Aeroplan Devaluation For United Awards

It's clear we're in the era of dynamic pricing. Many airlines have jettisoned their award charts long ago. Delta, for example, has dynamic pricing for its flights, as well as partner flights. Aeroplan operates a bit differently, in that most partners are on a fixed award chart, but Air Canada and other select partner flights are dynamic. A few months ago, we saw United awards move to dynamic pricing. Dan's Deals noticed a massive jump in how those awards are priced beyond the changes a few months ago, but in our research, we're not seeing the new price hikes. What could be going on? Is there an Aeroplan devaluation for United awards coming?

Dynamic United Awards Through Aeroplan Live Pricing

In case you weren't aware, Aeroplan publishes a lowest price for a route based on mileage, and then a median price for award flights that are priced dynamically.

Going off of the Dan's Deal's post, I wanted to see for myself if I could find live pricing based on their research. It appears that pricing is still steady for Newark (EWR) to Cleveland (CLE) at 10,000 points for direct flights, plus taxes and fees. Dan's Deals had seen prices as high as 20,000 points each way.

Here are a few examples:

Newark (EWR) to Los Angeles (LAX) still remains at the “normal” 15,000 point price, versus the 30,000 points that Dan's Deals had seen.

Looking at other routes not mentioned in the post, things seem normal as well.

Phoenix (PHX) to Los Angeles (LAX) remains under the median promised for flights between 0-500 points. The median price is 10,000 points each way.

Flights from Houston (IAH) to Los Angeles (LAX) remain just above the median price promised by the Aeroplan chart:

To me, it seems like everything live is normal… for now.

So What Is Happening Here?

When blogs notice pricing live in an award program, but quickly disappears, there's more to the story. Since awards are dynamically priced, it's completely within Aeroplan's right to price awards higher without notice. However, it may not have been their plan to launch higher pricing at this time. Perhaps that's the plan for the future. Or, Aeroplan tested the market to see if United awards could be priced higher. We'll continue to watch this space to see if new pricing goes live again.

Aeroplan Devaluation For United Awards: ToP Thoughts

It is good to see the prices normalize after the recent spike in award costs. Could this be a precursor to an Aeroplan devaluation for United Awards? Possibly. We have seen people flip the switch too early in the past, and quickly pull it back, only to drop the devaluation a little while later. It could also just be a short glitch that was quickly fixed. These rapid changes are why we stress not to speculatively transfer points to programs, even if you have a routine use for them. That routine booking could become a bad deal overnight, so don't shackle yourself to airline miles or hotel points until you actually need them. Let us know what you think about this potential Aeroplan devaluation over in the ToP Facebook Group.