Ultimate Guide to Aeroplan Stopovers on Award Flight

Aeroplan Stopovers on Award Flight
Table of Contents

Stopovers can be a great way to travel more for less. Many airlines offer stopovers; however, a few offer them on partner flights, too. Air Canada Aeroplan is one such program that allows you to book a stopover for just 5000 Points and has generous stopover rules.

Update: Air Canada Aeroplan Extends Dynamic Pricing on Select Partners.

Air Canada Aeroplan Stopover Rules

  • The Stopover can be booked for just 5000 Aeroplan points, in any cabin Class.
  • Infants travel free on the Stopover.
  • You can book a stopover in Economy, Business Class or First Class cabin.
  • Available for one-way, round trip & multi-city itineraries.
  • Maximum Stopover is allowed for 45 days, whereas minimum Stopover should be 24 hours.
  • No Stopover is allowed within Canada and the USA.
  • Backtracking is not allowed. However, short-distance backtracking is allowed.
  • Open Jaws can be booked; however, not at the stopover city. For example, if your stopover city is Singapore, your next flight should also depart from Singapore.
  • To book a complex itinerary, you need to call 1-800-361-5373.

Before you Book A Stopover

Before you book a stopover, get familiar with Air Canada Award Chart.

The award chart is divided into four Zones:

  • North America
  • South America
  • Atlantic
  • Pacific Zone

The award pricing is for intra zone and inter-zones flights. Since the pricing of all zones is different, this creates arbitrage opportunities, which you can combine with Aeroplan Stopover to maximize the value of points.

How to book a stopover with Air Canada Aeroplan Points?

Here is how to book a Stopover with Air Canada Aeroplan Points.

  • Now, enter your departure city, destination city, and travel date. For a stopover, you must enter the stopover city and the number of days for the stopover.
  • In our case, the first flight will be from Mumbai to Singapore on 11 April 2025, and the next flight will be from Singapore to Melbourne on 15 April 2025 after a three-day stopover.
  • For flights from Mumbai to Melbourne, you usually will pay 50K points for economy cabin and 80K points for business class cabin. Now, with a stopover in Singapore, you just have to pay 5K more points.
BOM-SIN(Stopover)-MEL
  • Choose the flight you want to book and pay using Aeroplan Points. Since Aeroplan doesn’t charge fuel surcharges, you will pay the required taxes and a booking fee of CA $39.

One Stopover with Aeroplan Points

To book a Stopover on one-way flights, choose the multi-city option and select a Book with points; also, choose the option “Remove Flight” to book a stopover on one-way flight.

Two Stopover with Aeroplan Points

Booking two stopovers in a journey is also possible. However, you will pay a total of 10K points for two stopover.

  • To book two stopovers for your journey, enter the stopover city on both flights.

Once you have chosen the flights, you can also see the stopover applied while using points for booking.

Maximzing the Aeroplan Stopover

Here is how to Maximize Aeroplan 5K Stopover:

Maximizing the Distance

  • If you want to add a stopover, you would only want to pay the 5 K stopover fees and not any additional points that can be charged if the distance is increased because of the stopover flight.
  • For Example, for flights within the Atlantic Zone, you pay 25K for a Business Class flight if the distance is between 1000 and 2000 miles. However, if you add a stopover, which increases the total distance of flights above 2000 miles, you will pay 45K points for the flight plus 5K stopover fees. That means you would still pay the price of two Business Class flights instead of paying the price for one and will not save anything.
  • So, it is usually better to be within the same distance range as your original flight to get more value out of your Aeroplan Stopover.
Aeroplan Atlantic Zone Award Chart

Maximizing the Intra-Zone Flights

  • You cannot have Stopover in the USA and Canada, which renders most of the North America Zone out of our calculations.
  • However, other zones do have sweet spots.

South America Zone

  • For Flights within South America with a distance of more than 1600, you can add 5K Points to Stopover fees and travel more.
Aeroplan South America Zone Award Chart

Pacific Zone

  • The Pacific Zone Award Chart has one advantage: Its 2000 to 5000-mile distance range is generous.
  • If you then see the Air Canada award chart, the distance range is usually either 1000, 2000, or 2500 miles; however, the Pacific Zone also has a 3000-mile range.
  • Plus, there are a number of Air Canada Airline Partners in the Psurchaacific Zone.
    • Partners in the Pacific Zone Are Asiana Airlines (South Korea), ANA (Japan), Air China (China), Air New Zealand (New Zealand), Bamboo Airways (Vietnam), Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong-Specific Routes), EVA Air (Taiwan), Shenzhen Airlines (China), Thai Airways (Thailand), Singapore Airlines (Singapore), and Virgin Atlantic (Australia).
    • However, availability is an issue specifically for Thai Airways.
  • With these many airline partners in the Pacific Zone, you can really make use of the 2000—to 5000-mile distance.
Aeroplan Pacific Zone Award Chart
  • For Example, the BKK-DPS-SYD route is around 4800 Miles, and you will just pay 30K to travel to Bali and Sydney from Bangkok.

Atlantic Zone

  • One of the sweet Spots in the Atlantic zone is that the award chart distance maxes out at 6000 miles. This is the only route that has three continents: Asia (Central), Europe, and Africa.
  • Indian Travellers can easily maximize the 4000 to 6000 miles whereas for other travellers, 6000+ distance makes sense.
  • For Example, you can fly from London to Johannesburg with a Stop in Cairo.
  • Or, travelling to any European or Middle Eastern country from London while en route to India.

