Originally Posted by
pennystinkard
I am pondering the wisdom of transferring points to Aeroplan prior to ascertaining award availability. I only ever intend to use Aeroplan for a specific route on a partner airline, and if there is no availability for that route (a highly competitive one), I would simply not use Aeroplan ever. I can certainly check at calendar open and then transfer instantaneously from Amex, but the route is competitive enough that I worry that even a few minutes delay in transferring would cost me the seats. So, how risky is it to pre-transfer points given that I have seen many refer to Aeroplan as a "sinking ship"?
Not sure where you get the idea that Aeroplan is a "sinking ship". The last use of that term in this forum came over 3.5 years ago, and with all due respect to other communities (e.g. Reddit, Facebook), and keeping in mind that moderators are volunteers with no affiliation with the company that owns FlyerTalk, this remains by far the most sophisticated and knowledgeable community when it comes to Aeroplan.
I'm not going to write up a lengthy financial analysis of Air Canada, but it owns 100% of Aeroplan, and is one of the healthier airlines in the world. It has over $8 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments. People without an understanding of how small Aeroplan is as a component of the business have sometimes made comments about the large number of points sales that AC has had, assuming this means Aeroplan points are in for some imminent massive devaluation, but the total amount of deferred revenue related to Aeroplan* has been relatively steady around $4.5 billion since the end of 2019 (*that line item on AC's balance sheet includes some other items that aren't disclosed, but that's the only disclosure AC consistently provides), so there's no indication that the Aeroplan liability is significantly increasing.
Partner availability has been a mess this year, but has started to rebound after some of the anti-fraud measures and other changes they've been making, and hopefully will continue to improve.
Big picture, since AC bought back Aeroplan from Aimia in 2019, they've added quite a few non-*A partners for redemptions - EK, EY, VA, WY, GF, etc. Star remains by far the biggest of the airline alliances, and while it's likely to lose SK next year, it's also likely to gain AZ.
Is it a sinking ship for points brokers and churners who engage in shady behaviour? I hope so, since that will make life better for the rest of us. But for most users, it's hard to see how that could be true.
No rewards program can ever guarantee availability of exactly the seats you want on exactly the date you want at the price you expect. Whether Aeroplan is the best program for the particular trip you're trying to book, no one can tell you based on what little information you've provided. But neither Aeroplan nor AC is on the verge of imminent bankruptcy or other problems that mean whatever points you plan to transfer are guaranteed to be stranded if you can't book this specific trip. If this trip doesn't work out, there will likely be some other way to use them in the future.