Flex Pay for Air Canada and Aeroplan: How Does It Work?

For various reasons, it can happen when booking a flight or vacation to realize that you don’t have enough cash in your account to pay for the whole cost.

Whether you want the flight for a family emergency, to get to a special event, or just to escape the darkness of a Canadian winter, having the ability to spread the price over multiple payments can be quite helpful.

In this article, we show you how Air Canada/Aeroplan’s Flex Pay option lets you do just this, giving you access to flights and vacation packages even if you don’t currently have the funds.

Flex Pay for Air Canada is a payment option available when you book an eligible cash fare, the cash portion of an Aeroplan award’s flight, Air Canada Vacations, flight & hotel package, tour package, or flight and cruise package through Air Canada’s booking portal.

Flex Pay lets you break up the cost of your trip and pay it back over the course of multiple months.

At its core, Flex Pay is a short-term, one-off loan that charges between 0% and 31.99% and gives you the ability to purchase a flight or vacation whenever you want, paying down the balance of the trip cost over a set number of months.

To use Flex Pay for your next trip, simply follow these steps:

Shop for your Air Canada or Aeroplan flight/vacation as normal.

After choosing your flight/vacation and following the prompts, when you get to the check-out page select the Flex Pay option.

At this stage, you’ll need to enter a few pieces of information so that Flex Pay can decide whether you qualify for the loan and with what interest rate and payment schedule. The required information typically includes your full name, address, email, and gross annual income.

Note that for our example, we tried entering $30,000 gross annual income and $70,000 gross annual income, with both amounts giving back the same payment options.

Once your information is entered, Flex Pay will let you know what payment plans you qualify for. You can then select the one you prefer and complete your purchase.

Even when using the Flex Pay option, you’ll still want to also choose the right travel-focused credit card for this purchase to help you earn valuable rewards. With Air Canada purchases, an Aeroplan co-branded credit card like the TD^® Aeroplan^® Visa Infinite Privilege* Card or theAmerican Express^® Aeroplan^®* Card are always a solid choice.

Once you’ve set up your payments, all that’s left to do is pack your bags!

In addition to using Flex Pay for Air Canada when booking a cash fare or vacation, you can also use it when using Aeroplan points to book an award flight or Air Canada Vacation.

As you can see in the image below, depending on the amount, you can select to cover the cash portion of your Aeroplan bookings using Flex Pay.

Since Flex Pay for Air Canada is essentially a loan, you’ll really only want to choose this payment option if you need to book a flight or vacation package and don’t currently have the funds to cover the full cost.

Ultimately, the interest you pay on the loan will eat into any savings you enjoyed when booking.

In terms of how Flex Pay compares to just paying with a credit card, the stand-out benefit is the clarity of cost given up front. If you were to put the flight/vacation cost on a credit card and carry the balance, it would be more difficult to determine the exact interest that was accruing on the expense since you’re likely continuing to spend on the card at the same time.

However, keep in mind that at Milesopedia, we always recommend paying off your credit card balance each month, since carrying a balance and paying interest cuts into the value of the rewards you gain from the card’s loyalty program.

So that said, Flex Pay is a nice option that lets you jump on a good deal, say yes to a trip with friends, or make an emergency trip when needed, while also letting you keep this particular expense separate from your other day-to-day expenses, but ultimately paying for your trip in full when booking is the best way to go.

Flex Pay for Air Canada helps you access flights and vacation packages even if you don’t have the full payment price available in cash at the time of booking.

By breaking up the cost across multiple months, Flex Pay lets you pay back the cost of your trip (plus interest), making it a bit easier for you to get where you’re going.

Regardless of whether you choose to use Flex Pay or not, it’s worth taking a look at our list of the best travel credit cards to see how you can take advantage of their perk, benefits, and rewards on your next journey.