Air Canada’s Aeroplan is one of the most versatile loyalty programmes due to reasonable award pricing, a large selection of award redemption associations, and a well-rounded approach for customers to get redemption tickets out of them.

Air Canada has now notified a change to this approach, where they will move to dynamic pricing in the coming weeks on some partner airlines. It isn’t all good news, but it isn’t all bad news either.

New “Air Canada and Select Partners” award chart

Air Canada Aeroplan has so far offered zone-based award charts, with slab-wise distance-based pricing within each chart. Air Canada started by providing a range of pricing within their redemptions. Then, variable pricing was launched on Emirates + FlyDubai, one of the best use cases of Air Canada points.

As of March 25, 2025, Air Canada Aeroplan will move forward with bringing variable pricing to Etihad and United, apart from existing partners already on variable pricing. There will also be dynamic pricing on Calm Air, Canadian North, and PAL (Provincial Airlines), which are all regional partners of Air Canada.

However, introducing the award pricing changes also comes with a tradeoff. The pricing under the new chart can be higher than the fixed partner award chart and can vary from one itinerary to another. Still, it will also result in greater availability for reward seats on these partner airlines than before. However, it is unclear as to how it works for now and how much preference will be given.

For instance, Aeroplan members will be able to access Etihad business class rewards going forward, again (which was being blamed on technology so far).

For example, as part of these changes, we’ll again see that Aeroplan has access to Etihad business class awards worldwide (though not Etihad first class awards). But still no access to Etihad First Class, so don’t get your hopes too high.

With this new chart, there will no longer be pricing ranges for the partners on variable pricing. There will be starting prices (unchanged from the current values) and a median amount based on historical member redemptions with these carriers. The median amounts will be updated quarterly based on redemptions from the previous year.

Aeroplan has shared an example of what the new award chart could look like.

Overall, this strategy resembles the Marriott Bonvoy strategy to some extent but slightly differently. Airlines pay each other (usually using a net-off approach) to deem inventory on each other. The new arrangement reflects the more expensive purchases that Aeroplan has to make for members from said carriers, which are being moved to the new variable pricing model.

While we have to wait and watch the evolution of this scenario, the best approach for now is to continue and redeem if there are any plans for the foreseeable future since current prices are the minimum in the scheme of things.

Bottomline

As of March 25, 2025, Aeroplan will introduce variable pricing on Etihad and United and Canadian regional carriers. This move will also include access to preferred award availability. With this, Aeroplan will once again have access to Etihad business class awards. In general, dynamic pricing means the end of outsized value for points. However, we must wait to see how bad or modest this becomes once we are alive. Maybe we are being Bonvoy’d; maybe not. We’ll see.

What do you think of these Aeroplan award chart changes?

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