I started this page because I was receiving Aeroplan newsletters every couple of weeks and had to go through all of the letters to find out about different promotions. I tried using the Aeroplan website but found that it is not an easy place to find out about all active promotions.
So, this page is designed to be a one-stop-shop for Aeroplan promotions. You may want to bookmark this page because I update it frequently.If you see that I am missing any promotions please let me know.
This page was last updated on 31 July, 2009.
LIMITED TIME OFFERS
Until 13 August, 2009, you can earn a bonus of 250 miles when you stay at Choice hotels. Full info here.
HOW CAN I COLLECT MORE AEROPLAN MILES? Most people collect Aeroplan miles on flights. But how else can you get more Aeroplan miles to help you get you a free trip faster?
Credit Cards: This is the best way to collect additional miles because you can effectively collect miles whenever you pay for anything on a credit card. You have a few choices here.
- CIBC Aerogold/Aerogold Infinite. You can get 1 Aeroplan mile for every 1 dollar spent. In addition you collect 1.5 Aeroplan miles for every dollar spent at gas, grocery, and drug stores. Annual fee is $120. The Aerogold card is now being replaced with the Aerogold Infinite Visa card.
- The CIBC Aventura/Aventura Infinite credit cards gives you 1 Aventura point for every 1 dollar spent. These Aventura points can be converted for the same amount of Aeroplan miles, in increments of 10,000 points. Annual fee is $120.
- CIBC Aero Classic Visa card gives you 1 Aeroplan mile for every 2 dollars spent. Annual fee is $29.
- American Express Aeroplan Plus Card gives you 1 Aeroplan mile for every 1 dollar spent. Annual fee is $60.
- American Express Aeroplan Plus Gold Card gives you 1 Aeroplan mile for every 1 dollar spent. Also gives you 1.25 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases over $10,000 annually. Annual fee is $120.
- American Express Aeroplan Plus Platinum Card gives you 1 Aeroplan mile for every 1 dollar spent. Also gives you 1.25 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases over $10,000 annually and 1.50 Aeroplan Miles for every $1 in purchases over $25,000 annually. Annual fee is $499
Gas: at Esso you can get 1 Aeroplan mile for every 3 dollars you spend
Pharmacy purchases: At Uniprix you can collect 1 Aeroplan mile for every 1 dollar you spend.
Renovations: At Home Hardware you can collect 1 Aeroplan mile for every 2 dollars you spend. Click here for more info
Insurance: At BelAir direct or at ING insurance you can collect 1 Aeroplan mile for every 2 dollars you spend. Click here for more info on Belair Direct or here for more info on ING.
Cruises: Earn one Aeroplan Mile for every two dollars you spend on a Royal Carribean or Celibrity cruise booked at Cruise Ship Centers. Click here for more info.
Electronics: Earn one Aeroplan Mile for every dollar you spend at Dumoulin. Click here for more info.
Air Canada eStore: The Air Canada eStore has partnered with a bunch of retailers and offers a range of extra miles and discounts for shopping on this website. The full list of their offers is here
HOW MANY MILES DO I NEED TO TRAVEL TO…..Check the Reward Table on the Aeroplan Website.
WHAT IF I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH AEOPLAN MILES?
You really have 2 options:
- You can buy miles directly from Aeroplan. They cost 3 cents each. Just begin your booking on the Aeroplan website and it will calculate how much extra it will cost.
- If you have friends, you can get someone to transfer miles to you. This costs 2 cents per point. Click here for more info.
WHAT ELSE CAN I DO WITH AEROPLAN MILES? Aside from using your Aeroplan Miles for Flights, they can also be used for Hotels, Car Rentals, and many other Activities and Merchandise. You can find all the options here.
DO MY AEROPLAN MILES EXPIRE? YES!
It is important to note that in order to keep your Aeroplan account active, you must make a transaction on the account every 12 months. This used to be every 36 months so make sure that you do something with miles at least once a year. For example, if you collected Aeroplan miles today, February 19th, you would have to do something else by February 18th of next year.
The second element of expiry is that now all Aeroplan miles expire after 7 years. The rules are slightly different from the rules regarding keeping the account active, as they are considered earned in a year of their accumulation. All miles that are collected in 2009, for example, will be removed from the account if they are not used by December 31st, 2016.
22 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
December 24, 2006 at 8:37 pm
Pingback from Tripinform.com · New Aeroplan page
October 1, 2007 at 2:28 pm
Carol Porter
It would be somewhat useful to have some way of knowing what your ticket is in dollar amounts as well.
November 28, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Patrick
If you are looking for Aeroplan promos you should check out
http://www.rewardscanada.ca/aeroplan.html for a complete list of what is available,
BTW you’ll need to fix your link on the side there from rewardscanada.com to rewardscanada.ca
Thanks!
