Bringing a child under 2 years old on a plane with you is free for domestic flights if you don’t buy them a seat. However when you travel internationally an infant without a seat needs a ticket, and those can be expensive even when you’re redeeming miles for your own flight.
When you book an award and add a lap infant, some programs charge you 10% of a paid ticket. That’s standard for United, Delta and American. If you redeem miles for a $6000 business class ticket, the lap infant costs you $600 plus taxes. (Alaska Airlines won’t even issue infant tickets on partner airline awards.)
Frequently non-U.S. programs are more generous ticketing lap infants when you redeem miles. British Airways lets you use miles for infant tickets. They charge 10% of the miles of an adult fare, and 10% of the surcharges. Aeroplan charges flat fees plus actual taxes.
- Coach: C$50 or 5000 miles
- Premium economy: C$75 or 7500 miles
- Business class: C$100 or 10,000 miles
- First class: C$125 or 12,500 miles
Well, @Roar_Singh noticed that he wasn’t being charged this fee when adding an infant to an Aeroplan award booking.
@OneMileataTime @garyleff Aeroplan told me yest under new rules $50/$100 infant fee has been dropped and only taxes will be charged. I don't see this new rule anywhere on the website. Agent was very clear tat this change came in with other changes. Have u guys heard anything? Tks
— FlyinSingh (@Roar_Singh) February 7, 2020
It turns out that Aeroplan is temporarily waiving the infant award charge “for technical reasons” related to the reservations system migration the airline did in the fall.
If you book awards with Aeroplan, and add an infant to the booking, right now you’re going to save. Since Air Canada is a Star Alliance member, you can use their miles to book award tickets across all of those partner airlines – whether United (no fuel surcharges) or Lufthansa (fuel surcharges).
Hilarious… the suspension is only because they cant, not because they want to
This is consistent with my experience with two flights, in Dec/Jan. Paid taxes only, no fee.
(But spent 4 hours on the phone to do it) So ivk5, when are you coming back with the under-two-year-old? (You didn’t think I’d miss this article, did you)
After 2.5 hours on hold with Aeroplan (had to call 6 times to even get in the call queue), and a call back to take my CC info…I can confirm this is correct! Was only charged fees of ~$7 CAD and ~$25 CAD for two transatlantic business class flights. Awesome tip!