The Complete Guide to Aeroplan Stopovers

One of the best and most powerful features of the Aeroplan loyalty program is the ability to book stopovers for an additional 5,000 Aeroplan points.

In taking advantage of Aeroplan stopovers, you’ll be able to add more destinations to your journey and turn one trip into multiple trips for a modest extra cost.

Plus, leveraging stopovers can be a great strategic move to use when piecing together complex Aeroplan itineraries and navigating partner award availability.

In This Post

A Summary of Aeroplan’s Stopover Rules

Prior to diving into the many applications of Aeroplan’s stopover feature, let’s go over the rules that govern its use.

Stopovers cost 5,000 points

You’re allowed to add a stopover at an intermediate point on a one-way journey for an extra 5,000 Aeroplan points per passenger.

On a round-trip booking, which is essentially just two one-way journeys, you’re allowed two stopovers (one in each direction), which would result in a total of 10,000 Aeroplan points per person. 

Stopovers can’t be in Canada or the United States

Stopovers are permitted everywhere other than in Canada or the United States. Booking a stopover within Canada or the United States will result in two one-way segments, so you’re better off just booking two one-ways to begin with.

Stopovers elsewhere in North America – such as in Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean – are allowed, as are stopovers in any of the other zones on the Aeroplan Flight Reward Chart (South America, Atlantic, and Pacific). 

Indeed, this opens up some incredible opportunities to see more of the world, since Aeroplan has partner airlines in almost every corner of the globe:

  • Fly from Montreal to Zurich, stopover, and then continue onward to Rome
  • Fly from Vancouver to Istanbul, stopover, and then continue onward to Almaty, Kazakhstan
  • Fly from Toronto to Cancun, stopover, and then continue onward to Panama City
  • Fly from Toronto to Lisbon, stopover, and then continue onward to Cape Town
  • Fly from New York to Singapore, stopover, and then continue onward to Australia
  • Fly from Seattle to Tokyo, stopover, and then continue onward to Bangkok

Stopovers can be up to 45 days

Stopovers are limited to 45 days in duration. This means that for any stops between 24 hours and 45 days in length, you’ll only be charged an extra 5,000 points per person for the stopover.

Any stopovers that exceed 45 days in length will be treated as a separate booking, and will be priced accordingly.

A connection must be over 24 hours in duration to count as a stopover. Connections of under 24 hours in duration are treated as layovers instead, and are not subject to an extra points surcharge.

This is an important distinction to understand if you’re looking to create bespoke Aeroplan itineraries. 

Stopovers can be booked online

If you’d like to book a stopover on an Aeroplan redemption, you use the Aeroplan search engine to construct your itinerary.

Note that you’ll only be able to book itineraries with up to four flights per direction of travel online, as this is currently the maximum amount the search engine can handle.

For example, you can book Vancouver–Istanbul–Abu Dhabi–Malé (stopover)–Singapore (four flights) online, but you can’t book Vancouver–Montreal–Istanbul–Abu Dhabi–Malé (stopover)–Singapore (five flights) online.

To book a stopover online, head to the main Air Canada website, select “Multi-city” and select “Book with points”. Then, click “Add a stopover for Flight 1”, and a new search field will appear.

Note that you’ll need to sign in to your account to perform searches for Aeroplan redemptions.

Aeroplan Stopovers Step 1

You’ll then need to put in your origin, destination, stopover city, travel dates, and length of stopover.

For example, if you’d like to fly from Toronto to Panama City with a stopover in Cancun for five days, you’d enter Toronto as your origin, Panama City as your destination, and Cancun as the stopover city.

Aeroplan Stopover Step 2

The search results will display multiple options for each flight along your journey. If you know the flights you’d like, you can use the filters to reduce the number of options you see.

Once you’ve found the flights you’d like, the extra 5,000 points for the stopover is already included in the price. For example, flights from Toronto to Panama City via Cancun price out at 25,000 points in business class, plus 5,000 points for the stopover, for a total of 30,000 points.

