Thought it might be useful to collect some anecdotal stories of how the separation between Aeroplan (left hand?) and Air Canada 'proper' (right hand?) is affecting us consumers.

As a first example, from my understanding the new financial arrangements between AC and AP has resulted in us having to pay an additional tax on trans-border rewards as U.S. authorities now deem AP a loyalty program as opposed to a FF program (see long thread here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ransborder+tax)

Second example, and this requires [vent and self-centered view of universe = on]. Have Classic reward ticket YYC-YYZ-BOS for tomorrow (Monday) morning. Would like to actually go on the red-eye Monday night (but technically Tuesday morning, e.g. AC 146, 00:27 on Nov 30), but no classic reward availability on that redeye and by 27 minutes doesn't count as same-day standby. Both that red-eye and the onward flights to BOS are wide-open per ITN.

The left hand / right hand comes in as the YYZ-BOS flight I'm confirmed on tomorrow afternoon is showing J4 C3 Y2 M1 U1 A0 B0 V0 Q0 L0 R0 I0 N0 G0 , which I would take to mean is going to be a pretty full flight, with at least a reasonable chance of being oversold. So there I am trying both AC and AP agents, telling them that I would love to give up a seat that could be turned into revenue if only I could get put stand-by on these wide-open flights.

I understand that they have capacity controls for reason, and it might be a bit presumptious for me to be telling them how to make more seats available on a prime-time flight , but the frustration was more the from AP "no we can't do anything, revenue seats = AC's responsibility" and from AC "no we can't do anything, reward travel = AP's responsibility", and nobody wanting to see a potential win-win for both ACE and the customer. [vent = off]

Any other anecdotes or unintended (or not?) consequences of the new arrangements and increasing separation between AP and AC? Might be useful to gather some material that might be useful given the potential upcoming FT chat with AP and AC....

J