Air Canada and Virgin Australia are now partners. You can,

• Credit Virgin Australia flights to Air Canada Aeroplan and earn redeemable miles
  
• Earn Air Canada elite qualifying miles for Virgin Australia domestic flights that are part of Air Canada tickets
  
• Redeem Air Canada Aeroplan miles for travel on Virgin Australia, even including them with Star Alliance or other partner airlines in an award

Aeroplan redemptions on Virgin Australia are even available for online booking already.

This fills a big hole in the Air Canada and Star Alliance route network. While oneworld has Qantas, and miles in American AAdvantage and other oneworld frequent flyer programs can get you anywhere in Australia, Star Alliance hasn’t had an Australian domestic partner since the demise of Ansett 20 years ago.

Connecting to secondary Australian destinations, including places like Cairns (Great Barrier Reef), Adelaide, and even Perth required connections usually via Auckland on Air New Zealand and good luck getting premium cabin award space into Auckland.

This partnership also gives Air Canada access to Virgin Australia customers, and therefore a bigger base for their own Australia flights from Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane once foreign air travel is generally permitted by the Australian government hopefully come the middle of this year.

Virgin Australia adds to the partner roster that Air Canada recently boosted with Air Serbia (Eastern Europe), Etihad (Mideast), Azul (Brazil) and Vistara (India) deals, continuing to position the carrier with feed and their program members with award options.