Sadly, you are right. The operators are well versed in talking about this, it's clearly a hot topic. The talking points as of right now seem to be along the lines of:

• major IT problem, we're working on it
• bookings for certain carriers are being cancelled (so even spoon-feeding specific flights found elsewhere won't work)
• yes the carriers you want are unavailable, but it's affecting many carriers (i.e. it's not a conspiracy)
• no timeframe for resolution, "try again in a week or two"

So for the moment we're left twisting in the wind with no commitment on Aeroplan's part other than a vague commitment to work on it. The options are to book high YQ carriers or take your chances on the possibility of the IT problem affecting the low/no YQ carriers somehow being resolved.

I admit I haven't been following this thread too closely, but what evidence do we have that bookings are being cancelled? Are you talking about forced bookings made since the latest round of "IT problems" began around 8/22, or are you talking about any existing bookings?

I called in today and was fed the same line about bookings being cancelled. The rep also seemed to think that Aeroplan was buying paid tickets for those affected. Given that, I'm led to believe there's some internal misinformation conflating the current issue with the LX F debacle a while back.

To be clear, nothing was said about existing bookings being cancelled and there is nothing that would suggest that is happening.

What the last agent I spoke to said is that when attempts have been made to book flights on blocked carriers (LX and the like), they get cancelled automatically due to the mysterious "IT problem". Apparently there is no way for AE to convince LX et al that these tickets are legitimate. So she was basically pre-empting any possibility of me spoon-feeding her the flights that I want and that have been consistently available for Sunday departures for months up until this latest round of so-called "IT problems".

So that leaves me here, totally at Aeroplan's mercy to restore access to the full range of carriers again.

Were they at all more specific about what they meant by "bookings"? I already make it a habit to check the status of my reward bookings every two weeks, but if this is affecting older bookings (eg those made towards the end of 2017) then I'll begrudgingly check daily.

Provided they can't find acceptable reward inventory for affected customers, it's the least they can do.

That's not hard to believe :)

Edited to add:

Thanks for the clarification.

IMO this would definitely be the prudent thing to do if you have a pre-existing booking on a low/no YQ carrier. With these problems, I'd be checking existing bookings at least once a week to make sure they're still there, unaffected.

Based on what they've told me, it seems to me that this issue is just preventing new bookings.

Update: did my standard check again on EF, United and AE, and sure enough only the LX flights on AE don't show up. Plenty of I space on the LX flight in question.

Call in to AE again, asking about the availability, getting the standard "nothing available" line. I ask her to check whether there is something going on with Swiss because I have reason to believe that there is availability on that flight, and she looks something up and feeds me the same story: technical issue, flights inhibited, no ETA, top priority. She assured me this is nothing to do with the AC/AE tie up, and checked with a Lead a couple of times on what they plan to do. Apparently the issue is that they have inhibited the booking of these airlines (LX, NH, TK and others) because even if AE ticketed it, folks would show up at the airport and the operating carrier would have no record of the reservation.

I am still suspicious because there is nothing posted as a news item on the AE site as there was in 2017 when a similar issue happened:

https://www.aeroplan.com/whats_new/n...110_2017_05_19

Apparently they have a team of people working on it and it is a top priority. Truth or BS? They do not have any credible way to make things right for those whose plans have been messed up because of availability that has come and gone due to this saga.

I know it's hearsay, but someone on reddit is reporting success in booking LX after requesting to talk to a supervisor.

I haven't tried it myself yet but if the situation isn't resolved within the next week or so I expect to be trying that approach myself.

Just saw this about SWISS having no record of ticket/reservation when booked with United so Aeroplan story could be true.

AN AWARD TICKET HORROR STORY ON SWISS

Departure day arrived and my clients showed up at the airport. While the husband had no trouble checking in, his wife was told she had no ticket.

https://liveandletsfly.boardingarea....#comment-93051

So LO of course still blocked....

But plenty of seats on AC WAWYYZ. No thanks.

Lost reservations TK
 

We had 2 YUL-IST business booked june 2017 for flight march 2018. TK had lost the reservation. AE had to buy 2 tickets for us on the day of our departure.

and yet AE showing connecting flights to IST on TK from European cities only, no TATL from YUL, seems only low fees TATL are being ''unavailabled''

Was your reservation showing in TK's manage booking tool prior to departure?

Did you bring about a printed itinerary with the ticket numbers et al? Good for you that Aeroplan took care of you at the end. So it bought the same tickets from TK so you could fly as scheduled?

This is very troublesome. So the "lost" reservation has been an issue since 2017. Did that relate to the issues Aeroplan acknowledged and made formal announcement on its site in 2017 (the link of the old announcement was posted a few posts upthread, seems the date was 19.05.2017)? TK was not named in the 4 airlines listed in that announcement though.

We have no such acknowledgement this time.