How to Maximize Aeroplan’s Priority Rewards

One of the most rewarding features of Air Canada Aeroplan and Aeroplan Elite Status is Priority Rewards – vouchers that offer a 50% discount on the number of points required for an eligible itinerary for one passenger booked out of the voucher holder’s account.

With the transition to the SQC-based qualification system in 2026, the ways in which you can earn Priority Rewards have evolved, but the core benefit remains the same. We’ll go over the updated earning structure in detail further in this guide.

Even though the concept of a 50% discount on award redemptions is pretty straightforward, there can be a surprising amount of room to optimize your usage of Aeroplan’s Priority Rewards. Put another way, the difference between using a Priority Reward casually and using one strategically can amount to tens of thousands of points in savings.

How to Earn Priority Rewards

Under the current Aeroplan program, Priority Rewards are earned in two ways.

Earning Priority Rewards Through Milestone Benefits

The primary way to earn Priority Rewards is by selecting them as a Milestone Benefit. As you accumulate Status Qualifying Credits (SQC) throughout the year, you’ll unlock Milestone Benefit selections at the 20,000, 40,000, 60,000, 80,000, and 100,000 SQC thresholds.

At each threshold, you’ll choose from a menu of benefits – including Priority Rewards, Maple Leaf Lounge passes, Aeroplan points, Status Passes, bonus SQC, and more. In other words, Priority Rewards are no longer awarded automatically; you must actively select them over the other options.

It’s worth noting that the tier of Priority Reward you receive depends on your Aeroplan Elite Status at the time of selection. Therefore, you may want to hold off on making your Milestone Benefit selections (at least if you’re choosing Priority Rewards) until you’ve reached a higher tier of status, since they could be more flexible.

Plus, your Priority Reward will have a validity period of 12 months from the moment it’s chosen. Note that you must use it by this time, but travel can occur afterwards.

We cover the full details, including the complete selection menu and optimal strategies for each status level, in our dedicated Milestone Benefits guide.

Spending on the Chase Aeroplan Card

In addition, the US-issued Chase Aeroplan Card offers a secondary pathway to Priority Rewards. Priority Reward vouchers are earned at the USD spend thresholds of $100,000, $250,000, $500,000, and $750,000 every calendar year, for a maximum of four Priority Reward vouchers via this method.

On Which Trips Are You Eligible to Redeem Priority Rewards?

Your Aeroplan Elite Status at the time of selecting a Priority Reward voucher from Milestone Benefits determines which set of flights are eligible for you to redeem that voucher and unlock a 50% discount on the award redemption, detailed as follows:

• Aeroplan 25K: Economy flights in Canada and the US
• Aeroplan 35K: Economy and premium economy flights in North America
• Aeroplan 50K: Economy and premium economy flights in North America
• Aeroplan 75: Economy and premium economy flights worldwide
• Aeroplan Super Elite: Economy, premium economy, and business class flights worldwide

For example, an Aeroplan 35K or 50K member is eligible to redeem Priority Reward vouchers on Aeroplan redemption flights within North America (which, in this case, refers to Canada, the US, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean) in economy or premium economy.

How to Redeem Priority Rewards

Once you’ve earned a Priority Reward, you can easily redeem them online or over the phone with the Aeroplan call centre.

When booking flights online, simply search for flights on the Aeroplan search engine as a member with Priority Rewards in your account. 

If your chosen origin–destination pair falls within the set of flights for which your Priority Rewards are eligible, you’ll first need to click on the “Credits and discounts” button that floats at the bottom of your screen.

Next, you’ll need to select a Priority Reward to use. Simply check the box, and the click on “Apply voucher(s)”. 

Your search results will then repopulate, and any eligible flights will cost 50% fewer points than searching without Priority Rewards applied. A star above the price indicates that you’re getting 50% off. 

You can then click through and book the half-priced reward straight away.

It’s worth noting that due to technical limitations, the full range of Points + Cash options is not available when you apply a Priority Reward.

How to Maximize Priority Rewards

Now that we’ve gone over how Priority Rewards work, let’s shift focus to how to maximize them.

Before we dive into specific strategies, it’s worth noting that everyone will find value in Priority Rewards in different ways. If you only ever fly within Canada and never fly overseas, then you might be happy with saving a handful of points on a short- or medium-haul route, even with a Super Elite Priority Reward.

On the other hand, if you’re someone who tends to maximize at all possible opportunities, you might be a bit more strategic in your approach and find exceptional value in Priority Rewards, possibly saving hundreds of thousands of points.

With that in mind, let’s go over my picks for the four best strategies for getting the most out of your Priority Rewards.

Make a Good Deal Even Better

When it comes to maximizing Priority Rewards, partner airline redemptions are where things get really interesting.

