Aeroplan tips

[montrealdisneylovers]

Do any of you have experience booking flights to Florida with Aeroplan during the Christmas break? Specifically, is there a time that is better than others (ie when points to fly are reduced). We booked for a family of 4 about 5 years ago during Christmas for 100,000 points (return). Now the points are ridiculous!! You cannot even get that one way. I do not remember if I booked at a specific time then or not.

 

[stefanospops]

I don't have a real tip for you other than I now use my Aeroplan points for car rentals in Orlando as opposed to flights. But I am fortunate to live in the west end of Toronto about an hour and chance from Buffalo airport (with no traffic) so I don't find that using Aeroplan miles for free flights is cost effective relative to flying out of Buffalo.

 

[aristocat65]

I don't really use Aeoplan anymore either, but I plugged in some dates and did see availability for 4 return tickets Dec 18, returning Jan 2. These had one stop on United. I'm sure they won't release nonstop flights over Christmas. As always with Aeroplane, being flexible with dates helps. If you can't get the dates you want try searching for 2, then 3 tickets and see if that helps as it can be hard to get 4 seats on rewards. Maybe you can pay for the 4th ticket, and use some miles for park hoppers?

Good luck

PS remember that the number of miles showing is the TOTAL for all four tickets. This threw me off at first.

 

[amw]

To really benefit from aeroplan, you have to be a priority elite member. If you are, you can click on the priority flight button when you do your searches. It allows all available flights at the lower point value. If you are not elite, you are out of luck as they only have a few seats per plane. Before elite status, I actually booked a full year in advance.

Keep in mind too that with taxes and fees, those "free" tickets are actually around $170 per ticket! You may want to look at other airlines and use the points for something else. I've ordered Universal passes with them, car rentals, etc. or if you plan a short-haul trip elsewhere (ie NYC), that might be a better use of points.

 

[Sunseeker2012]

I tried for several years in a row to secure flights with Aeroplan points and was never able to get flights no matter what dates I would choose. I finally decided to use my points for Hotels and this year I used points for our Park tickets.

 

[minnie56]

You can use Aeroplan on US carriers too originating in the US..just FYI
For Air Canada and Christmas flights, I would say best bet is look as soon as they are in the system usually 350 days prior I think?

 

[schoonersky]

Do any of you have experience booking flights to Florida with Aeroplan during the Christmas break? Specifically, is there a time that is better than others (ie when points to fly are reduced). We booked for a family of 4 about 5 years ago during Christmas for 100,000 points (return). Now the points are ridiculous!! You cannot even get that one way. I do not remember if I booked at a specific time then or not.

I had a hard time booking for Remembrance Day, for just two tickets. Ended up checking obsessively, like 4 and 5 times a day. Low and behold a rather nasty two stopover option came up (Halifax to Montreal to Washington to Orlando) and I took it because I just wanted to use the points and be done of aeroplan. I have been trying to use these points for years and find it very difficult to find anything with them.

 

[Tropics]

In the last couple of years it has been getting nearly impossible to use aeroplan points to any of the good destinations. DH travels to Saskatoon and we never have any problems getting flights but if we want to book to a popular US destination then it's super tough. I wanted to book 3 seats on points to Orlando for this December. I started looking December 2012 even couple of days. The flight times were all bad and most of the availability was on United (not a fun way to travel with a young child). I wanted to use points so I had to suck it up and book a "classic plus" flight requiring double the number of points for something good. Aeroplan's time is over. It's time to start looking for a better rewards travel company.

 

[coastgirl]

THat's good to know, we have some "orphan" points in both our AP accounts since we stopped collecting a few years ago. I forgot how miserable it was to try to book flights...I did notice that the AP miles required for park tickets of various sorts seem better than the amounts required for AM ticket purchases, and AP seems to have more options. So, you've just talked me into using those AP points for park tickets...

 

[papertraveller]

We faced the same issue -- using the Aeroplan points for flights was near-on impossible. We just cleared out DH's account for three passes for Universal this last Christmas.

 

[melbrujack]

We booked a trip to Europe for next month, on my father and FIL's aeroplan points. We have flights from he*l! We are spending 9 hrs in TO, and 4 hrs in Dusseldorff on way to Moscow. We are then flying from Frankfurt and have to O/N in TO on way back, I see there is a flight that will get us back to Charlottetown, but it will cost more money than a hotel to change!

I am sick of Aeroplan too. My only advice is to do what someone else mentioned and look at flights many times a day, as they do change a lot.

We are thinking about changing our CIBC Aerogold to some other CC, but will have to wait until Oct, as we paid for the year. Does anyone have a better recommendation for a CC. I heard Avion from RBC was good. Any suggestions?

Melissa

 

[minnie56]

I have both Aerogold-Infinite and RBC Avion Infinite
Avion is good. Space isn't an issue as long as there is a seat on the flight you wish. They do have a price cap though so you get X amount of dollars redeeming for economy and X amount for business. I find the economy is adequate but the business class allowance isn't nearly enough. Might make a dent and that's about it. Also, Avion requires slightly higher point redemption than Aeroplan. Usually about 5,000 more per flight.

They all have their loopholes

 

[damo]

We like Avion too but it definitely takes more points to get a flight. A normal North American flight is 25,000 on aeroplan but is 35,000 on Avion. That 10,000 is a big difference but you can just about always get flights.

 

[montrealdisneylovers]

Our primary credit card now is the TD Travel Rewards Card. We really like this one as it gives travel dollar credit (1.5% of your charges to the card) for any type of travel related expense. We use it for airfare, Disney tickets, hotel rooms etc. You book and pay with the card then redeem the dollar value to cover the cost of your travel expenses. REALLY GOOD CARD!!!

 

[schoonersky]

We now use Scotiabank Passport Visa and it is a travel rewards card. You get 1 point for every dollar spent, and then the points are redeemed against travel for anything, flights, cruise, package, etc. at a rate of 1 cent per point I think. So for my 100,000 points I get 1000 in travel. It doesn't seem like much but they add up much faster than Aeroplan for me (1 point for every 10 or 20 spent?) and I can use them anytime, for any flight. I can also book through Scotia Travel and save 5% off the price of any flight, cruise, package. So combined this has been working great for us.

 

[Disney Daniel]

Our primary credit card now is the TD Travel Rewards Card. We really like this one as it gives travel dollar credit (1.5% of your charges to the card) for any type of travel related expense. We use it for airfare, Disney tickets, hotel rooms etc. You book and pay with the card then redeem the dollar value to cover the cost of your travel expenses. REALLY GOOD CARD!!!

Sounds like a good option. Another option is using the SPG Amex whereas you can transfer Starpoints to Aeroplan points (along with a large number of other airline programs) on a 1:1 basis plus receive a 5000 point bonus when transferring 20,000 (so 20,000 SPG points equals 25,000 Aeroplan points).