Air Canada Aeroplan announced sweeping program changes for next year that affect mileage earning on paid flights and status earning. Note that there have not been any award chart changes announced, the changes here only affect mileage and status earning when crediting your paid flights to Air Canada Aeroplan.
Air Canada goes revenue-based both for earning points on paid flights and elite status
The main idea here is that Air Canada Aeroplan has gone revenue-based when it comes to earning points on paid flights and earning elite status for the 2026 qualification year.
To be clear, these changes take effect in 2026, so flight earnings and status earning for flights taken in 2025 do not change. However, when it comes to earning points and elite credit for flights taken in 2026 in order to earn 2027 status, Aeroplan is changing things pretty significantly.
That said, the fact that the changes are significant don’t mean that they are bad for everyone. T.J. Dunn at Prince of Travel has written excellent comprehensive analyses of both the new points earning model and the elite status earning model. I recommend reading those for a thorough analysis of the changes, but I’ll recap the key points here.
The main shift here is that, as with any of the revenue-based programs, the more you spend, the more you’ll earn. Spending more on higher fares and/or premium cabins will earn you more points and status credit.
Air Canada’s new revenue-based points earning
On the surface, the earning structure for earning points on Air Canada-ticketed flights will be greatly simplified:
- Earn 1 point per Canadian dollar spent if you have no status
- Elite members earn 2-6 points per dollar spent depending on status
The new model obviously favors those with elite status. It also favors expensive flights. On the flip side, it decimates earnings on cheap long-haul flights. Prince of Travel demonstrates a few examples where members will earn thousands fewer points on long-haul economy flights, whether transcontinental or intercontinental fares. In fact, they show an example of a $1,450 round trip fare from Vancouver to Brisbane where even top-tier elites stand to earn more than 50% fewer Aeroplan points under the new model.
Of course, as with any revenue-based change, those buying premium cabins or expensive last-minute short-haul fares may find instances that will be more rewarding than in the past. Consider some of the shorter-distance hops from northern US cities to Canada, which can sometimes be pricey on Air Canada. You might be able to earn more points in some situations than you did in the past.
That said, it is hard to ignore the fact that 1 point per Canadian Dollar spent compares very poorly to revenue-based programs in the United States. Programs like United and American Airlines offer far more points per dollar spent. It seems that Air Canada Aeroplan will be slashing earnings in most circumstances and will typically award far fewer points per dollar spent than US competitors, particularly for those with elite status, where US members would stand to earn significantly more points per dollar spent with programs like American Airlines, United, etc.
Why would Air Canada Aeroplan slash earnings like this? I think there are several pieces to this puzzle:
- Aeroplan executives have said that feedback from consumers indicated that they preferred a simplified approach to earning. While I know many readers of this blog probably prefer a distance-based approach based on fare class, I can believe that the average person likely finds the distance-based / fare-based earning system hard to understand. Explaining earning 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 points per Canadian Dollar spent is far easier.
- Scott O’Leary, VP of Loyalty and Product for Air Canada Aeroplan, was adamant that the new system wasn’t about trimming rewards but rather resitributing awards to motivate customers differently. It was implied that Air Canada Aeroplan will budget as much cost for its rewards program under the new model as it did before, with the key difference being more frequent promotions to drive member engagement. In fact, new and more frequent promotions is a point that Air Canada Aeroplan hammered home, whether to distract from the earnings cuts or because they do intend to offer creative promotions. I wouldn’t hold my breath for a SAS EuroBonus Millionaire type of promotion, though now that I type that out I do wonder what we may see from the Aeroplan team.
- Direct competitor WestJet recently launched similar earnings structure. Perhaps these changes were mostly about making it easier for their core home-market customers to compare apples to apples.
To be clear, we don’t yet know what type of promotions will be offered, but I get the sense that Air Canada Aeroplan is leaning into technology. I wouldn’t be surprised to see targeted promotions designed to separate you from your money create more opportunities for you to meaningfully engage with the program.
That said, I find it odd that Air Canada Aeroplan hasn’t planned for a way to encourage anciliary spending. While the change announcement touts incentives to engage with Aeroplan and its partners, it is surprising that spend with Air Canada isn’t incentivized beyond the base fare of a ticket.
I should note that all of the above regarding points earning from paid flights applies to flights ticketed through Air Canada (or close partners United, Lufthansa, and Copa). Tickets purchased through most partner programs will continue to earn based on distance-based partner earnings charts.
Elite status earning changes with Air Canada Aeroplan
Whereas point earnings from paid flights is simplified in the new program, earning elite status gets significantly more complicated — so much so that I’ve really struggled wrapping my mind around all of it (which doesn’t bode well for how easily digestible it will be for folks who don’t live and breathe loyalty programs).
If you’re really into earning elite status with Air Canada Aeroplan, I really recommend reading Prince of Travel’s deep dive here.
At a simplified level:
- Starting in 2026, you’ll earn Status Qualifying Credits (SQCs) to earn elite status. That’s the single metric by which loyalty will be measured and it will be revenue-based.
- Basic economy fares will not earn SQCs (if you want elite status, no basic economy for you!)
