For those who have been involved in the points and miles world for a while now, you may remember or have heard of the Air Canada Aeroplan Family Sharing feature. For those just starting your journey, you might be scratching your head asking, “What exactly is this program?”
First introduced in 2020, it was put on hiatus by Aeroplan indefinitely in 2023. This was presumably due to abuse of the program’s generous features and rules at the time. Now in 2025, Aeroplan Family Sharing is back! Let’s take a deep dive into what the program is about and how we can use it to our advantage!
What is Aeroplan Family Sharing?
Aeroplan Family Sharing allows up to 8 of your family members to pool together all of your hard-earned Aeroplan points together to redeem rewards.
This is not the only example of a program like this in the world of points and miles. For example, the British Airways household account, the Virgin Atlantic Flying Club household account, and the Flying Blue family account also allow groups of people to pool together their points to be redeemed for rewards. Other airline programs allow point transfers at a cost.
What makes Aeroplan Family Sharing so special, especially for us Canadians, is that there are so many different ways to earn Aeroplan points. Aeroplan co-branded credit cards are one of the best ways for each member of your household to earn Aeroplan points through welcome bonuses. The card I recommend most to people continues to be the TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Card!
The TD® Aeroplan® Visa Infinite* Card offers benefits that include a free first checked bag on Air Canada flights and a $100 NEXUS membership credit.
In 2025, we awarded this card as the Best Core Air Canada Aeroplan Credit Card.
40,000 Aeroplan
$12,000
$840+
$139 (FYF)
Yes
–
For earning Aeroplan points, we always recommend the fan-favorite American Express Cobalt card, which was awarded our Best Points Credit Card for Grocery Purchases in our 2025 best credit card picks! While this card earns American Express Membership Rewards points, they can be transferred to Aeroplan at a rate of 1:1.
The American Express Cobalt card gives cardholders the opportunity to earn 5x Membership Rewards on eligible restaurant, food delivery, and grocery store purchases.
In 2025, we selected this card to receive the award Best Points Credit Card for Grocery Purchases.
Check out our American Express Cobalt card review for more details.
15,000 Membership Rewards
$9,000
$330+
$156
Yes
–
Either way, if you have a family member that you travel with and earn Aeroplan points with, you definitely want to set up an Aeroplan Family Sharing account to make earning and redeeming that much easier.
Verification Requirements for Aeroplan Family Sharing
In order for people to join a Family Sharing group, they must be “verified members” of Aeroplan. To be verified, they must have been a member of the Air Canada Aeroplan program for at least 6 months.
They also have to complete at least one of the four following “tasks” to finish account verification:
- If you have flown 2 separately booked Air Canada-operated flights that were tied to your Aeroplan membership number, you are automatically verified – no other actions necessary.
- If you hold an Aeroplan co-branded credit card and have it linked to your Aeroplan account, you are also automatically verified.
- You can verify in-person with an Airport Customer Experience Manager at the Air Canada check-in counter at Montréal-Trudeau (YUL), Chicago O’Hare (ORD), and Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) airports.
- Instant verification online with a picture of a government-issued photo ID and a selfie.
On a separate note, I definitely chuckled when I saw the list of airports for in-person verification – what an obscure list!
Members of a family sharing account must also fall into one of the following categories in terms of their relationship to you, assuming that you are the group leader: spouse or partner, children, siblings, in-laws, parents, grandparents, and “other members of your family.”
The last one is a bit vague – we interpret this as someone you find extremely trustworthy whom you are not worried about having access to your Aeroplan points and whom you travel with often.
How Does Redeeming Aeroplan Points in a Family Sharing Group Work?
Let’s see what Aeroplan Family Sharing looks like in action. For the sake of this example (and because I don’t have any human children yet), our Family Sharing will consist of myself (Quentin), my partner Erin, and our 2 dogs, Q and Eli! Dogs are unfortunately not listed as eligible members for Aeroplan accounts but bear with me with this example.
In this example, here are the Aeroplan points that each of us are starting with:
| Aeroplan Member | Aeroplan Points Balance | Proportion of Total Pool |
|---|---|---|
| Quentin | 100,000 | 40% |
| Erin | 75,000 | 30% |
| Q | 50,000 | 20% |
| Eli | 25,000 | 10% |
Our Family Sharing group now has a shared balance of 250,000 Aeroplan points. The percentage proportion of points is important because that’s how Aeroplan calculates the number of points that it will draw from each person when a redemption is made. In other words, for every booking made by someone in the Family Sharing group, everyone will have points taken from their account regardless if that person is taking part in the flight or not.
