Anyone able to tell me if there are any J class seats on AC872 or AC876, yyz-fra on May 28 or 29?

Using the "view seats" on AC shows only 2 seats of at least 20 taken but Aeroplan is asking for 503,000 pts to take those flights?

The regular amount is only 90k i think.

What gives?

Thanks.

Unfortunately KVS shows no business class award available on AC872 or AC876 on either May 28th or 29th.

The view seats function only indicates how many seats have been assigned. It does not provide any indication of how many of the seats are actually available for sale. Nor does it provide any indication of how many reward seats may be available.

With the seat map showing only 2 seats assigned, even if those are indeed the only 2 seats that have been sold there isn't any guarantee that any reward seats are left.

What you are seeing is a Classic Plus award that allows you to book any seat which is available for sale, albeit at an extremely inflated amount of Aeroplan points.

Welcome to Aeroplan

That far ahead only 2 seats per flight are released to Aeroplan by Air Canada. These are the seats you see already taken.

If exact dates are important book economy seats for now and monitor I fare class (normal 90K level seat) on your flights using Expertflyer or KVS. Then call Aeroplan and rebook each economy seat into business one-by-one as soon as I class becomes available.

Great Help, thank you..

1) is there a cost to upgrade to biz once they are available
2) how did you know "that far in advance only 2 seats are released by AC to A/P"

I just spoke to an A/P rep at length and he swore he didn't know anything about availablilty at any time, anywhere, anyhow....just what's on his screen.

I said, "so you agree the flight has 40 of 42 biz seats avail" he agreed...so i asked if maybe A/P wasn't given any reward seats on that flight...he said he had no idea....so thank you, i guess the 2 they did get are gone, but 2 out of 42 seems like a rip off!

Thanks for the info.....A/P is getting so ridiculous.

Galen John,
Why is it a rip off? Is AC not entitled to seek actual cash purchasers for those as yet unclaimed seats? Are they not allowed to make some money? Why should they make the seat available to you ahead of someone WILLING TO BUY THE SEAT?

I'm the last person to defend AC on many things, but your argument makes no sense! AC can sell any number of seats to AE to make available to its members based on projected fill rates for those flights. Many here know that it is common for airlines to allocate two seats at a time in advance of the actual flight. As you get closer to departure, if revenue management feels that those seats will not be filled with paying passengers, they may decide to release more seats. Sometimes this happens sooner, sometimes later. In some cases, especially for premium products, you will never get seats ie: SQ F suites or only at a late date ie: LH.

503,000 points at 0.8 cents is about $4000. Not that bad, is it? Is there still another $1000 surcharge on these too?

Even so, comparable with lower revenue.

What is a rip off is that 5 years ago the only real people claiming rewards were flyers.

Now everyone in Canada has points from Amex & CIBC and those original seats that have been giving out are now being gobbled up by non flyers and no increase to the seats for redemption for actual flyers.This is why Aeroplan has become so crap because we have seen no increase in classic business seats avaiblity v's the massive increases in players with avaible points from CIBC and Amex.

Aeroplan should have 2 seats for FF and then 2 seats for CIBC & Amex users for business class redemption.

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I see talk of this almost daily here on FT

My question is, from a business perspective, why would an airline not want to open up space for redemption?

Does AE not have to pay AC or any other carrier for the redeemed seats? One in the hand versus two in the bush...

Is what AE pays for the seats so low that AC / others would rather wait it out?

There will be a cost, the difference in fees and surcharges between an economy and business class redemption.