I love Airmiles. I think, anyway!

[coastgirl]

So, have been doing lots of investigating to see the cheapest way to get to Orlando from Nova Scotia. (We used an accumulation of Aeroplan points from my Aerogold Visa for our May/June trip, but AC is just more trouble than it's worth.) When we moved back east last year we started collecting airmiles, mostly at Sobey's but also one startling foray to Lawton's (200 pts in one trip, spending about $100 on stuff we needed anyway.) And after threatening to discontinue the Aerogold for years, dh finally got an Airmiles Mosaik Mastercard in February. In my general research, I found out we could get to MCO from YHZ for about $1500 for 4 in December. (We're looking at Dec or Feb.) Pretty good, but still thinking a good "Ding" from NH would save us 50% of that.

Checked our Airmiles account tonight, and we are dangerously close to having two free flights! With the Mosaik MC we only need 1400 low-season pts per ticket. Less than a year of collecting and we're that close. I'm figuring by the fall (if I watch all those bonus miles offers in the flyers) we'll have what we need to book two free tickets, then buy the other two, hopefully for less than $800. Flying from Halifax in the winter is much preferable to driving to the closest US airport even if it did save us big bucks. AND I don't have to deal with smarmy AC service, we get to have fun on Westjet. I am so proud of dh for doing the research and finding this good deal for us! I had all this inertia built up for the collection through my Visa, even though it was costing us a couple-hundred bucks a year to do it. What a clever dh.

Now, if anyone has any caveats to offer about using airmiles, I'm listening. I know it's really frustrating and often difficult to use AP points--hoping AMs are easier to deal with.

 

[donkthemagicllama]

I just got the WestJet Mosaik card recently, and so far my experience has been good. We (DW and me) booked a flight from Calgary to Vancouver for 800 miles each about 3 weeks out in May with no trouble, and booked a flight from Calgary to Orlando in September in May (for 1400 miles each) with no problems. We've still got over 3000 miles after just a couple years collecting. Since we spent quite a bit on an extended family trip with WestJet, we have a free companion flight that we can use, so we're planning to go to Hawaii next spring. Needless to say, we're thrilled with it! As long as you're going somewhere that WestJet flies, it seems to be a great deal.

-donk

 

[daver]

We used airmiles in February to go to DW, A family of 5 was 7000 airmiles from Halifax, we had to buy about 300 airmiles to get the last ticket. As Westjet only reserves 6 tickets per flight, book your tickets as early as you can. Then you can book your stay after you get your tickets. With the taxes and insurance for the family it was about $900.00 return. Not too bad considering the cost pp for flying from Hfx.
I booked way in advance and about 3 months before the travel date Disney offered water parks and more and PH included with the package, so we called and got the promo which saved about $600.00.
We booked our flight about last July and now have 3100 airmiles already, so realistically we can use airmiles every 2 years to fly to Disney!

 

[CdnDisneyNut]

As previously mention book as early as possible as there is only a certain number of seats per flight that are available to redeem for Airmiles. And there is the additional taxes that need to be paid. When I was investigation prices for the trip this fall the taxes where around $130 per ticket.

Think that will drive to Buffalo and use the Airmiles to buy park passes.