Aeroplan Market Fares versus Fixed Mileage Flight Rewards

Recently, one of Pointshogger’s readers asked the question of the difference between a Market Fare and Fixed Mileage Flight Reward offered by Aeroplan. In today’s post, we will analyze these two topics. 

As an Aeroplan member, you have access to both the Market Fare and Fixed Mileage Flight Rewards, depending on your needs at the time of booking. Note that “Fixed Mileage” used to be called “Classic Fare”. For Fixed Mileage flight rewards, there will be a fixed number of seats which are offered exclusively to Aeroplan Members on both Air Canada and Star Alliance flights. For Market Fare flight rewards, you will have access to all available seats on all flights operated by Air Canada.

Let’s take a look at how the two options work:

You can see from the photograph above how the two options differ from each other. For Fixed Mileage Flight Rewards, the number of miles required for a particular flight will remain constant. Conversely, Market Fare flight rewards fluctuate based on the market price of the ticket at the time of booking.

With the Market Fare flight rewards, you could potentially be purchasing tickets with miles less than the cost of Fixed Mileage flight reward tickets.

Book a one-way ticket

With the Fixed Mileage flight reward, you can redeem a one-way ticket for 50% of the miles required for a round trip. If you know the market fare is low at the time, you can book a one-way Market Fare Flight Reward for the current price of a one-way flight. The price will be converted into miles at the time of booking.

Book a multi-city ticket

Another option you have with the roundtrip Fixed Mileage flight reward is to book a stopover in another city on your way home. This does not require any additional miles. You can also book an open-jaw itinerary so your arrival and departure cities are different. For an open jaw-itinerary, you will travel to one city, then to another, and from there you will travel to your home destination.

What to do if you do not have enough miles?

If you don’t have enough Aeroplan reward miles to book a one-way flight, you have the option to purchase up to 50% of the total miles required for that roundtrip reward flight. This will be valued at 3 cents per Aeroplan mile.

The bottom line is, both Fixed Mileage and Market Fare flight rewards have their own benefits. Generally, Market Fare flight rewards do require a higher mileage requirement, but they provide a much better access to different routes, travel times and flight departures. Although Fixed Mileage flight rewards are locked in, so on high season, you can redeem tickets at the constant fixed pricing, the seats are limited and require you to book early. There also aren’t as many options in the flights available for booking.