Toronto Cancun Panama City stopover

Note that the length of stopover is counted by nights at your destination. In the above example, you’d arrive in Cancun on the same day you departed, and then you have five nights in Cancun before heading off to Panama City.

If you’re on an overnight flight, the stopover days begin when you arrive at your stopover destination. 

For example, let’s say that you fly from Boston to Frankfurt, stopover for five days, and then continue onward to Nice. 

Boston Frankfurt Nice stopover

With a departure date of August 27, you’d arrive in Frankfurt on August 28, and then you’d fly to Nice on September 2 after spending five nights in Frankfurt. 

Stopovers can be also booked over the phone (for a fee)

If you aren’t able to book your desired stopover itinerary online, you can also choose to call the Aeroplan Contact Centre to work with an agent.

Note that there’s a non-refundable $30 booking fee associated with booking itineraries over the phone.

In my experience, the booking fee has been worth it as I’ve been able to piece together complex, bespoke itineraries that allow me to stretch the value of my Aeroplan points to the max. 

Logistics of Booking Aeroplan Stopovers

Once you have an idea of where you’d like to go, you’ll then go through the process of making the booking.

The best way to approach booking itineraries with stopovers is to do all of the planning in advance, and then go ahead with actually booking the stopover.

If you aren’t familiar with the Aeroplan Flight Reward Chart and how to price out Aeroplan itineraries, head over to our Essential Guide to Aeroplan for a detailed review of how the program works.

We’d recommend that you start by looking for award space on individual flight segments that you’d like to take. This can help you find award availability on a specific airline that you’d like to fly with, or on a particular route. Be sure to broaden your search and factor in positioning flights to help you increase your odds of success.

Play around with the filters on the search results page to find the specific flights you’d like. Your hard work will have paid off when you find the perfect itinerary at the price point you’re looking for.

As you’re constructing an itinerary, make sure to calculate the total distances using Great Circle Mapper, to ensure that you aren’t crossing into a farther distance band and unnecessarily spending more points.

When you find flights that work, note down the dates and the flight numbers, and begin the process of making the booking. You’ll also want to calculate the number of days required for your stopover, as this is the least intuitive part of the search.

If you can book your itinerary online – great! If not, give the Aeroplan contact centre a call and work with an agent to build your custom itinerary.

Once it’s all booked, you’ll be able to select your seats on all segments of the journey, and then begin looking forward to actually flying on it.

If you’d like some expert advice on how to maximize Aeroplan redemptions, be sure to check out our Points Coaching service. You’ll receive one-on-one guidance from one of our Aeroplan experts over the course of four sessions, and you’ll fast track your way into becoming a pro at Aeroplan redemptions in no time!

Learn More about Points Coaching
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Whether you’re planning your first redemption or looking to optimize a complex points portfolio, the Prince of Travel Points Coaching service will help you build a travel strategy that works for you.

Examples of Booking Aeroplan Stopovers

To better understand how to maximize Aeroplan stopovers, let’s take a look at a few sample routings.

It’s worth noting that the below examples focus on business-class redemptions, since that’s one of the best ways to get the most value out of your Aeroplan points. However, finding business class award availability with partner airlines, or rates at the “Starting at” prices for Air Canada and/or Select Partners, requires a fair bit of effort. 

If you’re happy to fly in economy, then piecing together a booking with stopovers at a great price is much easier.

Stopover on a one-way

Let’s consider a routing Boston–Istanbul–Jakarta. If you didn’t want to stop in Istanbul for more than 24 hours, this would price out at 87,500 Aeroplan points in business class as per the North America–Pacific award chart.

Between North America and Pacific Zones

If you wanted to add a stopover of over 24 hours and less than 45 days in Istanbul, the cost would increase by 5,000 points, paying a total of 92,500 Aeroplan points for the entire journey.

For example, if you load up your cities in the search engine, along with your stopover length and departure date, you’ll see the results price out with the stopover included.

The itinerary prices out as we had expected, and you can proceed to book it by simply clicking through.

