calpaugh

Here are a few more Aeroplan rules that are clever:

1) you cannot convert a two-way reward into 2 one-way rewards; if you do, first you pay cancellation charges, then they return your seats to inventory and they might or might not be available to rebook (i would go with not available) But I'm also pretty sure you cannot convert 2 one-way rewards to a single 2-way reward. So, you have to make the decision before incurring extra changes fees: do you want 2 stop-overs or are you ok with two one-ways without any stop-overs. (i actually didn't ask that question, but somebody else might have)

2) if you change a two-way reward and move the return segment to start *before* the outbound segment, they charge you TWO changes fees. (one for each direction) (think booking a year ahead and the return segments aren't loaded yet; absolutely i would recommend booking only the one-way outbound to start; booking a two-way with a fake date earlier ( going the wrong way) is really not useful and probably costly and you can convert the one-way to a two-way later).

3) Australia won't allow Aeroplan to charge scam-charges (YQ, fuel surcharges, etc) for flight itineraries that originate in Australia. (the entire itinerary, outbound and return). But if the flight itinerary originates in Canada and goes to Australia, scam charges apply on the entire itinerary. Its around a grand on a J-Class redemption from Canada to Australia +/-.

If I had asked questions that resulted in the above 3 answers, I would have saved a lot of $$$ on my Australian reward booking. haha. All part of the Aeroplan game. Those three rules are NOT advertised anywhere that I know of; hopefully they are useful to others booking rewards.

BTW, i did manage to score 3 J-class seats (on the same flights) outbound and return YVR/SYD in Feb/Mar 2019, which I guess is pretty close to the unicorn of Aeroplan rewards. (actually 4 J seats on the outbound). I didn't even think that was possible. I've come to assume on the Australian direct flights they usually only release 1 J seat per flight.

Here's an example:

book SYD -> YVR -> SYD with the outbound departing Sep 2018 and return March 2019.

You might do this to secure YVR -> SYD at 354 days out in March 2019

You won't see any scam charges on this itinerary, on either segment.

Ok. Now change this to:

YVR -> SYD -> YVR (with the outbound as the original return, March 2019), and the SYD -> YVR in April 2019.

First, this will cost 2 change fees (2 x $100). Second it will add scam charges on both segments.

You can't escape the scam charges on the SYD -> YVR segment without cancelling the original (paying cancellation fees) and risk losing the YVR -> SYD segment that you already confirmed.

So there you have it. Hopefully somebody will save some money on their Aeroplan bookings.