StuMcIlwain

I've been doing some research into Aeroplan inventory using the Galileo-CRS site recommended by CPYVR. (Thanks!) I've only looked at the YOW-YYC nonstop route, but I may look at some others as time allows to try and understand better what Aeroplan is doing. The YOW-YYC route is one that I have been completely unsuccessful at finding award seats in the last year. I have no idea whether the trends apparent on this route also apply to others, but I suspect that they do.

If you look at award seat availability for next October, well beyond the booking threshold for even the most zealous trip-of-a-lifetime award bookers, you will find that the availablity is 2D/6W on the morning A320 and 2D/5W on the evening A319 every day of the week. This is 15 out of 260 available seats each day, or 5.8% of capacity.

For most dates from roughly 1 to 3 months from now, almost no award seats are available. Sometimes you get lucky and find 1 or 2 on a certain flight, but that's the exception not the norm.

Then starting about one month from now, seats start appearing on the empty flights (which, on this route, is usually all of them). First they start appearing midweek. Then they start appearing every day, so if you want to fly next Sunday, for example, there are 8W seats available. (That's an extreme example, but there are seats on most flights.) But I suspect that you wouldn't have been able to find a single award seat a month ago for next Sunday; you certainly can't for Sunday February 16th.

AC claims to set aside an average of 10% of the seats for awards per route. But they only say "set aside", not "give out". I suspect that many of the award seats set aside at the last minute are never claimed.

The US airlines set aside roughly 7% of their seats for awards, but I don't know if they also add seats at the last minute and include those seats in the tally. But that could explain why it seems to be easier to get award seats in advance on other airlines.