Air Canada Acquisition Of Aeroplan Now Completed

Back in 2002 Air Canada spun off Aeroplan as a separate entity. Aeroplan was eventually sold to Aimia and they had an exclusive contract with Air Canada until June 29th, 2020. Air Canada & Aimia were unable to reach an agreement to extend this relationship, after much back and forth the end result was Air Canada agreeing to purchase Aeroplan back from Air Canada. That acquisition has now been completed, full details can be found in this news release.

Interestingly Air Canada still plans to launch a new rewards program in 2020, existing Aeroplan members will just be rolled into the new program. Air Canada has said that details regarding this new program will be shared once the acquisition has been completed, but are yet to share details. Not sure I understand the reasoning by creating a new rewards program unless Air Canada plans to make big wholesale changes to the program and if that’s the case I certainly don’t see it being good news for loyalty members. At least we should have some warning about how bad the changes actually are if they don’t launch until 2020, although it’s entirely possible Air Canada will hugely devalue the current Aeroplan program first to make the new program look better in comparison (aka what Marriott did).