Aeroplan soft launches using miles to bid for upgrades and a full time buy/gift miles option

Air Canada's Aeroplan soft-launched two new features today for program members. The first is using Aeroplan Miles to bid for upgrades on flights and the second is the full time availability to buying or gifting Aeroplan miles.

Here are the details as provided to us by Air Canada:

• Use Aeroplan Miles to submit offers for Bid Upgrades. Members now have the option to use Aeroplan Miles when bidding for an upgrade to a higher cabin. Previously, customers could only bid for a cabin upgrade using cash at https://upgrade.plusgrade.com/offer/AirCanada?lang=en. This is the first of what will be many new ways for members to access popular extras and premium travel to make their trip more relaxing and rewarding
• Buy or Gift Aeroplan Miles at any time. Members can now purchase miles for themselves, and give the gift of miles to other Aeroplan Members, at any time, through https://www.aeroplan.com/buy-gift-miles.do#/. Previously, members could only purchase miles to top up their Aeroplan account when they were making a flight reward booking. This feature continues to be available. Members can also continue to transfer their miles to another member. 

It's nice to see the program pushing out more developments and features that members can utilize. Of course the using miles to bid for upgrades is something more of us will look at down the road since there isn't a lot of flying going on. That being said, if you do find yourself flying in the next few month it is definitely a feature you'll want to check out. In fact, if you do please let us know we'd love to have you detail it for us and/or write about it (and we do pay you for these articles). If you are interested please send me a note at info@rewardscanada.ca.

Learn more about the Bid Upgrades here

For the buying miles option, it is just like you have seen on our site from many other airline and hotel programs. You can now buy or gift miles at anytime and Aeroplan allows you to buy anywhere from 1,000 to 250,000 miles. The cost is 3 cents (C$) per mile. This rate is on the high side - but that is always the case when you buy miles from airline programs when you don't take any bonuses into account.

Hopefully Air Canada will be like all the others who sell miles and offer bonuses or discounts from time to time. That being said, there are many award flights in business or first class where you can easily get value way above 3 cents per mile so it can make sense to buy miles for those awards and as always it can make sense to buy miles to top off for an award. For example, if your only 2,000 miles shy of a business class ticket worth thousands of dollars paying $60 to get to that award is worth it.

Learn more about buying Aeroplan miles here.

All screenshots/images via Air Canada