Whose advantage? Air Canada and Aeroplan are separate things. Air Canada's FF program most recently allowed upgrades with free eupgrade credits to business class (of the order of 15 credits per direction, a typical 'elite' or E50K has 30-40 credits per year) from flex fares with no additional pay. That was one of the biggest perks of its FF program (now called Altitude, not Aeroplan) but as of this year you can only upgrade from flex if you pay $500 extra per direction. Since flex is already a few hundred more than tango/the cheapest rate per direction, this is very unattractive as a typical ticket Calgary - Europe would go from $1700 to $3400, and the extra flex rate only gives you a chance at an upgrade, not an upgrade. The extra cost is one reason why I'm not interested in Air Canada's FF program anymore, but this isn't Aeroplan's problem.kcowan wrote:Isn't this just a sign that they are correcting an anomaly because business class to Europe was one of their few competitive advantages?
I'd argue most frequent fliers think the best value of Aeroplan was its mini Round-The-World trips for something like 110k miles in business/first class. These still exist but have become much more expensive. (> 200k? I have no use for this RTW, didn't follow closely). J reward flights in general are very difficult to find. The new Aeroplan gimmick of their own 'Distinction' program promises more flights but at what they call market rates, not according to the award chart. Distinction Diamond status discounts those market fares by 35% but that is still typically very expensive. I know people here have referred to flyertalk before but there are endless threads about this on flyertalk.com