Priority Rewards limit to ten reservations
 

Long time reader, first time poster. I am a SE100K member for years and just found out about the new restriction on Aeroplan Priority rewards limited to ten reservations a year. However my business partner (also SE100K) was told on the phone that aeroplan is not tracking this and is considering removing this all together. Anyone hear this?

It will change the way I book reward tickets if true. Thanks!

Here is the rule:
Priority Rewards
Priority Rewards will be limited to ten (10) reservations per eligible Altitude member, per benefit period beginning March 1, 2015. Super Elite 100K members are able to book a combined total of ten reservations in both Economy and Business Class. In the event that Aeroplan ClassicFlight® Reward seats are completely booked, Priority Rewards offer access to additional seats on flights operated by Air Canada, Air Canada Express and Air Canada rouge.

Yes, this was announced last fall. An important note is that each of the 10 reservations can contain up to 9 people and it includes anytime of reservation (o/w, r/t or open-jaw). Given that, it shouldn't have a huge impact, but it may result in changes to booking procedures (i.e. booking r/t ticket instead of multiple o/w).

Indeed, according to Ben/AC, was it 95 or 90% of SE members would not be impacted.

Funny all these people showing up with these one offs of changes previously announced.

Imagine all those gradually "finding out" that don't post on FT? Will be an interesting year for AC....with an burst of pissed of customers above and beyond the normal level.

Welcome to posting on FT!

Yes, when modifying an AE IKK reward (booked after March 1st), the agent told me they haven't started restricting this yet. Actually, it was an interesting discussion as she has several SE friends, and we had a very frank discussion about how upset people are with Altitude this year.

Most the population finds out about changes like this when is directly impacts them - and I don't mean in the future but right at that exact moment - as such yes I believe all year we will see people get surprised with the changes and be pretty upset.

So what happens if you book a priority reward and then have to cancel it? Am I safe in assuming that it won't count towards my 10 per benefit year total? Ben, could you clarify?

He already clarified it. That won't count towards the limit.

I'm more interested in the "Aeroplan...is considering removing this altogether".

IKK is a benefit provided by AC, so it's up to them, not Aeroplan.

IIRC (95% sure), it gets returned to you for future use. I think it was AY? or maybe BL who posted on here about that

Thanks guys, good to know. I must have missed this part in the hundreds of posts after the changes were announced. :)

AC comes up with the rule, but it's up to Aeroplan to administer. I imagine if they're not tracking now, once they have the ability to later this year they'll run an audit to determine how many IKKs Altitude members have used from March 1st. I don't think anyone should book under the assumption that there are any freebees.

Hopefully this is true! It has gotten ridiculously hard to get regular Aeroplan rewards unless you're booking a very long way out, meaning that the priority rewards are actually a useful benefit. I'm sure it's true that the cut to a yearly max of 10 didn't affect a lot of people, but it substantially diminishes our ability to max use of all those bloody Aeroplan miles we accumulate.

10 Reservations are a lot. I cannot see many SE even doing 6 Reservations per year.

The truth is that it has become ridiculously hard to get priority rewards as well. :) It is high time that AC did something to actually make this a tangible benefit again. 10 is far too many. Make it something like 4 J seats and 8 Y seats that can be had with priority rewards per year. Or something. As it sits, it is no benefit at all.

I did 12 last year (I think by rough count) BUT I did them all as one ways. This year I'll just do them at r/t and it'll be way under.

** Also pretty much all of mine were YVR - YQF so I could just drive instead if I have to :)