Two stopovers on a round-trip

Suppose that you’d like to visit Seoul, Bangkok, and Munich on a holiday next year. You’re flexible with routings, and consider flying via Asia on your outbound flights and across the Atlantic on your return to make it a true round-the-world trip.

After doing some manual research for award flights, you set up your Aeroplan search as in the screenshot below:

Complex stopover booking

For your outbound flight, you hop on Air Canada from Montreal to Seoul. After staying in Seoul for a week and a bit, you then proceed onwards to Bangkok, this time with Asiana and Thai Airways (with an overnight layover in Tokyo).

Booked separately, these flights would cost 120,000 Aeroplan points in business class. When booked as a one-way with a stopover, however, the cost drops down to only 92,500 points: 87,500 for the flights and 5,000 for a stopover.

Complex stopover booking outbound

Similarly, on the way back, you could fly from Bangkok to Munich via Frankfurt with Thai Airways and Lufthansa, add a stopover for up to 45 days, and then continue back to Montreal on a non-stop with Lufthansa.

Complex stopover booking inbound

Booking these flights as two one-ways would cost 140,000 Aeroplan points, while booking them as a one-way with a stopover drops the cost to 92,500 points: 87,500 for the flights and 5,000 for a stopover.

In total, your round-the-world routing would cost 185,000 Aeroplan points.

Further applications of adding stopovers are almost endless, and they’re only limited to how adventurous you can get within the limits of what’s possible with Aeroplan’s routing rules.

Is the Aeroplan Stopover a Good Deal?

Across airline loyalty programs, it’s fairly rare for stopovers to be permitted on a one-way booking. Other programs, such as The British Airways Club, simply cumulatively add up the distance and charge you accordingly. 

Others, like Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer, don’t allow stopovers on one-way Saver redemptions (but do on higher-priced Advantage awards), and others yet (such as Cathay Pacific Asia Miles) don’t allow stopovers on one-way bookings at all.

A few other programs, like Atmos Rewards (formerly Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan) or Air France KLM Flying Blue, do allow you to add a stopover on a one-way flight for no additional charge, which is more favourable than Aeroplan’s stopover fee of 5,000 points. 

However, it’s worth noting that Aeroplan’s flexible routing policy allows travellers to cover a lot of ground en route to their destination. This is what makes it possible to stop in Europe on the way to Asia, or stop in the Middle East (or even Mauritius!) on the way to Australia, all while mix-and-matching Aeroplan’s 45+ partner airlines.

Mauritius beach
Stop in Mauritius en route to Australia with the Aeroplan stopover feature

Indeed, Aeroplan’s constantly expanding network of partners adds more clout to an already strong program. In addition to Star Alliance-member airlines, external partners such as Gulf Air, Virgin Australia, Etihad Airways, and Emirates, amongst others, add to the extensive global network accessible through Aeroplan points.

If you’re looking to see more of the world and get the most of your Aeroplan points, the stopover feature should certainly be something that you take advantage of whenever possible.

Conclusion

Aeroplan’s stopover rules permit travellers to squeeze in an extended stay on a one-way trip to most places in the world for only 5,000 extra points.

Personally, I’ve used stopovers on many Aeroplan bookings ever since the feature was first launched. I appreciate how I can visit multiple countries on one trip, without being unduly penalized for it by having to book separate itineraries. 

Being able to book stopovers online gives Aeroplan members more power to construct their ideal itineraries without picking up the phone. The last step in the search engine’s rollout is the ability to create fully customized itineraries, which we’ll hopefully see at some point in the near future.

28 Comments
  1. Jason

    Not sure if there have been any changes to the partner bookings, but it seems impossible to find any ANA First Class availability on Air Canada’s search engine nowadays. Is there a better place to search?

    1. Jay*

      It exists, I see some right now through the search engine.

