How hard could it be that they wouldn’t have something up and running by 2020?

AC already tracks the mileage accumulation for its own flights crediting to Aeroplan and *A FFP. AFAIK much of the functionality of Altitude has been brought back in-house. Sounds like CIBC and TD are both willing to partner with AC, so I don’t see an issue there. All AC needs to launch its own FFP is the ability to earn/redeem on *A and CC partner; all other partners can be added over time. As canadiancow pointed out previously some of AC’s recent IT items have been relatively good; I don’t thing a new FFP would be too difficult for AC given where they currently are and nearly 2 years to go.