Changing a refundable award to non-refundable

[luxury-lizard]

I have an award (PER-BKK-FRA) booked as refundable (ie paid the extra points) - if I want to change this to just BKK-FRA or SIN-BKK-FRA I know can only do this by calling AC, but since it would be fewer points I presume I would get the difference refunded but could I also change it to non-refundable and get those points back as well?

Now the reason for this change is that I'm actually would be starting in SYD so I would need to buy the SYD-PER sector but I can almost fly to SIN or BKK from SYD for not much more than SYD-PER (in J). At present for my dates (end of May) there are no award seats to PER (for 2 persons) and/or SIN or BKK.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I have an award (PER-BKK-FRA) booked as refundable (ie paid the extra points) - if I want to change this to just BKK-FRA or SIN-BKK-FRA I know can only do this by calling AC, but since it would be fewer points I presume I would get the difference refunded but could I also change it to non-refundable and get those points back as well?

Now the reason for this change is that I'm actually would be starting in SYD so I would need to buy the SYD-PER sector but I can almost fly to SIN or BKK from SYD for not much more than SYD-PER (in J). At present for my dates (end of May) there are no award seats to PER (for 2 persons) and/or SIN or BKK.

Yes, provided the segments aren’t married and you can drop the PER-BKK sector.

You could just fully cancel on line and rebook, without having to contact the call centre. Or are you trying to keep the BKK-FRA?

Changing from flex to no-flex used to be a thing… and you’d save a swag of points. There was a while when they clamped down on it because it wasn’t how the program was intended to operate. They were requiring additional (new) award seats available to do this, not simply converting your existing ones across.

Dunno if that’s still the case.

 

[luxury-lizard]

Thanks @mel-Traveller - yes I would want to keep BKK-FRA so just cancelling the whole award would be an issue as the BKK-FRA section would probably not be returned to award inventory. I've decided to wait until May 1 to decide what to do - this itinerary is a "backup" in case my preferred one on QR is not possible/desirable in light of the war.

 

[Clayton]

My understanding is that for the past 12 months or so Aeroplan has not enabled under any circumstance for fully flex award bookings to be changed to the cheaper award rate. The only way to do it is to cancel the existing flight and book a new flight, this of course is only possible if award seats that you need are currently available.

This policy change came about due to the vast number of people that used a pre-existing hack to make a small change on the full flex award then get the booking agent to reprice it to the cheaper award rate and get a significant points refund.