While Aeroplan’s days are numbered, at least they’re slowly starting to make some minor improvements. They recently fixed their issues with accessing Swiss and Air China awards, and have now fixed one other major frustration I have.
You can once again redeem Aeroplan miles for travel on Swiss
When it comes to booking partner airline award tickets, there’s often one confirmation code for the airline with which you book, and another confirmation code for the airline with which you’re flying. The latter confirmation code is the one you’ll need to select seats, since Aeroplan can’t assign you seats on their airline partners.
If you’re booking an award ticket by phone, the Aeroplan agent can typically give you the partner airline confirmation number. However, when booking award tickets online, you can only see the Aeroplan confirmation code. If you wanted the confirmation code of the airline with which you’re flying you’d either have to phone up Aeroplan or the airline operating the flight. This can often only be done during limited hours, and can require quite some hold time as well.
The good news is that Aeroplan has finally come up with a solution here, which is long overdue. You can now see your partner airline confirmation numbers directly on Aeroplan’s website.
To access them, log into your Aeroplan account with your account number and password, and then on the very left click on “Manage Your Rewards.” On the next page you should see a list of the awards you have booked.
Click on the itinerary you want, and then on the next page you should see a “Seat Selection” button.
Once you click that, you’ll be brought to a page with the partner airline confirmation number. This is awesome, since you can then either go to the website of the partner airline to select seats, or otherwise call the airline with that code directly.
It was a no brainer for Aeroplan to finally get this fixed, given that their phone lines were presumably being clogged up by people calling in to get these numbers. This saves Aeroplan agents and customers time, and alleviates one frustrating aspect of booking award tickets with the program.
(Tip of the hat to Don’t Call The Airline)
Finally! I think by the time they are toast, they will have the best booking platform on the market. They will probably try and sell it...
@Justin says "AA PNRs are easy to find for other OW airlines"
How?
Great. Now bring back Avianca awards
Delta does this for a few partners, but they really need to expand it to all partners. It's very inefficient to have to call for every partner PNR.
Looks good but the app crashes when you ask for details and the website does not respond when you try to see details
I find it's often much easier just to DM the airline you booked the award with on Twitter and ask for the operating airline's confirmation number. It's a lot more efficient than calling.
Wow, so many "technical issues" being resolved and "new features" being added to ErrorPlan AFTER the announcement by AC.
Too little, too late.
Very helpful as I have an Aeroplan itinerary coming up across five Star Alliance carriers. Thank you.
@Adam UA does display this online
AA PNRs are easy to find for other OW airlines -- not sure for other partners
Wish other airlines or rather ffp's would do/offer the same service for their partner/alliance awards. Cause right now for AA & UA, you have to call em up to find the other confirmation number.
The best solution (if possible) would obviously be a unified/master PNR regardless of airline or program the flights are booked from.
I was able to use the e-ticket number (as opposed to the confirmation code) provided on Aeroplan's site to manage my reservation and select seats on EVA's site before this update. A welcome change, either way.
With Aeroplan's future with Air Canada decided (even though it's supposedly not until 2020), is it safe for me to keep collecting Aeroplan miles to get a big reward (i.e. biz class to somewhere far away...), or should I adopt a policy of "earn 'em & burn 'em?"