Flights booked on most Star Alliance carriers and other Aeroplan partner airlines come at a predictable, fixed cost based on the Aeroplan Flight Reward Chart. Unlike dynamic pricing for redemptions with Air Canada and Select Partner airlines, these prices don’t fluctuate – what you see on the chart is what you pay, every single time. This predictability makes it easy to map out your savings in advance and plan accordingly.

Apply a Priority Reward to one of these fixed-price partner awards and you’re looking at a straightforward 50% discount on an already well-priced redemption. Put another way, you’re making a good deal even better.

This is where Super Elite Priority Rewards truly shine. Super Elites have access to 50% off business class partner awards worldwide – arguably the single most powerful use of Priority Rewards in the entire program. A business class flight on a partner carrier that would normally cost 70,000 points one-way drops to just 35,000 points with a Priority Reward applied, or 70,000 points for a round-trip redemption.

But you don’t need to be a Super Elite to benefit. Any status level can apply a Priority Reward to an eligible partner redemption within their region and cabin allowances. 

A 35K member booking a Copa Airlines flight within North America, or a 75K member redeeming on Lufthansa or ANA in economy on an overseas flight, will still enjoy that same 50% reduction on a fixed, predictable price.

It’s also worth noting that Aeroplan’s Select Partners – including Canadian regional carriers like Calm Air, Canadian North, and PAL Airlines – are great targets for Priority Rewards as well. 

The bottom line is this: most partner awards offer certainty, and a Priority Reward turns that certainty into outsized value.

Take the Sting out of Dynamic Pricing

If Air Canada is your primary airline, Priority Rewards can be very helpful in taking the sting out of dynamic pricing.

In exchange for having access to every available seat on Air Canada flights, you might just have to pay more for it – and sometimes significantly more. It’s common to find pricing on Air Canada flights that’s well above the “Starting at” prince, particularly during peak travel seasons, on high-demand routes, and for last-minute bookings.

Since Priority Rewards reduce the number of points required for eligible itineraries by 50%, they can bring an inflated dynamically priced flight back down to reality. 

For example, a dynamically priced YYZ–YVR flight sitting at 25,000 points in economy would drop to just 12,500 points with a Priority Reward – a cost that’s much more attractive.

The same is true for flights overseas. If you plan on flying to Australia, you may have noticed that the dynamic pricing for Air Canada flights can be quite alarming.

However, 75K members (in economy and premium economy) and Super Elites (business class) can apply a Priority Reward to halve those amounts, thereby bringing them down to much more reasonable levels.

This is where Priority Rewards are most valuable on Air Canada metal: when dynamic pricing has pushed a flight well above what you’d normally consider reasonable. In these situations, you could also benefit from more direct routings that might otherwise be too costly in points, which is important for many people who don’t want to connect when a non-stop option exists.

The upside here is that you don’t have to settle for a less convenient itinerary just because the non-stop flight is priced at a premium. A Priority Reward effectively gives you the flexibility to book the flight you actually want, at a cost that makes sense.

Priority Rewards x eUpgrades

One of the most compelling uses for Priority Rewards is to combine them with eUpgrades earned from your Aeroplan Elite Status – and in particular the “Latitude Attitude” approach for what is essentially a backdoor into business class at the price of economy.

Even though you can’t apply your Priority Rewards directly to business class redemptions (unless you’re a Super Elite), you can still wind up in Air Canada business class through this method.

Here’s how it works: use a Priority Reward voucher to halve the cost of an economy class booking in the Economy (Latitude) fare category, and then use eUpgrades to confirm an upgrade into premium economy or business class long before your departure date. You get the 50% points savings on the base booking and the cabin upgrade through a separate mechanism entirely.

Of course, this assumes that you’ve done your due diligence of looking for eUpgrade availability on your flight. Anecdotally, eUpgrade space for Aeroplan redemptions isn’t quite what it used to be – availability appears to have tightened in recent years, and you’ll want to manage your approach accordingly.

That said, pockets of availability remain. In general, you’ll tend to find better eUpgrade availability on flights to Canada than on flights from Canada, since outbound flights from Canadian hubs tend to be more competitive. Even if there isn’t confirmed eUpgrade availability at the outset, you could still wind up in business class through the eUpgrade waitlist, especially if you hold higher-tier status that gives you priority in the queue.

For a deeper look at how eUpgrade clearance windows, waitlist ranking, and availability patterns work, we’d recommend reading our comprehensive eUpgrade guide, which covers the key strategies for maximizing your chances of clearing into a higher cabin.

Push the Limits

This is where things get interesting. If you really want to extract maximum value from Priority Rewards, you’ll want to take advantage of Aeroplan’s generous stopover and routing rules to construct ambitious multi-city itineraries – and then apply a single Priority Reward to the entire thing.

