Aeroplan’s Multi-City Tool May Get You Lower Award Prices
Frequent Miler recently highlighted an interesting quirk with Air Canada’s Aeroplan program. Booking an itinerary through the multi-city tool can sometimes require fewer points than booking the same flights with a layover, and more convenient than booking two separate flights.
Aeroplan’s award pricing uses a distance-based award charts for partner flights, and it was recently updated with some prices going up.
The example involved flying from New York (JFK) to Billund, Denmark (BLL) via Frankfurt. Under Aeroplan’s updated award chart, the standard partner award price for the itinerary was 75,000 points (up from 70,000 in old chart) one-way in business class because the routing falls into the 4,001-6,000-mile distance band.
However, when pricing the itinerary using the multi-city tool, Aeroplan priced each segment separately:
- JFK → Frankfurt (FRA) is 3,846 miles, which falls into Aeroplan’s North America to Atlantic Zone 0-4,000 mile band, pricing at 60,000 points in business class.
- Frankfurt (FRA) → Billund (BLL) is 396 miles, which falls within the Atlantic zone 0-1,000 miles band. That segment prices at 12,500 points in business class or 7,500 points in economy.
So with multi-city tool, you would need a total to 72,500 points, saving 2,500 points per passenger.
The savings are even better if the Frankfurt-Billund segment is booked in economy class. Since that short intra-Europe flight costs just 7,500 points, the total price dropped to 67,500 Aeroplan points. That’s a savings of 7,500 points per passenger. And most people will likely not pay extra for business class for that flights.
These same flights could obviously be booked separately as well. But with the multi-city tool you’re keeping everything on a single ticket. This trick might not work for every itinerary, but it’s worth keeping it in mind when booking your next flight with Aeroplan miles.
