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.
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?
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