While not a huge deal, the process of searching award availability with Air Canada Aeroplan has just become a bit more complicated, as several readers have flagged.
In this post:
Aeroplan account log-in required for award search
Air Canada’s Aeroplan frequent flyer program is useful not just for redemptions on Star Alliance, but also for travel on select other airlines. Historically, it has been possible to search Aeroplan award space simply by visiting Air Canada’s website, and entering your desired flight details. There has been no requirement to actually log into an account.
Well, unfortunately that’s no longer the case. Due to a change that has been made this week, Air Canada now requires members to log into their Aeroplan accounts to search award availability. That’s not a huge deal, of course, but it certainly adds a bit of time to searching award space, especially if using Aeroplan’s two factor authentication for account log-ins.
I’m sure I’m not alone in frequently using Air Canada’s website to search award availability, so this adds some small amount of time to each visit to the website when trying to search awards. The app at least allows you stay continually logged in, though personally I find searching award availability on mobile to be more cumbersome than on desktop.
Why would Aeroplan make this account log-in change?
Aeroplan is hardly alone among frequent flyer programs, in requiring members to log-in in order to search award availability. As a matter of fact, it’s a trend that has become increasingly common. What’s the program’s motive for making this change? I suspect there are a couple of factors at play, though perhaps one is most significant.
There’s an increasing number of award search tools, some of which scrape award space from airline websites. We know that Air Canada has aggressively been trying to block some of these, including filing lawsuits.
Air Canada argues that the terms of service of its website prohibit data from the website being used in a way that’s not explicitly allowed, and that scraping services aren’t following these policies. The counterargument is that scraping publicly available parts of websites is perfectly legal, no matter what terms of use a website creates.
Arguably requiring an account log-in is Aeroplan’s easiest way to stop this kind of activity, since it’s much easier to monitor this kind of activity, to limit the total number of award searches coming from any one user, etc.
Frankly, I’m surprised it took Air Canada this long to implement a policy like this. As a website user, I’m not all that happy to see it, but I understand why…
Bottom line
The Aeroplan program now requires members to log into their accounts in order to search award availability. This isn’t a huge deal, but it does add a bit of time to any award search, and takes some getting used to. I suspect this change is largely intended to stop scraping of availability.
What do you make of Air Canada now requiring Aeroplan account log-ins to search award space?
Honestly, good. There has been an undeniable negative correlation between the proliferation of websites (like point.me) making it too easy to search award space across programs, on the one hand, and decreasing award space, on the other hand.
I wish more loyalty programs would institute barriers like this to inhibit these websites from catering to credit card holders who are too lazy to learn the ins and outs of various loyalty programs.
Does that mean that Seats.Aero won’t work anymore on Aeroplan?
Some day an airline will refuse to show results if you don't have enough miles.
Canada is an idiot country. They rip each other off with high prices.
LOL, whatever bean counting PM who was like “but we’ll lose 2% of engagement!” or w/e must’ve finally lost that fight…
Hopefully this opens Ana up to awards
RIP Cowtool the greatest search tool ever
RIP, indeed. :-(
As a UK user (Aeroplan 75k), it has been like this for a long time. The login is clunky for sure. My experience in the past couple of days is that availability seems to be status dependent even with partner airlines. I tried searching with my son's login (no status) and my own and seemed to get different outcomes.
Won't matter to me. Unlike Ben, I've never been able to find affordable and useful awards with or without first logging in :-(
The AC app allows you to remain continuously logged in. No inconvenience.
However, I’m prepared to be educated that using the app somehow handicaps your search ability vs the website.
I wouldn't necessarily say handicaps, but it certainly lacks features that the website has, like filtering on e-up space.
AC allows you to turn off the two-factor authentication if you don't like it
That would be nice. I despise mandatory email 2FA (virgin atlantic looking at you). I use 1password and at least give me the option for TOTP.
My junk password for unimportant websites is uses the name of the company, like aircandasucksBigly13