March 1, 2008 at 12:30 pm
ben
Aeroplan - forget it, it sucks! It started as a passenger loyalty program and grew to a money making machine.
Here is my experience with Aeroplan: It is almost impossible to get a reward ticket at the basic published “cost”. The number of classic points required to fly to Tel Aviv from Canada is 75,000 points. I actively looking to get a ticket (Feb 2008) and was surprised that the earliest availability of “classic” seats (e.g. 75,000) is 8 months away (Oct 2008)!
Yes, sure there are available seats for 115 000 points and above in May 2008.
Let us compare the cost of issuing a ticket with aeroplan’s points with the cost of points collected with other cards available in the market.
With a TD bank’s card a group of 5,000 points = 75$. The current average price of a ticket to Tel Aviv is $1200. Thus you need 80,000 point to purchase a ticket (British airways, Air Canada (if the price is right), Air France, Olympic, etc). That’s it! You DO NOT pay additional fees (Like ~$ 250 airport fees etc) when issuing the ticket with Aeroplan. The cost of carrying the credit card ($120 / year) is assumed to be the same with the various financial institutes.
March 6, 2008 at 1:34 am
Dave Owers
Thanks for the comment ben…. I agree partially.
For me the advantage to Aeroplan is that you get to collect miles a bunch of different ways (gas stations, pharmacies, etc…) and of course from Air Canada or Star Alliance flights; in addition to making purchases on a credit card.
Recently I had the CIBC Aventura (which is probably similar to the TD bank card) and it was very easy to reserve a trip to Europe for 60,000 points. However, you can only collect the Aventura points from using the credit card.
March 22, 2008 at 3:08 am
Abcd
As good as it is to own an aeroplan card and i certainly don’t disagree owning one, since i have gotten at least 7 to 8 free flights through them. I beleive its better to have a TD or Royal bank points Visa card. This way, you get to double dip since you can use your royal or td points to book a ticket on star alliance network, while you get free points for the flights as well.
April 16, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Franco
Is it better (better value) to use your aeroplan miles on flights or merchandise?
April 19, 2008 at 9:06 am
Dave Owers
Franco, that really depends. I value my Aeroplan points at around one cent each- because I can use 6,000 miles to get a $50 gift card at Chapters. When I look at a flight I want to take I will take a look at the price of the flight compared to the number of miles required. If paying for the flight is less than the number of miles needed * 1 cent, then I use miles. I have done this a bunch of times and I have found that it is always better to use the miles.
If you want to travel business or first class you can get better value from your miles because the prices of those seats are typically much more than economy seats- so people with a lot of miles will often do that. I generally prefer to stay in economy and get another flight later.
April 28, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Dayna
I am looking forward to burning my aeroplan card as soon as I possibly can. I would not recommend Aeroplan to anyone, for any reason. If you are choosing between an aeroplan visa or avion I would recommend avion any day. With my aeroplan visa I pay a yearly fee of $120.00 plus high interest rate. For what? To wait 30 minutes on the phone to book a flight a year in advance and be told they have no classic seats, but do have business….when they just told my sister the opposite!
June 11, 2008 at 11:37 pm
ExAE Member
I agree 100 percent with Dayna, I the last thing they have in mind is their members, has anyone notices how much their we site just sucks? Always broken, search does not work, full of bugs and inconsistencies? It is not rocket science to build a proper Web site. and god knows they have enough money to make it great.
BTW this blog sounds and feels like a fake. Something aeroplan PR people would cook up.
June 12, 2008 at 1:02 pm
nadine
As of October 20, 2007, you can no longer add an Aeroplan number to your Bell account. Aeroplan and Bell have cancelled their agreement
June 13, 2008 at 8:00 am
Dave Owers
Ex-AE Member… thanks! I hope they find me and pay me
November 4, 2008 at 5:08 pm
dave g
Aeroplan sux….I just used 120,000 points to book tix YVR to LHR - with $590 “fees” for each ticket…then used my United Points for the same trip - $150 of fees…what the heck is that all about? I plan to cancel my CIBC aeroplan…what a ripoff.
November 5, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Dave Owers
dave g
I hear you… I was just looking at a flight Montreal to London and the fees were a crazy $480. the problem is- where do you collect United points in Canada?
May 7, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Tobin
Is there a reference chart that denotes how many status miles you get travelling to certain destinations?
July 22, 2009 at 7:20 pm
guy
Aeroplan used to be “bad” but now its even worse. Before you could pick a destination and start searching for dates of when you could go. You couldn’t pick when but only where. Now Aeroplan will often not have any “classic” flights available for specific destinations you want to go anytime ever! They’ll have the “non-classic” trips available but they are a ripoff for points. If you upgrade to business with business level points they won’t be business all the way there and back. And of course, no discount of points required for the economy flights.
