Air Canada and Hopper: new flight cancellation option

The Cancel For Any Reason option allows customers to cancel their flights up to 24 hours before scheduled departure, and receive an instant refund of 80% or 100% of the original booking price.

This option is available for the following fares:

• Standard Economy
• Flex Economy
• Premium Economy (lowest fare)
• Business class (lowest fare)

Hopper, the Montreal-based travel app, now offers business-to-business commerce services with Hopper Cloud.

Take this Montreal-New York flight, for example. When you select your flight, you will be offered two cancellation options without reason, with one refund option at 80% and the other at 100%:

You can therefore choose the option that suits you best, or simply decline the purchase of Cancel For Any Reason, and continue to the payment page, where you’ll see the total cost including the selected option.

As indicated, this offer is only available at the time of booking, you will not be able to add it once the booking is complete. If you choose this option and request a refund, please allow ten working days for receipt. Hopper uses Paypal’s Hyperwallet services to process refunds, depending on the user’s preferred method of payment.

You should also bear in mind that Air Canada already offers fully refundable fares, as well as refundable fares for a fee. So it’s up to you to calculate whether you’d prefer to pay the Cancel For Any Reason fee from Hopper that allows you to get a refund, or rather to go with one of the two refundable fares offered by Air Canada, which includes other benefits such as seat selection, checked baggage, and more.

Fees for Air Canada flight changes and refunds vary depending on the type of flight: within Canada, U.S., international, sun destinations and Flex Economy. All fees are detailed here.

Let’s take the example of the choice of fares for this Montreal-Lisbon flight:

It may be more advantageous to choose the standard economy fare and add Hopper’s $137 Cancel For Any Reason to cover your flight at 100%, rather than choosing the Latitude (and fully refundable) fare, which costs a total of $1,848.

The latter includes many other advantages (free checked baggage, more Aeroplan points, Préférence seat, standby), but if these advantages do not interest you and you simply wish to have the possibility of being reimbursed,Hopper’s Cancel For Any Reason may be preferable, although it will be impossible to recover the $137 cancellation fee.

Here is the total amount for the standard economy fare with 100% Cancel For Any Reason:

This new partnership between Air Canada and Hopper offers greater flexibility to customers who wish to cancel their flight and obtain a partial or full refund without having to pay the full price of certain higher fares. Recently, Air Canada also announced the addition of Apple TV+ and new in-flight amenities. It will be interesting to see how companies like Hopper offering financial technology solutions can improve the travel industry.