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Aeroplan miles expire if the Aeroplan member has not accumulated or redeemed Aeroplan Miles for a period of 18 consecutive months. The good news is there are several easy ways to prevent your miles from expiring—which we cover below.
The 18-month period is the 18 consecutive months from the date of your last transaction. So, if your last transaction was on April 1 of a given year, all your miles will be valid through October 1 of the following year.
Note that this new policy was adopted on July 20, 2020. Under the previous policy, Aeroplan miles expired after 12 months of inactivity.
How To Prevent Your Miles From Expiring
- Earn Miles
- Purchase something with your Aeroplan-affiliated credit card
- Shop at any Aeroplan partner and show or swipe your Aeroplan card
- Enter your Aeroplan number and shop at any of the 150+ online partners via the Aeroplan eStore
- Credit miles earned from an Air Canada or Star Alliance flight
- Transfer points from an Aeroplan bank partner such as American Express Membership Rewards (1:1 ratio, instant transfer time) or Capital One Miles (4:3 ratio, instant transfer time)
- Transfer points from an Aeroplan hotel partner like Marriott Rewards
- Redeem Miles
- Donate your miles to a charity (minimum of 1,000 miles)
- Transfer your Aeroplan miles to another member (for a fee)
- Redeem your miles for flight or other non-flight activities
Exceptions to the Mileage Expiration Policy
The mileage expiry policy is waived under certain circumstances including:
- Primary cardmembers of an Aeroplan-affiliated credit card — such as the TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite, TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege Card, TD® Aeroplan® Visa Platinum, and TD® Aeroplan® Visa Business.
Miles Already Expired? You Can Reinstate Miles
If your miles have already expired, you have a couple of options. Within 6 months of your account becoming inactive, you can reinstate all your Aeroplan miles free of charge by either taking an Air Canada flight or opening an Aeroplan credit card.
After the 6 months, you can still reinstate your miles at the cost of 1 cent per mile plus a $30 administrative fee. To reinstate your miles, you'll want to call the Aeroplan Contact Center at 1-800-361-5373.
Don't Forget
Aeroplan is a great program, with plenty of excellent value in their redemption sweet spots. And with proper planning, you can avoid dreaded fuel surcharges on award tickets. The program is active and regularly offers different promotions. In the long run, the program should get even better after the launch of the new Air Canada Aeroplan program in Q4 2020.
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
It is difficult to establish Aeroplan as a preferred program knowing that AirCanada will leave it.
I love the Aeroplan program as they are a star alliance partner. However, I will say that the flights tend to cost 2500 – 5000 more miles for the same leg booked through United.
but United doesn’t charge any fuel/carrier-imposed fees on Award tickets. A huge value.
MiniRTW is one of the best option with Aeroplan. if you really have to fly Air Canada then get the Amex rewards which transfers to Aeroplan 1:1 and redeem for MiniRTW. Other wise better to stick with United to credit the miles as a star alliance member.
I’ve got some Aeroplan miles to use up.
Very interesting about the exception for minors and credit card holders. I don’t know if other plans have that, who have an expiration on the miles. Plus letting you reinstate…very interesting. Is the phone number that’s published and well known? Or is this something that you guys found?
The phone number is publicly available on Aeroplan’s website.
They are not the easiest to use miles for upgrades
To keep Aeroplan account alive we can answer some survey to get points for free.
What survey precludes A miles from expiring?
Did not know about the exception to minors. Great tip
Aeroplan is basically MileagePlus Minus
Kinda, but not really. Prices with Aeroplan can really beat MileagePlus on redemptions, especially if you can avoid surcharges.
What is mini RTW?
RTW = Round The World — e.g. a trip that has you flying completely around the planet.
I have 60,000 miles which I am going to lose very soon, if I do not keep my account active.
If I donate a portion, say 5000 mile to an aeroplan charity does this count and the balance of 55,000 miles is safe for another year.
As the post says, yes.
Why not buy something on Aeroplan shopping instead?
My Aeroplan miles are expiring. I went on the site to spend some reward miles, and the system shut down when I was in the middle of purchasing saying they’re doing maintenance and come back tomorrow at 10:00 am. My concern is my deadline is at 10:00 am tomorrow morning, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose all of my miles???
If you have Amex Membership Rewards or Capital One points, you can transfer to Aeroplan to reset your expiration instantly.
Why is it advertised that 25,000 points is worth $625 at Cosco but when I get onto the aeroplan site it shows 67,500 points for a $500 cash card?
Where are you seeing this information? I’m not sure what you’re referencing.
Have my aeroplane miles expired and if not when do they do so
How can I get them back
You should check your Aeroplan account. You usually can’t get them back, but it never hurts to call and ask for an exception.
My wife and I reside in the UK and are both Aeroplan members. Can anyone please advise me, is there is anywhere in the UK where we can collect Aeroplan points
If you fly a partner airline, you can select AC every so often as the rewards number to earn some miles in that program.
