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Air Canada Aeroplan recently added yet another airline partnership, this time with Lufthansa subsidiary Eurowings. At first glance, I was confused as I’d booked and flown a flight on Eurowings Discover during our most recent team challenge, but View from the Wing points out that Eurowings is a separate entity from Eurowings Discover (now branded as Discover Airlines). This opens up some additional destinations in Europe, essentially increasing the odds that Aeroplan can get you where you need to go.
Eurowings is a small regional carrier owned by Lufthansa. While I believe that United has long partnered with Eurowings, they aren’t actually in the Star Alliance. I’ve occasionally run into situations with itineraries that included segments on Eurowings that couldn’t be booked via Aeroplan despite itineraries with Eurowings Discover being available to Air Canada, and now I know why. I hadn’t realized that they were completely separate entities and that Aeroplan didn’t have a partnership with Eurowings.
The nice thing about partnerships like this one is that these smaller regional carriers really increase the number of destinations you can reach since they often serve smaller cities / countries that are less likely to be served directly by Lufthansa or other major Star Alliance carriers. That increases the odds that Air Canada Aeroplan can connect you to your final destination, which in turn makes the program more broadly useful. While I’m not specifically excited by a Eurowings flight that I can book today, I’m sure that this will be useful sooner or later in helping me connect the dots for an itinerary I want to book.
Eurowings flights price according to the normal Aeroplan award grids and can be booked on the website, app, or via the contact center. They can be combined with segments operated by other airlines (as a reminder, Aeroplan allows up to 6 segments on a one-way award). You will of course pay the $39 CAD partner redemption fee when redeeming for an award that includes partners like Eurowings.
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Nick, have you had any luck booking Eurowings Discover with Aeroplan? I’ve flown Eurowings Discover awards several times now, and always had to book with United as these flights never showed up on Aeroplan. Even worse, they never showed up on Lifemiles either. But they were consistently available on United. Eurowings Discover is quite convenient to fly back home from FRA.
Here are the various cities that Eurowings flies to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Eurowings_destinations
Is there a tool find award availability for discover airline