Altitude Points for Air Canada?

[BriarFlyer]

I have friends looking into flying Sydney-Vancouver with Air Canada. They have a stack of Altitude points and I'm wondering if there's any roundabout way of transferring them into AC Aeroplan miles. Does Altitude transfer to any of the hotel loyalty programs? Is points.com worth looking into?

Or, can you book Air Canada award seats via another airline (to which Altitude points transfer)?

I would appreciate any advice from the experienced.

 

[MikeeB]

Hello,

Their best bet would probably be to redeem their stack of altitude points into KrisFlyer and book a star alliance award with AC through there. How many of your friends are travelling? there seems to be decent award space with the SYD-YVR flight in both Y and J over the coming months. They can do return Y for 110,000 each or if they have the points return J is 195,000 each. I am not sure what sort of taxes and fuel surcharges they would be up for though.

Unfortunately Altitude does not appear to partner with any hotel loyalty programs so KrisFlyer with Singapore Airlines is probably the only option for using their altitude balance.

 

[BriarFlyer]

Thanks so much for the helpful response, MikeeB. I'll pass that KF option along and they (there's 2 of 'em) can decide how to proceed.

You mentioned decent award space availability: do they need to join the AC scheme to view availability or can you check elsewhere?

 

[MikeeB]

The majority of star alliance award space seems to have good visibility in a calendar style setup with united.com but for the best availability it probably pays to search for award space with the airline itself. I also use the ANA search engine when researching availability, in my experience I've found it to be the most complete of the entire star alliance network.

 

[BriarFlyer]

Excellent! Thanks, MikeeB.