Aeroplan Economy Booking and Seat Selection Fees are a Mistake

I recently made an award booking with Aeroplan, flying on Air Canada. The system automatically assigned me a middle seat (yuck!), so I went to Air Canada’s website to change my seat. For some weird reason, the system attempted to charge me to select a normal, non-privilege seat. Being the cheap guy that I am, I Tweeted Air Canada and got this response:

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This seemed very odd to me. I called Air Canada, and was given the same response. There’s a thread on Flyertalk about this, as others are having the same issue. One person claimed they were able to bypass the fee by going to the Air Canada Travel Agent Seat Selection Tool, however, it didn’t work for me at all (similar reports on the thread). I was eventually able to select my seats for free by calling the Air Canada Mexico line!

I emailed my contact at Air Canada. They told me that it was a mistake. The intention was to impose Tango fare baggage fees on Aeroplan economy bookings, however, the entire set of Tango fees, including seat selection, was imposed. This is supposed to be temporary and fixed soon.

2 Comments

  1. Hey Avery, I have a mixed class AC/UA (AC Y, UA Y, and then UA F) itinerary booked using Aeroplan classic rewards, how do I assign seats for the UA legs? Do I have to call and get the UA designator?

    If so, that’s a real pain in the ass since the Aeroplan hold queue is 1h + usually.

    1. Try calling UA. Give them your flight/personal information and they should be able to find you in their system.

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