000 miles. Earn and burn is now the order of the day. I hope not to have very many miles left in June 2020. The last resort redemption would be for an Air Canada gift card. The value isn't great, but it is a viable way to use up any remaining points and turn them into air travel.

The interesting question going forward will be what credit card offerings will be out there, and what the start-up for the new Air Canada loyalty programme will look like. Lots of interesting bonuses I'd guess. We'll have to wait two years for those details.

I can't say I'm sorry to see AC and Aeroplan break up -- their "partnership" is a hot mess. I had an easier time booking seats on an AC flight with United miles and LifeMiles than with Aeroplan miles, which makes ZERO sense. Now the Aeroplan-booked ticket doesn't show up on either Air Canada OR on Aeroplan -- it's like it's floating out there in the aviation ether somewhere.

Hope whatever AC uses as their "new" miles plan will be a vast improvement over the Aeroplan deal.

@eileen

If you can't find your ticket on AC or Aeroplan it usually is a warning of a problem that needs to be checked out quickly. Had this happen a few years ago caused by a UA schedule change that caused the itinerary to be non-functional. Only AC's trouble desk could fix it at the last minute after repeated phone calls.

What are the chances that AC new program will have the cheap flight Classic Awards? ZERO! Best to start collecting convertable miles or join another*A program. Too bad SPG AMEX is devaluing their everyday awards Aug 1.

Sounds like they're positioning themselves to merge with Air Miles. Canada isn't that big a market, hard to see how it can support two points currencies.

so. . . Aeroplan will just ending being like Plenti?

As a Toronto resident Air Canada is my main carrier, and these days with Aeroplan, I'm "earnin' 'em 'n burnin' 'em." As soon as I have enough for the flight I want, I cash out. I don't want to be holding a bag of useless points when the whole mess goes south. But I'm still holding out hope that Air Canada is deliberately driving Aimia's share price down in hopes of scooping Aeroplan back up on the cheap.