Let’s say that the 4 of us are going to head up home to Sault Ste. Marie for a few weeks to see family. For 4 tickets, we’ll need a total of 55,600 Aeroplan points. Good news – we have enough!
Now to redeem! To calculate how many points will be deducted from each person’s account, we will multiply the total cost of the booking by the percentage of points that each person has contributed to the Family Sharing pool.
| Aeroplan Member | Proportion of Total Pool | Aeroplan Points To Be Deducted |
|---|---|---|
| Quentin | 40% | 22,240 |
| Erin | 30% | 16,680 |
| Q | 20% | 11,120 |
| Eli | 10% | 5,560 |
What a great deal for Eli – with just over 5,500 Aeroplan points, he gets to go on a trip! Most of the points from this itinerary will come out of Quentin’s and Erin’s accounts as they contributed 70% of the pool. All things are not equal in life and neither are they in Aeroplan Family Sharing!
In another scenario, Quentin and Erin want to get away to Vancouver by themselves for a couple’s retreat. For 2 tickets, this will cost a total of 28,800 Aeroplan points in economy class.
Although Q and Eli aren’t coming on this trip, they will still have to contribute 20% and 10% to the booking, respectively.
How to Set Up An Aeroplan Family Sharing Group
I was actually one of the lucky people to have Aeroplan Family Sharing set up in advance of its hiatus. Thus, I was enjoying the benefits of pooled points between Erin and me! Thankfully, Josh and his partner just set up their Family Sharing account and were kind enough to share screenshots of their experience.
Once you log in to your Aeroplan account, click on My Aeroplan which will take you to a landing screen that is a summary of your Aeroplan account. Click on “Family Sharing” to get your group started.
You will be prompted to invite up to 7 verified Aeroplan members to your group. You don’t have to input everyone now either as you also have the ability to add (and remove) members at a later date.
Here you will fill out their name as listed on their Aeroplan account, their Aeroplan number, and their relationship to you. You can also toggle whether or not the new member will have redemption privileges. This might be handy if you are adding children to your group.
The person you invited will receive an email asking them to respond to whether or not they want to join your Family Sharing group. There will also be a pending invitation notice if they log into their Aeroplan account.
Once the invited member accepts the pending invitation, your Family Sharing group has been created!
Once created, you’ll see the balances and information for all family sharing group members when logged in once the group has been set up.
Please excuse my depleted Aeroplan points pool – we just made a redemption to go to Ireland in the Summer of 2025!
Benefits of the Aeroplan Family Sharing Feature
The power of Aeroplan Family Sharing is to be able to pool together your hard-earned Aeroplan points and make redemptions that you might not have otherwise been able to afford if you were accruing points alone.
Having a Player 2 is a very powerful tool in the points and miles world and Aeroplan Family Sharing allows you and your Player 2 (or 3, 4, 5, etc.) to unlock the full potential of your earnings!
For example, as we only hold one American Express Cobalt card in the house as it offers free authorized users, we can both use the same grocery credit card to earn points and pool them together for redemptions later on.
Another benefit of the Aeroplan Family Sharing feature is that if one person in your Family Sharing group holds an Aeroplan co-branded credit card, everyone in the group gets access to Aeroplan Preferred Pricing and can make redemptions for slightly fewer points than otherwise possible.
Drawbacks of the Aeroplan Family Sharing Feature
One of the main drawbacks of Family Sharing is that when making redemption for Air Canada or partner airline flights with points, all members of the Family Sharing group will have points deducted.
This becomes more of a problem with larger Family Sharing groups. For example, if you made a Family Sharing group with you, your partner, your parents, and your 3 siblings and you and your partner want to redeem for a trip alone, your parents and your siblings will get some of their points pulled from their account to pay for your trip.
You can see how this can get a bit tricky! We recommend that you limit your Family Sharing account to only people that you take at least 80% of your trips with, such as your significant other. Otherwise, you might get some complaints from other members of your group!
Another drawback is if you or someone in your group finds themselves needing to withdraw from the Family Sharing account. To do this, you will have to call Aeroplan to have someone on the backend remove them. Once removed, that person cannot join another Family Sharing group for 6 months. Additionally, it’s worth it to note that a member cannot leave the Family Sharing group within 3 months of joining.
Conclusion
The revival of Aeroplan Family Sharing has been long awaited and certainly welcomed with open arms. The ability to pool together hard-earned Aeroplan points with members of your household is a great way to maximize the points that you and your Player 2 have earned.
Looking for ways to increase your stash of Aeroplan points? Check out our Miles Ahead podcast episode on Air Canada Aeroplan where we talk about all aspects of the program and ways that you can earn points!
Quentin Tsang
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