I just booked two Aeroplan reward tickets for December, but was not able to get the flight times and routing I wanted.

Is there any point in checking back to see if reward seats have opened up? If so, is there a particular time of the day or week that they are released?

Thanks.

(I am a Prestige member)

Welcome to FT and the AC forum!

Did you get the days you want? Perhaps you could stand by for earlier flights on the day.

How far are you from Elite? If you can reach 35k in November, every revenue seat in the back cabin will open up for you.

andrew

Welcome PRS. As Andrew suggests, you may want to check closer to the flight dates, depending upon your status and further availability of inventory based on market circumstances.

Also, if you were a bit more specific about dates, routes and class of service you intend to fly, we might be able to offer you better advice. If you are talking near Christmas, then you are lucky to have gotten close to the dates you want. And depending upon the route you are flying and the class of service, alternatives may be available to you which the agent or you yourself may not have considered.

Welcome PRS. I see you are from London also.
The response from AC when I asked this question was that the seats are under the control of the route controllers, who may open up seats at their discretion. My experience is that seats are not often freed up.
I have found that it is very useful to check the virtual rewards page regularly for the flight times you want. Even on busy routes seats come and go, so you can call as soon as something better shows up. As Andrew mentioned, if you're scheduled for a flight later than the one you want on a particular day, you can always standby for an earlier flight. You also didn't mention whether this was a domestic or international trip that you were taking, because there may be some alternatives.

Welcome!
One thing I've noticed is that sometimes seats open up just after the deadlines for advance bookings on discounted tickets expire, ie (for many routes) three weeks before your outbound flight. I assume this is because AC knows they are not going to sell that many full fare tickets, so they are able to release the inventory. Problem is, you can't be sure about this, which makes vacation planning a bit of a gamble.

FWIW - when I last used reward travel for my wife and myself in Executive class last year - at time of booking they did not have reward seats avail on the return leg, but we took the flights anyway return to Fort Lauderdale. They indicated that they would place a comment in the record and that we should check at the airport when we return back to YYZ from Fort Lauderdale ... sure enough at the airport we checked in - asked about upgrades on the reward travel, they read the instructions and we got the seats ... so keep the faith - just make sure that AC places information in the record - the SE desk did it for us and actually placed instructions for the check-in agent on what to do to make it happen.

Good Luck

SimonC

The rule is (e-mail from the Elite desk)that if you have a D-class ticket and some of the segments are in W, then you have first priority for upgrades at the airport. This has certainly been the case for me on my last trip.