A loyalty program that shows its members no loyalty.
And kicks you while you’re down not giving refunds for canceled flights despite DOT stating multiple times that is required by law.
Have been a loyal customer of Aéroplan for over 35 years and lost close to 200,000 miles due to a technicality. The notification email went to my spam. Inform them of the issue and they would do nothing about it except telling me that I can purchase them back for 1 cent a mile. You know what it’s not worth it. I would spent $2000 in buying them back but I would not get $2000 worth of marchandise. Their ad says a mile is worth 2.5 cents is bullshit. Each mile is worth at best a penny. Air Canada have just lost a loyal customer for life.
I agree I had 300 thousand miles didn’t fly for year because of job and lost them all
Good by aircanada I will never fly with them again
… and you did nothing to keep them like wasting some of them on an overpriced suitcase?
Does RTW or mini-RTW literally you have to travel around the world in one direction to return to your original departure point? Or is it just a trip to multiple countries in any direction?
Usually, there are some backtracking restrictions prohibiting you from crossing the same ocean or going east, west, then east.
Aeroplan no longer offers RTW awards (see our post on recent Aeroplan changes)
I’d consider hiring a booking service if you don’t have time to dig into all the rules.
I can tell you what a disappointment today, when I called Areoplan and found out that for real my 80,000 vanished as they do not honour dormant accounts if no activity over a one year period. My heart is just aching right now. Through my ups and down over the last few years, I was hoping that maybe this could eventually help us to take a trip. Unforgiving they are!
@Mary @Roger
If you guys have an avis car rental from before the expiration it can generate activity and reinstate your account for free. If you don’t have there are forums on the web where people sell them also.
Good luck guys!
I was notified by an aeroplan agent that I need to use my points or they will expire–in trying to get back to the caller, I cannot reconnect. Please help! at 250-386-9063
Thank you,, B Marilyn Ferguson
Please contact Aeroplan representatives to get it resolved. We at AwardWallet are not related or affiliated with the programs we support.
I have been calling for days to speak with customer service… I have spent HOURS waiting to talk with someone. This is unnacceptable.
Please contact me right away as this is a barbaric way to conduct business nevermind treat your customers. Hire more phone reps!!!
Hello. I am an Aeroplan member and have a TD Aeroplan Visa card. From what I have read, because I have a TD Visa card, my points will never expire. And, if that isn’t the case, then just using my Visa card once every 12 months is enough to keep my points active.
Could you confirm that please?
Thank you,
Janelle
Janelle,
Yes, it should help according to their rules:
https://www.aeroplan.com/helpcenter/expired-miles#/
But I would recommend to contact Aeroplan representatives to figure it out.
18 months is a reasonable time. This is good news and should help Aeroplan retain members.
About time! My favorite way to keep miles from expiring are using shopping portals for small purchases.
Aeroplan has been my go to in the past. Easy to redeem online and when needed, the CSR are knowledgable and very pleasant.
I wish they should follow all of the other major airlines that have no expiration on their mileage programs. This is similar to money which does not have an expiration.
The real question is, are they worth supporting as a company after the way they treated so many Americans during the pandemic.
Sometimes you don´t need to travel or you find cheaper ways of doing it than doing it with miles. I think airlines should think about extending the expliration time, specially in this covid time.
I understand AC has not refunded people who bought tickets on flights that never even left the ground… I agree with your thinking but their current covid strategy is not earning a lot of goodwill from me.
Being able to restore expired miles within 6 months of inactivity at no charge is great. I do not know if this already existed, but if it is a new benefit, good for Air Canada.
Still waiting for details on the new air canada loyalty program.
Aeroplan is on the way out soon, but good sign that Air Canada intends to have at least a slightly more generous expiration policy in their new rewards program.
18 months is not long enough in my opinion, especially given the current climate and how much travel will change going forward.
Miles shouldnt expire period. Hope Aeroplan learns from programs like skymiles.
Donating miles may be a good choice. I don’t have a website where I can participate in shopping award miles, and there is no credit card that can accumulate Air Canada miles.
The CA plan good at can be avoid dreaded fuel surcharges on award tickets. The BA have expensive fuel surchanges to redeem BA flight. But there have a good news is Cathay Pacific cancelled Fuel Fee.
There is a survey panel called Asking Canadians that gives you Aeroplan points for completing surveys. As with any survey panel, most of the time you get screened out. This one gives you 5 Aeroplan points even if you screen out, so it is a great way to keep my Aeroplan miles alive. Every once in a while, I even get to complete a survey. You need a Canadian address to qualify to join the panel.
The customer service call is really too difficult to get through. Even if it gets through, They might say that you need to change to another customer service. I sincerely hope that Air Canada can enhance the customer experience.
As with calling any large companies with world wide branches, always try to call the phone number that is not in your time zone. It’s much easier to get through in my experience.
Recently Air Canada posted 1 mile in my account and my expiration date was reset for a year and a half, thank you Air Canada