Their accountants that are nickling and diming us are going to shut down Aeroplan one of these days. I fly Air Canada alot and may just keep the aeroplan for that and cancel my aeroplan credit cards.
October 12, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Carlos
I find the Aeroplan website to very cumbersome and not user friendly. The air travel section probably works the best. The car rental section is terrible. I just entered Scottsdale, Arizona and it could not find that location. 10 minutes earlier it did find it. The pricing is also odd. THe vehicle I wanted was 84,500 points whether I took it for 6 days, 7 days or 8 days. Something is fishy. Feel like I could be getting ripped off, so I will save my points and use cash for the car rental (Navigator) which is US$567 all in.
November 3, 2009 at 6:44 am
Fleuretta
I’m looking to fly to New York for New Years. Currently no classic seats available. Is it likely that as the date gets nearer those ‘extra access flights’ (i.e. flights requiring 3 or 4 times the points of the classic flights) may become downgraded to classic flights? I’m really no fan of Aeroplan anymore. Who cares if every flight is available if they hike the number of miles required to buy the seat.
November 27, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Frank
I’m getting so sick of Aeroplan / United / Air Canada - I know, I’m joining a large club of “fed up with this crap” Aeroplan users. Why is it that I strictly follow the rules, make sure my Aeroplan number is on every flight, and I almost never get the points for my United code share? My number is on the damn ticket - I see it - it’s right in front of me! Why doesn’t it get to Aeroplan!
Oh, but wait! The Narrowplan site now let’s me get my credits online. Entering all the information online (it even helps me by filling in the departure airport - how nice), hitting submit - oops - can’t use the system for that departure. BUT YOU HELPED ME FILL IN THE AIRPORT that you are telling me is not really valid.
Screw it - it’s not worth the stamp. Oh, wait - now I understand…
January 23, 2010 at 2:50 pm
RGAussie
One month ago I would have agreed with all your comments bashing Aeroplan, their website etc., but I just had some good fortune worth sharing - tips perhaps?
I am flying Montreal to Melbourne, Australia and their website was showing nothing available across many days I was checking. Tio # 1 - call on a weekend afternoon, early morning - 9:00AM+, or late late evening. When I spoke to them ( tip #2 - do the “voice print” thing - and just keep saying “book a flight” or some other gibberish. It will pass you through to an agent quicker ) the phone agent was easily able to find an itinerary. Could care less about the $30 “phone agent fee”. Ridiculous, but efficient. Flight was 75,000 miles. I upgraded part of the trip to Business class for a 100,000 mile cost, and got business class MTL - LA.
Here’s the biggest surprise. I called to see if I could modify the 15 hour to Melbourne and they found me an alternate route - ALL business class, and didn’t charge me any more miles?? Love it! Not sure how that could happen because if you search on business class flights, it should bost a half millions miles to go business class ( seriously ).
Another tip - although I paid a $90 “change itineray” fee, I came out even because I was NOT flying AC to LA, but rather United. You see, AC still charges a much fuel surcharge ( robbery ) that they simple pocket. United charges way less. I was refunded on the “service fees etc”. So the tip is to use other Star Alliance airlines and avoid AC routes.
Final tip - just keep calling them. You never know what will open up, and every agent is different. Some try harder than others, but most are very pleasant to talk to. Costs nothing to keep calling if you have the time.
Believe me, I was ready to tear up my card and go for ANY other one. Now I have a return flight to Australia in business class that cost me about a little over 2 years worth of credit card purchases, and lots of gas I buy only at Esso.!!
Good luck!
February 1, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Matthew
I’m cancelling Aeroplan..
Basically I collected for YEARS.. now have enough to fly my family to South America and back (3 of us) Executive Class..
Well I book the flights, but they only have Aeroplan Executive Class seats available on the way back.. fine so be it… BUT… they charge you the FULL EXECUTIVE RATE…. So I’m paying (in points) for a full executive trip, but only getting half.
The only advice from the CSR Drones: “Cancel and go econonmy”… buh by Aeroplan…
July 26, 2010 at 4:51 pm
Michelle
I get all my groceries at Sobey’s and gas at Esso. I pay everything with my Aeroplan gold and get even more points. The interest rate is no worse than any other credit card out there.
I’ve gone to Australia and Peru on my BF’s points. This summer I flew my sister, her husband and two kids across the country so they could come visit me.
There are seats available but you do have to plan ahead. I booked in February for June travel.
If you can’t pay your credit card balance in full each month or can’t plan ahead then this might not be for you. It’s worked great for me and I look forward to my next trip.