  2. Always Flying Somewhere

    Hey Ricky,

    I was searching various European cities to the west coast, but the results would only display flights on AC metal… especially YUL. If the city pair isn’t served by AC, it doesn’t show, even if LH or another Star carrier operate it

  3. Jonathan

    I was trying to book SIN-MNL-ICN (stop)-NRT-JFK where the NRT-JFK segment was on ANA first class. For some reason they couldn’t get the business class flight from SIN-MNL on Singapore Airlines to price. I tried 4 or 5 different agents and none had any luck with it. I would have expected this to be 135k points. Any ideas what could be the issue here? Thanks!

  4. Rick R

    Hello elites,

    I have an upcoming YOW-BOM trip with a 2 day stopover at RAK and a 12 hour layover at CAI.
    107,996 AP (points-only multi-city booking) done online all on Y booked in April 2022.
    Distance is a shade over 8,700 miles and I feel I’m overpaying.

    Should I be booking YOW-BOM online (irrespective of routing which shows at 64,000-points only) then call Aeroplan to add RAK as stopover for the 5K app? Or book YOW-RAK (Aug 11th, 55k app) then ask RAK be considered stopover, final destination being BOM – and all of that should not exceed 70k + the 5k if I understand right.

    I’ve been reading and re-reading Ricky’s article lol and I feel the answer is the later ie. to book YOW-RAK first then phone in. However, not sure if flight availability on specific dates/class of travel is an issue, not sure how that works. RAK-BOM Aug 14th only shows J.

    Thanks so much, and great articles as always.

  5. Annie

    Based on my understanding of the rules, I should be able to book a one-way for the current posted YVR-LIS (97k pts) with and added stopover in LHR or BER (5K pts).

    But the agent quoted me almost double (227k pts) and said something about the market value of the flights impacting point cost, and that the old stop-over rules were suspended due to Covid? Is anyone able to confirm this, or should I try again if it’s an agent education issue per some of the previous posters.

    1. Shame

      Originally had two separate segments booked: NRT-TPE, TPE-KUL then realized I had overpaid. Called AP, granted this was my first time playing the stopover game, and it was SUPER smooth. Agent knew what I was referring to and ended up paying for NRT-KUL + 5K for the TPE stop, with the exact same flights. Sounds like you had a case of hang up, call again. Good luck.

    2. Rachel YOW

      Hi Annie,
      Did you confirm with the phone rep that you were looking at the same flights? It’s best to find all the segments you want and “feed” them to the agent, so to speak.

  6. Mak YYZ

    I spent almost 2 hours with agent but no dice of getting a stop over in india. She says lot of people call with this request but system does not allow them to do it. what a BS.
    I wanted to take a stop over in india from toronto
    YYZ-DEL-HYD(4 weeks)-BKK (destination) to reduce the points and alos to connect one way cash fare ($250) booking BKK-NRT-YYZ.
    i dont know how else i should convince them to give me that routing.
    appreciate any help in this regard

  7. Susan

    Was trying to book JFK-BEG-VIE with BEG as stopover. Called Aeroplan to book but the agent told me to do it online myself and used the multi-cities function. I told him I was not aware that we can now book the 5000 mile stopover online. The website priced me at 85k instead of 75k, which it priced out the two segments as separate one-way tickets. The agent basically kept telling the 85k is correct and refused to try to price it out for me via their system. He even told me Belgrade is in another zone… Last time I checked it was in Atlantic zone. LOL frustrating. I ended up just doing the JFK-BEG route for 70k and booked the BEG-VIE segment on United. Any idea when we can book stopover on the website ourselves vs calling?

    Love your content by the way! You’re my go-to when it comes to Aeroplan.

  8. SJ

    Is there a written communication from Aeroplan on this? I am being repeatedly told by phone agents that no such waiver exists.

    1. AK

      I just booked an one way with a stopover and they charged $30 fee. Looks like booking fee is not waived.

  9. Brett

    So now the question is, has anyone able to ACTUALLY book something the way the program is designed?

    The search engine is awful. The agents are a complete crap shoot, it’s impossible to know whether I’M WRONG or they’re wrong. In the old program I knew they were wrong. Search YVR-BOG get a set of results. Search YVR-MDE (which 99% of the time connects in BOG) get a completely different set of results. Search YVR-MVD, no flights. AUA-MVD, no flights. Despite knowing that PTY-MVD is available. So really the system just needs to get you from YVR-PTY. Easy.

