The New Aeroplan Program, Explained - Part 2: Real-Life Examples

The new Aeroplan program has been public for a week or two now, and there's a lot of great coverage out there explaining it in fine detail. If you're looking for a DEEP dive into the new program, I would suggest visiting the good folks over at Prince Of Travel. They've launched an official partnership with Air Canada to provide coverage - I think the first of its kind - and they get WAY into the details.

Meanwhile, over here on my personal site, I'm not looking to re-cover ground that's already well run, and the best value I think I can offer here is to give you what a lot of my friends and colleagues have been asking for offline, and that's an expert summary to get you familiar with the new program - and most importantly, how it'll affect your travel looking forward - in 5-10 minutes.

Part One is a summary of the new program, explaining the new approach and how to understand it. Read that page before this, as it quickly lays out the concepts we'll apply here in Part Two.

We're going to run through some real-life examples, designed to help you understand and estimate what your travel will translate to, and whether that makes it worth chasing status or not.

Last thing before we get started - since this is a breakdown of status-earning levels, a quick refresher on what's needed to qualify for each tier of Aeroplan status:

Status Level	Previous metric	2026 metric	Cost for 2026
25K	25,000 SQM or 25 SQS, and $3,000 SQD	25,000 SQC	$12,500 (Standard) $6,250 (Flex or more)
35K	35,000 SQM or 35 SQS, and $4,000 SQD	35,000 SQC	$17,500 (Standard) $8,750 (Flex or more)
50K	50,000 SQM or 50 SQS, and $6,000 SQD	50,000 SQC	$25,000 (Standard) $12,500 (Flex or more)
75K	75,000 SQM or 75 SQS, and $9,000 SQD	75,000 SQC	$37,500 (Standard) $18,750 (Flex or more)
100K / SE	100,000 SQM or 100 SQS, and $20,000 SQD	125,000 SQC	$62,500 (Standard) $31,250 (Flex or more)

Earning Status With Flights On Air Canada

Let's run through some real-world examples, to illustrate what various situations will earn under the new program. All the examples in this section are based on a few basic details:

• Standard fares earn 2 SQC per $1 CAD spent, Flex and up (including business) earn 4 SQC per $1.
  

• Aeroplan reward points are still earned to be spent on free award flights, and earn at 1 point per $1 CAD spent, with multipliers if you have Elite status. 25K=2x, 50K=4X, Super Elite=6x, and so on.
  

• All examples are based on round-trip flights booked a month in advance.

Example	Cost in $CAD	Aeroplan Pts Earned	SQC earned
Flight from Vancouver to Toronto Standard fare, no elite status	$470	470	940 (Standard = 2/$1)
Same Vancouver-Toronto flights Flex fare, 35K status	$550	1,650 (35K earns 3x)	2,200 (Flex = 4 / $1)
Flight from Vancouver to Tokyo Standard fare, no elite status	$1,650	1,650	3,300 (Standard = 2/$1)
Flight from Vancouver to Tokyo Business Class, Super Elite status	$10,500	63,000 (Super Elite earns 6x)	42,000 Business = 4/$1)

As you can see, the new rules REALLY favour people who already have elite status, and people who buy more-expensive fares. That Super Elite traveller going to Tokyo will re-qualify for Super Elite in three round trips, while our no-status, Standard-fare traveller would have to do a hot lap to Toronto every single week, all year, just to earn entry-level 25K status.

Notice that a Standard fare to Japan only earns a little more than a Flex fare to Toronto; if you're someone who mostly flies economy long-haul, earning status just got harder.

Earning Status With Flights On Air Canada's International Airline Partners

While you'll still be able to earn Aeroplan reward points and Status-Qualifying Credits (SQC) when flying with Air Canada's partner airlines in Star Alliance, the new program SEVERELY curtails your ability to earn status when flying with partners.

The math here is complicated and varies by both the individual airline - see here if you want the fine details - and the precise fare code purchased, which most airlines do NOT show during booking. The short version is, Aeroplan uses the same old formula for figuring out how many points you'll earn for that flight, but then awards just 1 SQC for every 5 Aeroplan points earned from the partner-airline flight.

