Air Canada has announced what appears to be a fairly generous policy. From June 15, 2020, you’ll be able to cancel your flight up to two hours before it’s due to depart and take the value of your flight in a couple of new ways.
The first is as a travel voucher. The benefit of this option is that the travel voucher will never expire, so provided you’re confident that you’ll take paid flights with Air Canada in the future – and that the airline will continue to be around – that could be a solid option.
The alternative is to take the ticket value as miles. The benefit of this option is that they’ll provide a 65% bonus, so you’d be converting your money to Aeroplan miles at a ~1.3cpp rate. That has the potential to be good value if you can then redeem those miles using one of Aeroplan’s sweet spots.
The concern with the latter option is if Air Canada decides to devalue the Aeroplan program in one way or another. They’re handing out status with easy requirements (which ends May 31) and they recently sold miles for as cheap as 1cpp. This certainly doesn’t mean that there’ll be a devaluation, but with miles being sold cheaply recently and the potential for a lot of paid tickets being converted to miles at what appears to be a reasonable conversion rate, the likelihood that there’ll be some kind of negative changes increases.
There are a couple of important things to note. The first is that this change will be available for all travel from March 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021. That means that if you had any flights in the last few months that were already cancelled and you took a travel credit, that travel credit can be converted to the non-expiring travel voucher or miles.
The second important feature to note is that this is only valid for tickets issued before June 30, 2020. Air Canada might end up extending this policy, but there’s no way of knowing if that’ll happen yet.
Although cancellation fees on award tickets are being waived until at least June 30 with miles being returned to your Aeroplan account, there have been reports that Air Canada hasn’t been as generous about providing refunds on paid tickets. This new policy could be in keeping with that less generous approach because converting paid tickets into travel vouchers or miles ensures that they get to keep hold of your money rather than providing a refund. Having said that, this policy does allow you to cancel your flight only two hours before departure, so it’s not only an option in the event that Air Canada cancels or changes your flight.
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[…] recently reported that AIr Canada would soon offer the ability to take a refund for a flight in the form of Aeroplan miles. I believe that conversion was scheduled to go live on June 15th. Loyalty Lobby reports that this […]
Not so bad but not right the Gov wants YOU to bail them out so they don’t have too.
#stayincave..Their lounges are a rip off too. LOL
Who is flying to Canada from the US right now anyways, given the border closure through June 21? Not saying the post is just aimed solely at Americans, but that gives American maybe nine days to take advantage of the new policy, if the closure isn’t extended.
Anyways, regarding my wife’s June 18, 2020, flight: So, on June 15, she will be able to get a voucher with no expiry date (whose value can be used by not just her, but also me, and whose value doesn’t need to be used up in one shot, lest the remaining balance be lost) for the ticket she bought way back in January of this year? Have I got this right?
And do you need to call in to get the voucher or can you get it online?
The policy is good for all flights booked before June 30, 2020 for travel booked through June 30, 2021, so there’ll be up to a year to take flights rather than only nine days.
With regards to your wife’s flight, Air Canada’s website states that “the voucher has no expiry date, is fully transferable and can be used multiple times.”
I’m not 100% sure if you can process this online. I’d assume you will be able to seeing as they won’t want their phone lines flooded with people wanting to do this on June 15, but I think it’ll be a case of waiting and seeing on June 15.
One thing to note is that this’ll be easiest to do if you booked with Air Canada directly. If you booked through any kind of travel agency – whether online or bricks & mortar – you’ll need to contact that travel agency. These options should still be available, but it’ll add a layer to the process.
Yes, after reading your post more carefully, I see what you’re saying here now: You just have to book by June 30, 2020, for travel completed by June 30, 2021.
And I guess those who do are betting on Air Canada surviving long term.
The voucher seems fair enough, though getting cash back on a flight they cancel would obviously be better. But the Canadian government is not requiring that, and I’m not counting on the US DOT to get me a refund from a foreign carrier. So, that transferable voucher (not Aeroplan miles that are likely to be devalued within a year) is what I’ll aim for online.
This option may be available as early as June 1 (If you didn’t convert a cash ticket to a credit already), unless I’m not correctly interpreting the pages I’ve come across while digging deeper on their site.