Don’t Let your Miles Expire
I hate mileage expiration rules. If someone had a sizeable balance and they involuntarily found out they had expired, I would argue it is one of the most negative effects to loyalty. It just feels wrong like a giftcard with an expiration date.
Even for travel-savvy people like us who have multiple accounts across multiple programs and tons of activity, sometimes you are hit with the expiration warning.
Jayce has talked about AwardWallet which aggregates all your award balances, log in information and expiration dates on one screen. Programs usually send you a warning if your miles are expiring but AwardWallet also sends you an email 90, 60, 30, and 7 days before expiration.
Your entire Aeroplan balance will expire if you have no activity in your account for 12 consecutive months (1 year).
Easy Ways to Earn Aeroplan Miles
As we preach the need for flexible points currency, you may not have a co-branded Aeroplan credit card to earn points every month. If that is you, make sure you do one of the following once every 12 months.
- Purchase or lease of a new Toyota (jk, but you could test drive a Toyota for Aeroplan miles)
- Credit Star Alliance flight to Aeroplan
- Transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Aeroplan (minimum 1,000 miles)
- Donate miles (minimum 1,000 miles)
- Use the Aeroplan eStore
- Earn miles with Costco.ca purchases
If my miles are near expiration, I prefer the options that transact instantaneously to confirm the extension of my miles and ease my worries. My preferred options for Aeroplan are to either transfer American Express Membership Rewards points (if I am short for an award, example <24,000) or to donate Aeroplan miles (if I am over for an award, example >26,000), both of which transact instantly.
If you are looking for a very simple way to extend your expiry, simply make a purchase through the Aeroplan eStore. Every dollar spent earns 1 Aeroplan Mile and there are many, many retailers that you most likely already use, like Amazon.
If you are looking for a $1 item on Amazon, I would suggest you use the website Shopfiller.com and choose $1 for Amazon.ca.
Reinstating Expired Aeroplan Miles
Fortunately, I have never had any Aeroplan miles expire as I redeem them fairly often. While you can reinstate your miles, Aeroplan charges 1¢ per mile, so it can be extremely expensive. I have never heard any good stories about Aeroplan having leniency with miles reinstatement without a fee, so I wouldn’t hold my breath about getting around the fee.
Before calling Aeroplan, you may be able to Request Missing Miles from previous travel in order to reinstate your miles. For example, if your miles expired on August 1, 2018, and you had a hotel stay or a car rental between February 1, 2018 and August 1, 2018, you might be in luck.
You can Request Missing Miles from six months past with the following partners:
Rental Cars:
- Avis
- Budget
- Payless Car Rental
Hotels:
- Accor Hotels
- Best Western International
- Carlson Hotels
- Choice Hotels International
- Coast Hotels & Resorts
- Delta Hotels & Resorts
- Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
- Gouverneur Hotels
- Hilton Worldwide
- Intercontinental Hotels Group
- Langham Hotels
- Marriott Hotels & Resorts
- Pan Pacific Hotels Canada & USA
- Shangri-La
- Starwood Preferred Guest
- Wyndham Worldwide
Pay Attention
Aeroplan will send you warnings via email that your miles are about to expire so make sure you have opted into email communications and that you aren’t auto-deleting emails from Aeroplan. As you only have to have account activity once a year, there really shouldn’t be any reason to have your miles expire. If you earn a single point, your expiry is extended by a further year.
Conclusion
With so many ways to earn Aeroplan miles, there should be no reason you should have your miles expire. If for some reason your miles have expired, hopefully, our suggestion for retroactive miles crediting through a car rental or hotel bookings gives you a second chance to get your miles back before being forced to pay 1¢ per mile to Aeroplan.