lespoir

Folks, we ought to make some noises to Air Canada and AeroPlan about its phony award choices.

Overall I like this program, and I have been an elite member for many years.

Ever since Air Canada's restructing and its spinoff of AeroPlan, however, the point redemption has become worse and worse.

What I want to single out is its phony award choice:

If you book a mutiple leg trip overseas, AeroPlan gives you a lot routing and itinerary choices. However, when you select "business" seating, what usually happens is that all those "business class seat" choices are not real: For a flight with perhaps 6 legs, as long as there is a small short-haul leg is a business class seat, this still qualifies as a "business class seat" choice, and will cost you the full mileage to get this reward ticket, even though the other five legs, and usually the long hauls (Trans-Pacific or Trans-Atlantic) legs are all economic.

This is how AeroPlan sets the program.

Once I phoned AeroPlan and spoke to an agent, who rudely replied: "You do not have to choose any of these!"

Meanwhile I found a trick. When logging into AeroPlan website, if you can United or other Star Alliance partner airlines of Air Canada's, a business class choice is a true business class.

You will also find that redeeming an AeroPlan reward ticket by flying Air Canada's parner airline may actually cost less, with a true business class flight. I test run many destinations, and it is almost always the case: If you select Air Canada's business class flight, it may cost you 115,000 miles for a trip to Asia, while only the shortest flight segment among the 6-8 legs is business seat, as I call it "phony reward", while by flying United or Singapore Air, you may only spend 100,000 AeroPlan points.

Welcome comments and ideas!

I have been trying to bring this to the media's attention, but so far, Canadain media seem to have completed been turned off by Air Canada and AeroPlan ailment, so they do not even want to revisit this subject.

But we the flyers are suffering more and more.

Shareholder

You have posted nothing that hasn't been discussed many hundreds of times here. When AC raised its redemption levels two years ago for ExecFirst seats overseas, STAR awards remained fixed, so it was immediately clear that it was cheaper to book a partner carrier over AC if the option was presented. It has also been the subject of much discussion that AE limits the number of ExecFirst award seats per flight to two, and that these tend to go very quickly on most high demand routes.

However, what you fail to acknowledge -- and granted not many outside this forum realize -- is that if you book a business class award and not all the segments can be confirmed in the front cabin on AC flights, you can get upgraded into any open seat in the front cabin at check-in since you have priority over standby upgraders. AC/AE should advise this when making such bookings so members know this. Sometimes a phone agent will mention this if booked this way, or even at check-in if the agent notices the ticket is issued in D, but you are only booked into Hospitality.

You also do not acknowledge that on routes where there are many flights a day, you can standby for an earlier same day flight, and ask to be moved onto one of those flights, should there be ExecFirst space available.

Note that this does not apply to segments flown on STAR partners. These awards cannot be upgraded at the gate.

I mentioned this fact to a friend last summer when I saw her ticket had been issued with just one segment in D, and the rest in W. She had no problem moving up to ExecFirst on both overseas segments upon check-in. Though had I not told her that she could legitimately ask for this "upgrade", I don't know whether it would have been offered to her.

So welcome to FT. Vent all you wish about AE, but the likelihood is that someone has already beaten you to the "punch"!

Sebring

As someone who knows media, and The Media, pretty well from a past life, I think I can speak on their behalf that this is not a problem that would interest them one iota. This is not a widespread generalized complaint like the availability of rewards on popular routes, increases in the number of points for redemptions, or fuel surcharges and the like which make rewards not quite free. These do affect the AP membership broadly. The problem you outline, though important to you, affects a small proportion of total AP members, and since you seem to have recognized the same work-around as everyone else here, the Media likely will deem your issue to be of too little interest to bother with. They would not see your situation as a case of "suffering more and more"...

IMHO

yyznomad

*yawn*

Welcome, lespoir...!

Tractor Boy

Welcome to FT. You have posted information that most members here have known for a long time.

AE does have the worst reward availability of any of the major N. American airlines. This is supposed to change in Q2 2006 with a new redemption program offerring "unlimited" seats for extra miles. Then again this program was originally supposed to be launched in 2004, then 2005 etc. We will see.

lespoir

hey, Shareholder, thanks for so much useful information. There are a few things completely new to me. Thanks for the tip.

yyznomad

Don't sweat it... just remember the following saying:
"If you think it's new news, check FT and it's most likely old news already"

Altaflyer

One thing that SH missed is the suggestion that you never refer to a standby move to J (D) from Y(W) on an award an "upgrade". Just say "confirmed" into Business since you have indeed paid for a D award. Some agents hear upgrade and will tune you out.

Also, some Star partners have been known to allow you into J on an award for which the J points were deducted but this varies and more often than not I think the answer would be no.

PreferBulkhead

Very good and impt point !!! ^

Elited

While checking in my Mrs. last weekend on a D reward with the outbound only confirmed ahead of time in W at the Exec counter in YVR, the agent said nothing while checking her in and simply kept the same seat number. I then prompted him by asking "My wife is on a D reward but they could not assign a J seat for her ahead of time. Can you please do that?". His response "You'll have to try and *upgrade* at the gate. I can't do anything about it here."

When I took exception to the term 'upgrade', he got all snuffy and still did nothing....wouldn't even say whether there was room available (I happened to know there were at least 7 free J seats, and this was checking in for a 3 hr domestic mid-weekend flight just an hour before departure -- i.e. shouldn't be a problem).

Needless to say, despite Mr. Grouchy at the check-in, when she finally made it through to the gate they had already printed the new BP with here J seat. What a waste....why do I bother to check in with a person if they're unwilling to even 'try' and provide a service beyond the kiosks?

FlyerGoldII

If one is booked on a D class award, and if one is successfully booked on a domestic segment D class seat, but W class seats on other routes of the itinerary, one risks not be "upgraded" to those routes, if by the time of boarding, the front cabin is completely full. From previous threads on the subject of true upgrading on these routes, I suspect that many of the flights from YOW, or YYZ to LHR, FRA, and MUC may fit this category, as well as many flights from Canada to Asia, Hawaii/Sydney - and back.

PreferBulkhead

Likely Unionized and not wanting to go outside the scope of their jobs!!

lespoir

Thank you, AltaFlyer, too. You are from Alberta or Atlanta? I am from Calgary.

These are useful tips that one can perhaps only learn from this kind of complaint forums :-)

What amazes me is that one has to keep learning, as the rules keep changing.

yyznomad

Absolutely It's tough to keep pace sometimes.

Altaflyer

Yeah, I hail from the Big City...Edmonton