I finally tried one thing I was dreading: making a change to a legacy IKK booking.

Two bookings (originally one, but divided so we could both fly NH F TPAC, as the flights were F8 O1).

SFO-HND-CAN-BKK and SFO-LAX-HND-CAN-BKK.

I am not keen on a 2 hour connection in China. So I found HND-SGN-BKK with 23 hours in SGN.

Absolutely no issue getting it done over the phone, though it took some time.

Apologies if this has already been answered. I’ve got a pair of IKK’d J awards YYC-LCA in April 2021. Unfortunately it’s looking more and more likely that they will be at least re-routed if not outright cancelled. In the event that the flights are involuntarily changed would I have the ability to change the date to the fall at the same number of points calling it IRROPS or would it have to be re-priced at a much higher cost under the new program? From what I’ve seen it’s clear that if I request the change it would be re-priced but I’m not as clear on what happens if the change is carrier initiated.

IKK is a special exception. You can make voluntary changes without repricing.

What does availability have to be on the new AC flights? Is it correlated to R or can I get basically any available J seat? Also, is there a limit on how far in the future you can push these bookings?

I'm not sure on your first question. The agent I dealt with definitely said "there needs to be availability", but I was only changing non-AC segments, so it was much more clear.

I assume you can move it to within a year of the original booking date, but I haven't tried anything like that.

So I just got off the phone with Aeroplan and they indicated that even though it was an IKK booking in order to change dates at the original number of points it had to be the exact same routing and I class has to be available. I’m currently booked Yyc-yyz-ath-lca and I wasn’t available on my new dates so tried to change to Yyc-yul-ath-lca which had I class at exactly the same arrival/departure times but even that wasn’t allowed. The agent escalated to a supervisor who indicated the same. Wondering if I’m SOL here or if this is a HUCA situation?

They made it pretty clear that "reasonable" changes wouldn't be repriced.

I changed my routing, but not my dates.

My main goal is to change my MUC-SFO two-stop in J to a non-stop in LH F, which I think will be a bit tougher. But it's not unreasonable, given it's a F redemption.

The routing also has some 30 minute connections, so I'm hoping to also have an involuntary schedule change on my side.

Thanks, I think I’ll try calling back later. Re-routing through YUL rather than YYZ all on AC metal seems pretty “reasonable” to me but clearly the agent I spoke with didn’t feel the same. They mentioned that it was an Amadeus limitation but it feels like something ticketing should be able to deal with fairly easily.

So if I changed my old Aeroplan YUL-ZRH-ZAG ticket in LX J to YYZ-ZRH direct (also in J), I'd still only have to pay 57.5K miles?

It's unlikely an LX J booking was IKK.

IKK is a booking under the old AE program, right? (Fotsg) I picked it up late October just in case. Fixed mileage redemption, 57.5K miles plus $75. I'm not intending on keeping it, just wondering

Question regarding reward booking, under the old system if you had business booked and 1 segment was in economy, you could call in when business seats became available and they would move you to business no questions asked. I have a trip booked YYZ-IAD-AUH-MLE, it was booked as O for 130,000 miles. however YYZ-IAD was on United economy so I called in and asked for AC Business as it was showing as available in the tool, the agent told me it would be extra points, I pushed back and she changed it for $1.37 and no extra points.
AUH-MLE is also in Economy, I have a flight alert set up but will I get the same pushback?
In a nutshell if flights in the class booked become available is it free to change? I am SE so no change fees

What did you say when you pushed, and what was the eventual response when they acquiesced? Did they change their reasoning from their initial denial? Or was it a "since you're SE, we'll make the world-shattering compromise for you"?

LOL I pointed out that i was getting an economy segment on a first class ticket and the Air Canada flights were not showing up as an option to get to Dulles so dhe put me on hold and came back to graciously say it could be done for a nominal fee.
I want to book the AUH to MLE in Business so I can get access to the FCL on my layover in AUH

AC metal is dynamically priced. That's expected, and she likely did you a favor.

For an entirely partner-operated itinerary, it's the same as before. I'm not sure if it would reprice if you're only touching a parter segment on an itinerary with AC metal though.