Maximizing the Inter-Zone Flights

  • Inter Zone Award Chart also have sweet spots that you can use to get more out of Aeroplan Stopover.

North America and Atlantic zones

  • The one advantage of flights between North America and the Atlantic Zone is that you can travel up to 6000 miles and pay only 40K points in the economy cabin. Even the Business Class pricing is just 70K. And there is no significant pricing difference up to 6000 miles.
  • So, you should utilize a distance of up to 6000 to maximize.
  • This is only beneficial for travel from the USA East Coast to Europe and the Middle East. For other travel, the distance would usually be more than 6000 miles. That would include travelling to Africa and Central Asia.
Aeroplan Award Chart for Flights Between North America & Atlantic Zone
  • For Example, the SFO-FRA-ZRH flight will cost 45K points as the total distance will be under 6K Miles. However, if you want to fly JFK-FRA-ZRH, you will still pay 45K Since the total distance is 4032 miles.

North America and Pacific zones

  • The Award Chart between North America & Pacific Zone 1st distance range is 0 to 5000. There would be very few stopover options within this range. Considering the distance between North America & Pacific Zone, it is better to target 7500 to 11000 miles, which is generous.
  • The range of 5000 to 7500 is decent enough. However, with 7500 to 11000, you can travel further.
Aeroplan Award Chart for Flights Between North America & Pacific Zone
  • For example, you can visit Thailand & Japan on the same itinerary with a 5K stopover.

Atlantic and Pacific Zone

  • Both the Atlantic & Pacific zones are big. The closest Indian City to this zone is Kolkata. So, if you want to maximize the 0-2500 distance travel from Kolkata, for example, CCU-BKK-KUL, CCU-BKK-SIN, CCU-BKK-MNL & CCU-SIN-CGK will cost 30K points in an economy cabin and 45K in a Business Class Cabin.
  • The next distance range of 2501 to 5000 is generous too.
  • For travellers from Europe,the distance between Atlantic Zone can be over 7000 miles, and the award chart maxes out at 7K miles, so you would definitely want to add a stopover for travel exceeding 7000 miles.
  • For example, you can do FRA-DPS-SYD in 115K Business Class where distance between FRA-DPS is over 7K miles.
Aeroplan Award Chart for Flights Between Atlantic & Pacific Zone

Maximizing the Multiple Zones Flights

  • There are no multi-zone award charts.
  • However, Air Canada prices the award flights based on origin and destination zones. That means you can travel to three zones by adding stopover and still pay less.
  • For Example, the First-Class Pricing for flights between North America and the Pacific Zone for a distance of 7501 to 11000 is 130000, and for the same price, you can cover a distance of 6000 to 8000 miles for flights between North America and the Atlantic zone. That means you can add a stopover in the Atlantic for 5K and travel an additional 3000 miles. If you book these flights separately, you will end up paying 180K points instead of 135K points.
Aeroplan Award Chart for Flights Between North America & Pacific Zone
Aeroplan Award Chart for Flights Between North America & Atlantic Zone
North America to Atlantic Zone Without Stopover
North America to Pacific Zone With Stopover in Atlantic Zone

Use Positing or Open Jaws Flights

If you want to maximize Aeroplan Stopover, consider positing or Open Jaws flights. Both of these should be done to save the distance between two airports.

Distance Maxed Out

If your current flight distance will exhaust the last distance range in an award chart, consider adding a stopover, which will cost only 5K points. For example, the Abu Dhabi to Sydney flight covers 7492 miles. That means you have maxed out the distance for flights on the Atlantic & Pacific Zone award chart. Instead of booking another flight separately, book a stopover for just 5K to travel further.

AUH-SYD Without Stopover
AUH-SYD(Stopover)-MEL

Routes Example

Here some route that are worth exploring, the first class award pricing is for reference and may not available on that route:

Atlantic Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
LHR-FRA-JNB578740.5K65K95K
KEF-FRA-DEL503740.5K65K95K
LHR-IST-CMB546440.5K65K95K
JNB-MRU-BOM481240.5K65K95K

Pacific Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
SYD-DPS-SGN
(Via SIN)
458330K50K65K
ICN-HKG-BKK
(Via TPE)
333230K50K65K
PER-ADL-MEL171617.5K35K55K
HND-SIN-DPS423530K50K65K
TPE-SIN-KUL218130K50K65K
AKL-HKG-ICN697242.5K65K85K

North America & Atlantic Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
EWR-LHR-ZRH395640K65K95K
EWR-IST-TBS501445K75K115K
IAD-ZRH-CAI586445K75K105K
IAD-FRA-EVN594045K75K105K
LAX-VIE-TBS759060K95K135K

North America & Pacific Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
SFO-NRT-MNL701755K80K115K
SFO-ICN-HAN727455K80K115K
SEA-ICN-SGN742555K80K115K
SEA-ICN-UBN643555K80K115K
SGN-TPE-SEA744455K80K115K

Atlantic & Pacific Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
CMB-SIN-PER413045K65K85K
CCU-SIN-DPS283645K65K85K
FRA-SIN-KUL657555K85K105K
FRA-TPE-HAN684855K85K105K
ZRH-DEL-SGN609655K85K105K

Multi Zone

RouteDistance
(Miles)
EconomyBusinessFirst
JFK-FRA-SIN1042665K92.5K135K
GRU-ADD-SIN1068765K95K135K

Bottomline

Air Canada Aeroplan Stopovers for 5000 Points are a great way to travel more with fewer points. However, to maximize your travel using Aeroplan Stopover, you should know the award chart and the zones.