    Call in and try and feed segments 1 by 1 to the agent, the stock answer now is they CANNOT do that anymore. Not that they don’t want to, but that they can’t. Had an agent tell me that the 5,000 miles is strictly an ADD-ON charge plus the cost of 2 regular fare one-way tickets stitched together, which is not what the program says. This is absolutely maddening and my worry is the miles will be worthless by the time they actually figure this stuff out. It’s been a year now and they still can’t get it right.

    1. Susan

      OMG did we get the same agent. I also tried to do the same but told me the same thing. I give up. They really need to get it together.

  10. Darren Grosvenor

    Anyone tried to make the booking of the nice routing the system gives (great connections) on a one-way and then have the call center agent change the connection into a stop over? The system sometimes gives odd routing that an agent would never allow as it seems odd but if the system likes it due to hubs, carrier and tickets it, then the agent should be able to revise to change the connection to a stop for 5k more.

  11. Dan S

    Can someone please clarify the policy. If I make a booking before Sep 30 deadline with a 30 days; would that mean I won’t have the ability to cancel with full refund this itinerary in future, or would initial booking is considered the guiding principal for cancellation policy?

  12. Henry Chan

    As a long-term member since 1987, I hope aeroplan will again establish the similiar booking system to allow the stopover for any booking in the booking system. It was great booking system in the past.

  13. DenB® YTO

    How our Ricky manages to stay so positive is a complete mystery. If ever there was a justification for an impatient snarky post, it was this news, that AC took nearly a year to end a cynical, insulting practice, instead of ending it the week after the problem was first identified. I guess I will never understand how to make it in blogging. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to “applaud their initiative” after gouging their most loyal for untold months.

    1. Ricky YVR

      To help you out a bit here, impatience and snark is a terrible way to effect the change we’d like to see in loyalty providers. Given our size, it’s a miracle that our community’s concerns are being listened to in the first place, and I’d like to see that continue.

  14. Adam

    Definitely the right move to remove the phone booking fee until the website can perform that same function. Never understood why you should have to pay 5000AP points AND a 30$ phone booking fee for some complex trips. Shows some good will on the part of the Aeroplan team.

  15. Pablo

    I’m going attempt a similar booking as the example in this post. YYZ-IST-BKK, on business. Fingers are crossed!

    1. Pablo

      Update: the YYZ-IST-BKK itinerary worked and I’m thrilled! Booked last day of Sept in case sh*t hits the fan with Covid.
      YYZ-IST: Turkish business class on Boeing-777
      IST-BKK: Etihad business class on Boeing-787 w/ stop in Abu Dhabi.

      Anyone know if I can get access to the Turkish airlines lounge when I’m departing Istanbul for Bangkok?

      Hope that’s helpful for some readers. Thanks Ricky for the great content!

      1. Brett

        How many points did you pay though? That’s the really important question.

        1. Pablo

          I paid 90k points (85+5) and about $150 in taxes

          1. Brett

            Did you pick specific flights or just call in and say the destinations? I’m really curious because the experiences I’ve had with the website is maddening. When I called, she basically just told me what comes up on the search and wasn’t able to take my flights hand picked. So ex: just because YVR-IST is available and IST-SIN is available (hypothetically) doesn’t mean that doing a multi city search would yield those results and by extension means that the call centre agent can’t/won’t get them either.

            1. Pablo

              I came in with rough idea of flights. I had hoped to fly Turkish all the way and I searched on the website this itinerary as a multicity just to see if it was in the stock. The IST-BKK flight wasn’t available on Turkish (my choice) on business. But I called anyways. So iono it’s kinda hard to say because Etihad business didn’t really show up on my searches on AC website either…

      2. Ricky YVR

        Nice one! Yes, you’ll be able to access the lounge on account of your business class ticket.

        1. Pablo

          Thank you! Keep up the good work 🙂

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