Planning ahead for your Aeroplan points
Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for Air Canada points
While Air Canada does allow post-death transfer of points, lifetime planning gives the account holder more control over how points are shared and used.
Aeroplan Family Sharing lets up to 8 Verified Family Members pool their points into a single shared balance while each keeps an individual Aeroplan account. All points earned by pool members, including their existing balances, go into the shared balance, and points are redeemed proportionally from each member's account. Members with redemption privileges can redeem from the shared balance for themselves or anyone else, with no transfer fees. The person who creates the pool is the Family Lead, who must be 18 or older and an Aeroplan member for at least 6 months; the Family Lead can invite up to 7 other Verified Family Members and can set each member's redemption permissions. To create, join, or invite to a pool, a member must have been an Aeroplan member for at least 6 months, must not have been part of another pool for at least 6 months, and (as of February 2025) must be a Verified Aeroplan Member. There is no minimum age to join an existing pool. Family Members must stay in a pool for at least 3 months before leaving. As of the September 2026 verification, Aeroplan states that the ability to CREATE a new Family Sharing pool is temporarily unavailable; existing pools are unaffected, including adding and removing members. Estate note: the Aeroplan Terms and Conditions (Section 7) provide that on the death or incapacity of a Family Lead, Aeroplan automatically dissolves the pool, and the Family Lead and each Family Member retain the points that remain in their own account at that time. Outside of Family Sharing, a member can transfer points to another Aeroplan member for a fee; Family Sharing is the no-fee way to combine points within a household. Members can also redeem points for award travel for any passenger, including people who are not Aeroplan members.
How to protect your Aeroplan points
5 lifetime planning steps for your Aeroplan points:
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Frequently asked questions
Section 7 of the Aeroplan Terms and Conditions provides that on the death or incapacity of a Family Lead, Aeroplan automatically dissolves the pool. The Family Lead and each Family Member retain the Aeroplan points that remain in their own account at the time the pool is dissolved. Points sitting in the late Family Lead's own account are then addressed through the Aeroplan Estate policy.
Recording the Aeroplan account number for the executor and naming in the will who is to receive the points are the two items Aeroplan's Estate policy depends on, since the request requires the late member's Aeroplan number and a scanned copy of the portion of the will naming the beneficiaries. Keeping the account active protects the balance from the 18-month inactivity expiry. Aeroplan Family Sharing pools points for household members with no transfer fee, subject to the current pause on creating new pools.
Listing the Aeroplan account in an estate inventory identifies it for a fiduciary, who works through the operator's official channels to manage or close it.
Aeroplan does not offer beneficiary designations, so there is no program-level mechanism for directing points to a specific person at death.
Sources
Data sourced from Air Canada primary sources (6 pages reviewed). How we research.
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