- Standard fares earn 2 SQCs per $1 CAD spent
- Flex fares and higher earn 4 SQCs per $1 CAD spent
- Airline Partner tickets (not ticketed by Air Canada) earn 1 SQC per 5 Aeroplan points earned up to 25,000 SQCs per year)
- Credit cards earn 1,000 SQCs per $5,000 CAD spent on premium co-branded credit cards and 1,000 SQCs per $20,000 CAD spent on “core” cards (capped at 25,000 SQCs per year across all of your Aeroplan cards)
- The Chase Aeroplan card will lose its status boost benefit (whereby you move up a level in status with $50,000 in calendar-year spend) at the end of 2025. Starting in 2026, the Aeroplan card will have the following spending bonuses instead:
- $15K – 25K status
- $25K – 10,000 SQC boost
- $50K – 10,000 SQC boost
- $75K – 35K status
Hat tip to View from the Wing for parsing out the key details above.
Overall, the simple story is that earning elite status will be far more difficult. The loss of the status boost with $50K spend will certainly hurt for Chase cardholders who were using that to level up to a status that they otherwise wouldn’t attain.
Still, it will make sense for some to earn SQCs through credit card spend or other Air Canada partnerships in order to make earning status a bit less expensive than it otherwise would be. However, with so many caps on earnings to consider, you really need to do the math and take some care in planning out how you’ll earn status.
Bottom line
Air Canada Aeroplan has significantly complicated elite status earning under 2026 program changes. They have greatly simplified points earning from Air Canada-ticketed flights, though that has come at the cost of long-distance earnings. If Air Canada offers creative promotions, it may excite members a bit more on the points earning side. On the elite earning side, I can’t help but feel like it has become so complicated as to become uninteresting for any but the most dedicated members. In an era where we’ve seen airlines like American and Alaska greatly simplify status earning with points earning through many partners counting similarly toward a single elite status metric, I’m a little surprised to see Aeroplan swing so far in the other direction in terms of complification. If you have been a long-time Air Canada Aeroplan loyalist, you’ll need to break out the calculator and a calendar to determine whether or not these changes will work for you.

So the $15k spend for 25K status on the Chase Aeroplan card. Is this going away?
This is staying. Though spend to guaranteed 35k status is increasing to a maximum $75k spend
OK, so maybe I’m missing something, but the earning on flights seems very stingy. It does seem like the airlines are all becoming some hybrid of bank and travel agent (JetBlue and AA give the easiest path to status for those booking hotels and ancillaries). It seems our disease of revenue-based loyalty has infected both IAG and AC this year. It is probably not the best model to export.
Flying Blue strikes me as having one of the best models, as it makes status particularly hard to achieve to the North American market while much more reasonable to the European market. Meanwhile, you can get the miles…
IAG?
The parent company of both BA and Iberia.
From your article.
“ If you’re really into earning elite status with Air Canada Aeroplan, I really recommend reading Prince of Travel’s deep dive here. “
Prince of travel is Air Canada’s “ official educational partner “ Don’t expect too deep a dive.
This is fair – they do a ‘deep dive’ of explaining the new system, but because they’ve clearly partnered with them they don’t actually review and identify what this REALLY means for members. It’s super disappointing but over the last couple of years they’ve clearly been looking for a different revenue model so they are no longer a true points and miles vlogger in the traditional sense. On Friday they’re hosting a live question event with AP so I’ll be curious as to how that goes.
Just as an example, in my personal situation, I will end this year at about 220,000 SQM, next year, with the same flying and credit card spend, about 105,000 SQC, and the following year, with the same flying and CC spend, about 71,000 SQC. Points earned from flying will drop from about 90,000 to about 54,000 next year and 45,000 the following and subsequent years for the same flying. So a two thirds drop in qualifying criteria, and a 50% drop in earnings. Make no mistake, as adamant as O’Leary might be, this is a pure cost cutting exercise for AC. We will see if the drop in revenue will be less than the drop in expenses
For any elite member of the program, the consensus is that we’ll all have to spend a LOT more to maintain our current elite level – most of us will go down a level. The Reddit boards are pretty full of unhappy folks and for the those of us that are long-time supporters of the program, there is zero spin that makes this look good – zero.
It’s great that AP worked with Prince of Travel ahead of time to be able to roll out the analysis – but it also means that PoT is hardly impartial and isn’t giving their truly honest opinion of what this means – very much the opposite of what happened the last time the program was overhauled a few years ago.
Because this affects Canadians much more than any other group, there has been much less coverage or pressure about the changes; I liken this to the changes that Delta was imposing last year and as it affected a lot of folks on this channel – the hue and cry was a lot bigger!
Yes, on a pure spend basis, the requirement has increased between 56% (for SEs) and 125% for 25Ks. And the benefits have been reduced for both
How is lifetime status affected?
More damage there, at least as it is understood now. It will be harder to earn because of the elimination of class of service bonuses and will be less rewarding because almost all of the benefits are based on spend, not status
Exactly. Think of the AC 50k lifetime status as 50k lite. Like Hyatt Globalist lite from a status match has no suite upgrade awards. Only 50k AC status is much worse. Only useful for star alliance gold now.