Dave510

Does the new Air Canada FFP no longer offer Star Alliance upgrades? I can’t find any mention of it anywhere, only eupgrades.

24left

@Dave510

There is mention in the main 2020 Air Canada Aeroplan Program thread of this. I'm quoting from an article as it was easier to find when searching:

"No Star Alliance upgrades for awhile New upgrade requests using Aeroplan miles for partner airline upgrades will be taken offline October 31. This feature won’t return until “later in 2021.” They say they de-prioritized updating this feature because so few people are flying internationally....."

https://viewfromthewing.com/the-aero...nefits-longer/

The Lev

Air Canada "temporarily" discontinued offering Star Alliance upgrades with Aeroplan points last October both for its own flights and the flights of other airlines, although you can upgrade on AC if you have points from other programs.

Has anybody heard when Air Canada / Aeroplan intends to bring these back to life?

(They were supposed to return sometime later in 2021 and I have some Latitude bookings in 2022 I'd like to use them on).

UpgraderYYZTPE

Personally I feel something is up. As you stated there is no mention of Star Alliance Upgrades on their site despite the release that stated it would be returning "later in 2021". There are still people traveling during the pandemic. Due to the slowdown, they most certainly would have had the time/resources to integrate this feature into their new Aeroplan site. So I am skeptical as to whether it will ever return. I have asked their customer service representatives and they have no information to share either. I may contact the head of Aeroplan to try to find out what their plans are.

canadiancow

Huh? Do you think they're just going to assign a furloughed gate agent to do this?

Ah yes, waste the time of someone who could better spend it, you know, getting it implemented.

They said later in 2021, so I have no idea why you think that's not going to happen.

The Lev

I was not aware of AC/AE's great track record of implementing IT projects on schedule.

nexusCFX

Well he didn't say they would actually get it done in 2021. But if you plan to kill a feature you generally don't give an implementation timeframe at all, and definitely not something like "late 2021". You just say you're "investigating" bringing the feature back under new system etc etc. Giving a time frame like that is pretty strong evidence that there is no nefarious plan to never do it.

The Lev

I agree with the premise of getting to it eventually but canadiancow 's wording was: "They said later in 2021, so I have no idea why you think that's not going to happen."

My interpretation of English grammar is that in the quoted sentence "that" refers to what preceeded it - i.e. "later in 2021" rather than them killing the offering altogether.

Adam Smith

Heck, with all the other changes they made, it would have been super easy just to nuke it back in November without even pretending they were maybe going to bring it back.

canadiancow

Fair, so let me rephrase it more clearly:

1. Do you have any reason to believe they're not working on it?
2. Do you have any reason to believe they're not targeting "later 2021"?

Lots of things can delay projects. We've seen that with the calendar search

But emailing Mark Nasr to ask if they've decided to kill it forever is absurd based on the information we have.

Exactly.

When they killed the second stopover on round-trips, and said it would come back, lots of people said "oh it's never coming back". And in fact, the stopover allowances are now even more generous.

Excluding delayed timelines, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anything Aeroplan has committed to that they haven't delivered on (since AC bought them).

YOWgary

They've been surprisingly transparent about the progress on calendar search, just this past weekend we were told, effectively, "here's the problem we need to solve, here's the best-case timeline and here's the timeline if that doesn't go as hoped".

I wouldn't be shocked to find out the reason there's no similar update on *A Upgrade Awards is simply that nobody's asked recently. I could be wrong, I'm just saying that's absolutely a possibility.

If you find out something the rest of us don't know, please do come back and share!
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zrh2yvr

It should come back as it is essentially a core feature of the *A membership. Are there airlines in *A that have never offered this setup? I understand it is a bit technically complex from an IT perspective but I think all the airlines have had the program - and - I would expect AC is currently accepting requests from other airlines. For me it is a good benefit as I use it all the time to upgrade my segments on LX on B-Fares.

canadiancow

I want to start by saying it's coming back.

I want to finish by saying... It's probably the second least used *A benefit, after priority reservation waitlisting.

They're going to bring it back, but it's the "how do we attract expensive-cheap travelers who will stick with the alliance no matter the price" pax.

UpgraderYYZTPE

What is absurd is that a promoted functionality within AC, SAUA, is currently not available. tha is the absurdity here

Adam Smith

How is it a "promoted functionality"? They widely advertised that they would be unavailable for a while, and as far as I can tell, SAUAs aren't detailed anywhere on the AC website. The webpage that comes up if you Google it redirects to the eUp page.

I'm all for dumping on AC when they mess things up, but I think they've been reasonable about how they've handled this.