Here’s the key insight: a single Priority Reward voucher covers the entire round-trip itinerary. This is the sole exception in Aeroplan where booking a round trip actually saves you points compared to two separate one-way bookings. In every other scenario, two one-ways cost the same as a round trip – but with a Priority Reward, the 50% discount applies to the full itinerary, making the round-trip structure essential for maximizing your savings.

Let’s look at an example. A Super Elite books a round-trip business class itinerary from Toronto to Southeast Asia, with a stopover in Europe on the way there and another one in East Asia on the way back, all on partner airlines. This type of itinerary typically costs 185,000 Aeroplan points, assuming you’ve booked at the fixed rates on the Flight Reward Chart.

This takes advantage of the “Asia 3” sweet spot in the Flight Reward Chart, which represents one of the best distance-to-price ratios in the whole chart.

Applying a Priority Reward voucher to this redemption as a Super Elite member, you’d theoretically be able to book this whole trip – multiple stopovers, business class throughout, partner airlines – for only 92,500 Aeroplan points. That’s a spectacular deal by any measure.

It doesn’t stop there. Long-haul itineraries that push into the 4th distance band on the chart (8,001+ miles) can cost up to 115,000 points per direction in business class. Without a Priority Reward, that’s 230,000 points for the round trip. With a Priority Reward, a Super Elite pays just 115,000 points for the entire round trip – effectively getting one direction for free.

The bottom line is this: the more ambitious your itinerary, the more value a single Priority Reward voucher can unlock. Build the biggest, most complex round trip your status level allows, and let the 50% discount do the heavy lifting.

Is It Worth Pursuing Priority Rewards?

Now that we’ve explored the true power of Aeroplan’s Priority Rewards, the question remains: is it worthwhile to go out of your way to earn Status Qualifying Credits (SQC) and select Priority Rewards over other Milestone Benefits?

Under the current system, Priority Rewards are no longer handed out automatically – they’re a choice. Each time you reach a Milestone Benefit threshold, you must decide whether a Priority Reward voucher is more valuable to you than the alternatives, which include Maple Leaf Lounge passes, bonus Aeroplan points, Status Passes, and bonus SQC.

For members at 75K status and above, the answer is almost always yes. At these tiers, Priority Rewards cover worldwide redemptions, and the value you can extract from a single voucher – potentially thousands of dollars worth of premium cabin travel – far exceeds what a couple of lounge passes or a modest points bonus could provide.

Put another way, if you have access to Priority Rewards that unlock long-haul travel, it’s very difficult to justify choosing a lesser benefit in their place.

At lower tiers (25K through 50K), the math is less clear-cut. Priority Rewards at these levels are restricted to economy or premium economy within North America, so the value ceiling is considerably lower. In this case, it depends on your travel patterns. If you frequently fly domestic or transborder routes and can put an economy or premium economy Priority Reward to good use, it may still be the strongest pick.

When it comes to earning SQC, the landscape has shifted considerably. SQC can now be accumulated through credit card spending on premium Aeroplan cards at a rate of 1,000 SQC per $5,000 (CAD), capped at 25,000 SQC per year. You can also earn SQC through Aeroplan partner activity at a rate of 1 SQC per 5 eligible points earned, again capped at 25,000 SQC per year.

Between these two avenues, it’s possible to collect up to 50,000 SQC without ever boarding a plane, which would in theory give you access to 2 Priority Reward vouchers (if you choose them over the options)

If you’re already close to the next status threshold, fine-tuning your strategy – whether by booking into a higher fare category (Flex and above) or directing more spend to your premium Aeroplan credit card – could be enough to earn an additional Milestone Benefit and unlock a Priority Reward voucher that delivers outsized value.

Conclusion

Priority Rewards remain one of Aeroplan’s most powerful tools for reducing the cost of award travel. Under the SQC-based qualification model, they’re no longer an automatic perk of high-volume flying – instead, they’re a strategic choice at milestone intervals, which means you’ll want to plan your selections carefully to get the most out of them.

Put another way, every Priority Reward voucher you claim is one you’ve deliberately chosen over other milestone options, so it pays to have a plan for how you’ll use it.

It’s worth noting that a single Priority Reward voucher covers a round-trip booking in both directions, which makes the 50% discount even more compelling than it might appear at first glance. Whether it’s a cheap economy dash within North America or a round-the-world itinerary with stopovers for 5,000 points, one well-placed voucher can unlock outstanding value across the entire journey.

When married with Air Canada’s eUpgrades for high-status members, the value proposition only grows more attractive. The bottom line is that Priority Rewards handsomely reward those who engage deeply with the Aeroplan ecosystem – and with a bit of strategic planning around your milestone selections, they shouldn’t be difficult to put to exceptional use.