How To Book A Stopover With Aeroplan

Air Canada’s Aeroplan is one of the best award programs for travelers and its for good reason. The program offers flights on over 52 partner airlines and has some of the most competitive award rates of any program.

Air Canada is part of Star Alliance and they also have several airline partners for award bookings such as Emirates, Eithad, Cathay Pacific, Virgin Australia, and many more.

A typical award bookings ranges from 70,000 – 140,000 for long haul business and first class, considered some of the most competitive outside of outliers like Turkish Airlines and ANA.

In addition to having several booking partners and great rates, Air Canada Aeroplan miles are some of the easier to transfer from major credit cards. There are several options of credit cards that make transfers available as well as Marriott Bonvoy.

The award program has a less known feature, allowing an extended stopover in a destination for only 5,000 extra points. This is actually a pretty big benefit since its potentially saving you points by not making you price them separately.

We will help you break down how to actually book an Aeroplan stopover a few different ways.

Aeroplan Stopover Program

The Aeroplan stopover program allows travelers to add an extended stop in a destination for an extra 5,000 points on the booking.

This means if you are planning to travel to Dubai with a layover in Istanbul on Turkish Airlines, you can extend that Istanbul leg for multiple days and don’t need to book two separate award tickets.

Before booking you will need to lookup what zone you are planning to travel to and from.

Air Canada breaks the world into four “travel zones.” To find the correct price for your award, you must note the zone you’re departing from and the zone your destination is in.

You will then need to consider there award chart since you will be charged based on the distance you fly.

Once you have determined the zone you will know how much your flight should cost + 5,000 for the stopover.

Now there are conditions that Air Canada provides such as:

• You can have one stopover per direction of travel; this means you can have one stopover on a one-way flight or two stopovers on a round-trip booking.
• Stopovers are subject to a maximum of 45 days.
• Stopovers are not allowed within the United States or Canada.
• You cannot combine a stopover with an open-jaw ticket; your onward flight must continue from the city at which you arrived. This means that if you booked a flight from New York-JFK to Istanbul via Paris-Charles de Gaulle, you’ll need to depart from Paris-Charles de Gaulle to continue your trip to Istanbul. You can’t fly out of Paris-Orly instead.
• No backtracking is permitted on a stopover, as travel must be made in one direction.

That still leaves plenty of options and we will break down how to search and make your booking.

How To Book A Stopover

Depending on the route, booking an Aeroplan stopover instead of two awards can provide significant savings.

However, make sure to check the pricing of booking awards separately before booking a stopover. Due to Aeroplan’s quirky award chart, some awards are actually cheaper when booked as two separate awards rather than as one award with a stopover.

Search each route separately

The first thing you will want to do is search each of your routes separately.

This is to check availability before going into the multi search where it is harder to change your dates. It’s also to help you confirm the difference in price.

Let’s say I want to take a trip to Mumbai but stop in Singapore. I would first search the flight from LAX to SIN.

Then I would search my second leg a few days later from SIN to BOM.

Both legs are available for a total of 85,000 points in Economy Class.

Use Stopover Search to book

Now that you have confirmed your route is available – go to the flight search and select Multi-city/Stopover and Book with points.

This screen is a little tricky so make sure you are adding in your trip as From > To > Stopover City.

You should not click “Add another flight” in this search since it will add a second leg and price seperately.

Once you run the search you will see the total including your stopover and days in that destination.

For the same route it is 75,000 points, which is 10,000 cheaper than booking separately.

This shows just a bit of the value you can get from using the stopover feature to save those miles.

Call Air Canada to book

If you are having trouble finding availability online using Stopover search but see the legs separately, give Air Canada a call at 800-361-5373. This is pretty common and they will help you book over the phone and confirm the rate.

Earning Aeroplan Points

Air Canada has several transfer partners making it one of the easiest programs to earn rewards with. These partners include:

• American Express Membership Rewards — 1:1 transfer ratio.
• Capital One Miles — 1:1 transfer ratio.
• Chase Ultimate Rewards® — 1:1 transfer ratio.
• Bilt Rewards — 1:1 transfer ratio.
• Marriott Bonvoy — 3:1 transfer ratio with a 5,000-point bonus for transferring at least 60,000 Bonvoy points in a single transaction.

Given the variety it makes it very easy for travelers to earn points that can be redeemed with Air Canada.

Looking to earn more credit card points? Read our best credit cards for every type of traveler.