So, looking at a few examples, still based on round-trips booked a month in advance:

Example	Cost in $CAD	Aeroplan Pts Earned	SQC earned
United Airlines, Houston to Chicago Economy, 925 miles flown each way	$470	925 (50% of miles flown)	185
Lufthansa, Frankfurt to Tokyo Economy, 5830 miles flown each way	$2,300	5,830 (50% of miles flown)	1,166
Lufthansa, Frankfurt to Tokyo Business Class, 5830 miles each way	$9,200	11,660 (100% of miles flown)	2,332
Singapore Air, Singapore-New York Business Class, 9,530 miles each way	$14,000	23,843(125% of miles flown)	4,769

Comparing this to the Air Canada flights, it's pretty grim. While our Vancouver-Toronto example above cost $470 and returned 940 SQC, the same money spent with United Airlines for a US flight earns less than 1/5th as many SQC.

The exact same Lufthansa flight costs 4x as much in Business Class, but only earns twice the SQC, and even a $9,200 business-class flight to Japan earns less than a Flex fare from Vancouver to Toronto and back.

Getting into some real rich-folks stuff, the longest flight in the world, in business class on one of the finest airlines in the world, costs as much as a used car but earns about the same in SQC as you'd get from $1100 worth of domestic flights on Air Canada.

Just to cap this off, the amount of SQC you can earn from partners is capped at 25,000 per year, enough to earn you entry-level 25K status or get you 1/5th of the way to Super Elite.

Point being, the new program REALLY wants you to fly on Air Canada itself.

Earning Status With Aeroplan Credit Cards

This part's pretty simple. If you have an Aeroplan 'premium' credit card (TD/CIBC Aeroplan Infinite Privilege or American Express Aeroplan Reserve or Business Reserve - in other words, the ones with a $600 annual fee - you'll earn 1,000 SQC for every $5,000 CAD spent on the card.

If you have an Aeroplan 'core' credit card - TD/CIBC Aeroplan Infinite or Amex Aeroplan - you'll earn 1,000 SQC for every $20,000 CAD spent on the card.

Note that if you have the US-only Chase Aeroplan card, it's all changing; you'll get 5,000 SQC just for having the card, plus another 10,000 when you hit $25K and $50K USD spending, respectively.

You can earn a yearly maximum of 25,000 SQC per Aeroplan account, across all cards combined.

Earning Status With Aeroplan's Other Partners (Hotels, Car Rentals, Coffee, etc)

As the new program rolls out, Aeroplan's team have been excited to tell us that it's now possible to earn towards elite status with everyday activities like getting a coffee, buying gas or renting a car. Which is technically true, but as you'll see below, the earn rates are... not huge.

Example	Cost in $CAD	Aeroplan Pts Earned	SQC earned
Marriott Hotels, 1 Night Stay Ritz-Carlton Toronto	$815	1,164 (2 pts / $1 USD)	233
Marriott Hotels, 1 Night Stay Four Points Mississauga	$140	100 (1 pt / $1 USD)	20
Car Rental - Avis Regular Sedan, 2 Nights	$200	200	40
LCBO Liquor Stores (Ontario) 6-pack of Stella Beer	$20	5 (1 pt / $4 CAD)	1
Starbucks Coffee Each $50 pre-loaded to Starbucks App	$50	25	5
Uber Eats Orders Over $40 only	$40	40	8
Uber Rideshare Ride To The Airport or Premium Uber	$50	50	10
Chevron Gas 4 tanks of gas for a Honda Civic	$300	300	60

Yes, you're definitely now earning towards airline status through spending a lot of us already do on a regular basis, and that's more than the program offered two weeks ago.

...but if I took an Uber Black across town, checked into an $800/night hotel, got myself a six-pack of beer to wash down the dinner I ordered to the hotel, and then went downstairs for a coffee, I would have spent $1,275 and earned 250 SQC and 1,249 Aeroplan points.

If I did this every single weekend all year, I would have spent roughly $59,000, and gotten myself just over halfway to 25K status.

Put another way, this $11,000 bottle of 30-year-old single-malt Scotch will earn you 550 SQC, roughly the same as you'd get for a one-way Standard fare from Toronto to Sudbury.

Point being, non-flying partners help you towards earning elite status at about 1/10th or 1/20th of what you'll get from flying Air Canada itself. Certainly doesn't hurt, especially if you're already doing those things anyway, but in the big picture it's nowhere near the kind of incentive that would make me choose a Marriott over a Hilton, or Uber over Lyft.

On the plus side, if you literally spend half a million dollars a year at LCBO, you'll get 25K status for free!

So, Who Wins, Who Loses? What Does This Mean For Me?

