hoipolloi

Why do you predict that AC will be "nice enough" to extend existing passes, such as Gift of Travel Sun passes expiring April 2022, until 2022 ?

Bohemian1

That's a very specific date. You must have a amazingly precise Ouija board.

canadiancow

My prediction has been "a year after travel can get back to normal" for quite a while. I have absolutely zero inside knowledge on this.

Adam Smith

Anyone with a paused UFP, leave yourself some time to get it reactivated. The pass I put on hold last fall has "expired" and it's a bit of a hassle to get it sorted. I had a call with someone at AC today and I think there's a workable solution, but it will definitely have chewed up a few days. I'll post more once it's resolved.

For what it's worth, before this mess, they did tell me that they could reactivate it but have it on hold for a couple of days so that you can book a bit in advance, as described below:


So if you have a paused UFP, I'd definitely reach out a week or two beforehand to confirm there are no issues with the pass, as well as gain the ability to book a few days ahead.

BlondeBomber

Sorry to hear of the trouble with the UFP. I was proactive as well and left myself time in case of issues.

In the end, mine got activated in less than 30 hours and I made my first booking in less than 30 hours. I had an old credit card on file and needed to change that so that payment could be processed but otherwise it went way better than I anticipated.

They were also good about the extra days I was prepared to lose from when it was suspended. I had a few weeks of one month still left to use when it was suspended. They have added those weeks to this month's pass making it a 7 week pass!

Hope it all works out. I just responded to their email confirming the suspension in March 2020 at Customer Care <[email protected]> and got a response within 5 hours and a note asking to wait up to 24 hours for activation.

When you say "expired", is the type of UFP no longer available or is it just someone who messed up a bit with the "pause" that turned into an expiry?

The Lev

I would sure hope that AC would give people a year after the government lifts its travel advisory.

I bought a South America gift of travel pass to fly to SCL... then I had to book a flight for this fall on United because AC suspended its flights there.

AC gets to sit on our money, so it benefits them in the long run to continue to encourage people to buy passes rather than "gotcha" let them expire during a time of travel restrictions.

Adam Smith

It worked out in the end, only a minor inconvenience. Glad I reached out to them a few days ahead of time.

The FP was no longer available, but that wasn't the fundamental problem. It seems that whoever paused/put on hold the original FP from last fall may not have done it correctly, so the pass itself expired.

So they had to refund me for that one then I had to purchase a new one, which had an added layer of complexity because the pass was no longer for sale.

The customer service rep who sorted things out was very helpful, so I have no complaints on that front, and they were able to do a little something that made up for the hassle.

yerffej201

are they still extending flight passes?

Adam Smith

"Extending"? There has never been any rolling extension, just several discrete instances when they extended all passes outstanding at that time.

With COVID cases rising in so many places, I hope they'll do another, but they've not said anything about it.

yerffej201

my flight pass was originally supposed to expire feb 2021. at some point it was extended until later in 2021, and now apparently it's extended until march 2022. What else would you call it other than extensions?

Adam Smith

Perhaps we're getting bogged down in semantics. "Still extending" implies some sort of ongoing effort (e.g. rolling the expiry forward one month every month), or something with some consistency to it (e.g. offering an extension whenever one is requested by the customer). What we have had instead is a handful of individual occasions when AC extended the expiry date for all FPs. Those extensions haven't been for consistent amounts of time or at regular intervals.

If they do extend the passes again, they could do it next week, next month, December, or whenever they feel like it. And they could extend the passes by one month, or three, or for 47 days, or for a year.

Yhztraveller

I asked (through Concierge) to have my "Romantic Getaway" flight pass extended from the previously extended March 31 2022 deadline. I only asked for a 1 month extension, but just received an email that it had been extended to Sept 30, 2022.

Given that the extension is well beyond what I asked for can I assume that they have extended a number of FP to Sept 30??

I have not heard a word about reinstating my UFP, which had 1 month and 29 days when I put it on hold.

canadiancow

Mine are definitely still March 31.

Bohemian1

Same here. I would love Sep / 22 as an expiry date.

canadiancow

I just see no point in wasting my or AC's time when we're still more than 6 months away from the current expiry date.

I'm still 99.9% sure there will be another blanket extension for everyone, and I'm quite happy to wait until March 15. If at that point it turns out I'm wrong, I'll look at what I actually haven't used and write in about them.