Membership status on reward tickets
 

Hello,

Can anyone explain the rationale why, when flying on an Aeroplan reward ticket, the Aeroplan members status is not identified on the boarding card(s) and flight attendent manifest. Knowing that the Aeroplan reward is booked in a class which cannot accumate mileage, I'm not aware of a reason why a members status (P, E, SE or G (for Star Alliance)) should not otherwise appear so that front line staff, lounge attendents and flight attendents, regardless of the type of ticket the passenger has to be on the flight, should still not otherwise be identified as one of Air Canada's loyal customers (or Star Alliance).

Thank you,

This has come up before - here, for example.

Supposedly, the AP number will show on the manifest and on the BP if you ask the agent to add it at check-in.

It would be incorrect to have the redeeming Aeroplan member's FQTV/tier level print on the BP when s/he is not travelling, perhaps that is why it must be verified and appended upon check-in.

Great - Thanks for that - I scanned through the older posts and one thing I noted was SA boarding cards with the AC*G. In 2008, I flew two United Int'l First trips to Europe which included Austrian inter-Europe and none of the 10-12 boarding cards had AC*G, the area on the card reserved for loyalty information was blank - I was also asked twice, very politley I'm happy to say, by a UA F lounge attendent at ORD for my FF number which was not on the card (issued at YEG) - I merely said it was a reward ticket and so that the polite question doesn't instead become the dreaded "freebie" frown at the computer, we left it at that.

I've had very little luck getting my status added to the boarding pass. Basically traveling on AP means you don't get to take advantage of your status according to check-in and lounge agents. I can only think of one case where it was added and it was not a domestic airport which I think explains it.

Not sure what you mean here but I have always been ablke to take advantage of my SE status when travelling on reward tickets, be it lounge access, MLL and *A, or priority boarding, etc. Have for years now ...

Agreed. Your benefits (even when flying on a * award ticket) are granted by showing your Elite card to airport check-in and lounge staff, and not your boarding pass.

mxm135 :)

But when we travel on Reward tickets, we are always asked first when the FA takes meal orders. So in the flight manifest, they have to have some indications that we're SEs.

On a recent award trip I called LH to make sure my status was on file and looking back at the boarding pass it does say AC*G. I also had it added to the UA leg of the same trip to print out on the boarding pass (can't find it but am sure *G status was denoted), this was done by asking a UA agent at the airport when I picked up the boarding pass the night before (overnight connection so did it when I arrived at airport) - it had to be added manually by the agent.

That was the case last week when I was on an AE award in Exec, though it was booked when I was an Elite, so I kept on being referred to as an Elite rather than SE which I am now. And my UA-issued boarding passes on the return did have a *G notation on them

Yes, you'd have to ask them (at check-in or by phone) to change your status. But apparently, they know your status (at the time when you booked the ticket). That's why when I first became SE, I made it a point to call AP and asked them to pull up all my AP PNRs and update my status from E or nobody to SE.

So when you board the plane, you walk up to the staff, pull out your card, and say "just so you know, I'm a Super Elite?"

Your status does appear on the manifests. I've seen them. I'm less sure about what appears when you have purchased a ticket for someone else. Occasionally, when my daughter was flying on my points and there were problems, Concierges have come to the rescue, but I don't know if that was because she was flying in J.

Every reward flight I've taken, even though my AE numbers doesn't show, the manifest does show SE

I verified that it did not at least once recently, so I'm not convinced it's consistent. I sat around and watched everyone else get their meal order first.