You can finally book Air Canada Aeroplan stopovers online for 5,000 points

There's big news from Air Canada's Aeroplan program today. You can now book stopovers online for just 5,000 points, as first reported by One Mile at a Time.

While Aeroplan stopovers were already allowed, customers had to call to add a stopover to their itinerary. With multi-hour hold times, award availability can fluctuate before you can even get through to an agent.

In summary, being able to book stopovers online is a big win. But how do you book Aeroplan stopovers online?

Let's dive in.

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Booking Aeroplan stopovers online

Before we discuss booking Aeroplan stopovers online, let's review the conditions you need to meet for a stopover.

My colleague, Sarah Hostetler, has published a seven-step guide on how to book stopovers using Aeroplan. But here are a few reminders:

• You can’t build a stopover in North America.
• Your connecting flight must be less than double the mileage cost of a nonstop flight.
• You cannot backtrack through the same airport you’ve already visited.
• Your stopover must be at least 24 hours and cannot exceed 45 days in length.

Aeroplan has a variety of partner airlines — perhaps most notably Etihad — in addition to the 26 airlines within Star Alliance. Best of all, you can use any of Aeroplan's partners when booking stopovers. The program also allows you to transfer from one partner to another on stopovers.

To book an Aeroplan stopover, go to aircanada.com. When searching online, tick "Multi-city/Stopover" and "Book with points."

You'll type in your desired travel dates, length of stopover and stopover city.

On the next screen, you'll see the availability of your flight itinerary. In this case, we're offered a flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Brussels Airport (BRU) on Brussels Airlines, a five-day stopover in Brussels and a connecting flight from BRU to Abu Dhabi International Airport (AUH) on Etihad.

To confirm that this was the accurate stopover pricing, I searched for a flight from JFK to AUH without a stopover.

Sure enough, that flight — without a stopover — was priced at 5,000 points less than the one with the stopover.

If you're having issues finding availability, I suggest searching for each segment separately. Once you find award space on your desired flights, you can price it out and book using the online stopover tool.

How to earn Aeroplan points

One of the best parts about Aeroplan is that you can convert credit card points to Aeroplan points across the major credit cards currencies:

• American Express Membership Rewards (1:1).
• Bilt Rewards (1:1).
• Capital One miles (1:1).
• Chase Ultimate Rewards (1:1).
• Marriott Bonvoy (3:1, with a 5,000-point bonus given for every 60,000 points transferred).

That means you can convert the following card bonuses into Aeroplan points:

• American Express® Gold Card: Earn 60,000 Membership Rewards points after you spend $4,000 on purchases with your new card within the first six months of card membership.
• The Platinum Card® from American Express: Earn 80,000 points after you spend $6,000 on purchases on the card in the first six months of card membership.
• Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card: Earn 75,000 bonus miles when you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.
• Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.
• Chase Sapphire Reserve®: Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months from account opening.

Air Canada also has its own cobranded Aeroplan® Credit Card, which comes with a welcome bonus of 60,000 points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first three months of account opening, plus 40,000 points after you spend $20,000 on purchases in the first 12 months your account is open.

Check out our guide to the best travel credit cards to see all the other cards that earn rewards that transfer to Aeroplan.

Related: Why the new Aeroplan card is surprisingly a great choice for everyday purchases

Bottom line

At just 5,000 additional points in any cabin, the ability to book Aeroplan stopovers online makes them far more feasible and, in my book, increases the program's value proposition.

I'll certainly consider transferring my hard-earned credit card points to Aeroplan using the stopover feature the next time I'm ready to book an award flight.