There are lots of good calculators out there, both on the Air Canada website and through individual users' Google Sheets (Flyertalk and Reddit can help you find these), but let's look at a couple of use cases; you may see yourself in one of these examples, or at least I hope it'll give you a rough idea of the kind of travel frequency (and spend) it now takes to earn each status level:

Sample User	Flights	Partner Earn	SQC (flying) + SQC (other) = Status Earned
George - Stay At Home / WFH Parent Visits family in Calgary 4x/yr	4x $500 Flex fares	$1,700/mo on Aeroplan core card 4x 2-night Marriott stays /yr $100 Uber Eats 1x/ week Tank of gas 2x/ month	8,000 flying 2,040 other 10,040 SQC no status
Dave - Courier Flies Houston-Chicago return, 4x/week, all year	500 United flights, credited to Aeroplan	no other program engagement	25,000 partner flying 0 other 25,000 SQC 25K status
Karan - Sales Vancouver-Toronto 1x/mo	$800 Flex fare 1x/month	$5,000/mo on Aeroplan premium card 24x Marriott nights /yr	38,400 flying 17,500 other 55,900 SQC 50K status 590 SQC rollover
Susan - Lawyer Toronto-Montreal weekly for work	$500 Flex fare 4x/month $3500 vacation flight 1x/yr	$3,000/mo on Aeroplan premium card 60x Marriott nights /yr Uber Black to/from airport every week	110,000 flying 13,000 other 123,000 SQC 75K status 4,800 SQC rollover
Lin - Entrepreneur Toronto-Dubai 4x/yr in business class	4x Business fare $8000 per trip	no other program engagement	128,000 flying 0 other Super Elite status
Jamie - Lin's Assistant Same Dubai flights, but in Premium Economy	4x PE fare $3800 per trip	no other program engagement	60,800 flying 0 other 50K status

• While our stay-at-home dad George does fly several times a year, and engages weekly with several partners, it doesn't put him even halfway to entry-level 25K status.
  

• Our courier Dave flies five days a week all year, and earns entry-level 25K status. Obviously he shouldn't be using the Aeroplan program at all, and the example is intentionally extreme; the point is to demonstrate how much one can fly with a partner airline before earning even entry-level status with Aeroplan. It is worth noting that Dave will also earn 231,250 redeemable Aeroplan points.
  

• Our sales manager Karan flies monthly, but earns nearly 1/3 of their status from non-flying partners. They're earning the same 50K they would have in the old program.
  

• Our lawyer Susan is at the airport every week, engages heavily with every aspect of the program and takes an expensive vacation every year, and while her flying and credit-card spend would have earned her Super Elite last year with room to spare, she'll fall just short this year. She will, however, start the next year with a head start due to the Rollover / "Head Start" function of her premium credit card.

• Our entrepreneur, Lin, is just barely earning Super Elite based entirely on heavy spending, which the new program rewards. Under the old program, he would have only earned enough SQM to qualify as 75K.
  

• Lin's assistant Jamie would be 50K under the new program and the old, though last year he'd have been pretty close to earning the same 75K as his boss.
  

• Notice that none of our sample passengers made it even halfway to the maximum 25,000 SQC from their branded credit card.

  
  

FINAL THOUGHTS AND ADVICE

The new program isn't exactly "pay-to-win", but it's pretty darn close.

There's really not a lot of strategy here; if your travel plans were already going to have you flying Air Canada a whole bunch, in a Flex-or-better fare, AND that's enough to get nearly all the way to a status tier that provides value to you, AND you're confident you can get the rest of the way there through partner engagement like credit-card spend, then by all means, go ahead.

If your travel patterns are such that on any given trip you could pick and choose between several carriers, you may be better off going "free agent" and picking each trip based on price and schedule.

As far as whether it's worth it to pay a bit more on some airfares in order to qualify for a status tier, it's still pretty much a math problem; I'm a taller guy who really wants legroom, so every time I fly I'm getting free exit-row seats I otherwise would have paid cash for, so that's a very straightforward (X flights times Y dollars) value proposition for me. My wife is nearly a foot shorter than me, and doesn't care one bit about extra legroom, so that same math has a near-zero value for her.

Then there's the benefits that are harder to quantify: priority rebooking during cancellations, or potential free upgrades. I find value in both of those things, but any monetary value I assign will be made-up.

Point is, everyone's math is going to be different here, but especially in spend-based programs like the new Aeroplan, you've got to do the math in advance and be pretty confident that the incentives offered as airline status perks are truly worth any extra spend you've got to do to get them.

I hope this has been helpful - safe travels!

-G