Opening Seats on Aeroplan

[drag n' fly]

I was reading in the newspaper on the weekend that Aeroplan is opening all seats up on their airplanes for Aeroplan customers. For example round trip on the flight we paid for to Orlando it would take 279,000 Aeroplan miles (five of us).

 

[coastgirl]

I heard this was coming. I was checking out seats last week, actually, and could see lots more availability than usual, but OMG, the number of points you could spend for a simple itinerary!! I suppose it's a good thing for those super-elite members with lots of points to burn--me, I'm the one trying to scrape together 25000 for a North American round trip and then looking vainly for a way to use it...

Also found it interesting, when I called Airmiles last week, they couldn't give me availability on Westjet for the dates I wanted (Jan/Feb) but could on AC. Of course WJ costs me a LOT fewer pts b/c of our MasterCard, so that wasn't really an option either. Back to planning a year in advance to use up those points...at least AC isn't decreasing the number of seats available at the "Classic" reward level. (8% apparently, though it never seems to be where I need it.)

 

[amw]

I was reading in the newspaper on the weekend that Aeroplan is opening all seats up on their airplanes for Aeroplan customers. For example round trip on the flight we paid for to Orlando it would take 279,000 Aeroplan miles (five of us).

I was under the impression it was already like this Each flight has 5 regular point seats (ie. 25,000 points), but you really need to book them a year in advance. After those are sold, you can purchase any additional seats on the flight at added points -- as long as the flight isn't sold out. They'll charge 35,000 - 75,000 points for those extra seats.

Your best bet is to be an anal pre-planner like myself and book exactly one year in advance. We've never had a problem booking 4 seats on a flight for 100,000 total.

Leaving mid-week to mid-week gives more seat opportunities as well.

 

[drag n' fly]

I was under the impression it was already like this Each flight has 5 regular point seats (ie. 25,000 points), but you really need to book them a year in advance. After those are sold, you can purchase any additional seats on the flight at added points -- as long as the flight isn't sold out. They'll charge 35,000 - 75,000 points for those extra seats.

Your best bet is to be an anal pre-planner like myself

and book exactly one year in advance. We've never had a problem booking 4 seats on a flight for 100,000 total.

Leaving mid-week to mid-week gives more seat opportunities as well.

Don't shoot the messenger

I am assuming they mean more cheap point seats are opening up. Mabey check the Aeroplan website for more info. We do not use them for flights anymore but we do keep accumulating points once a year so we don't lose them and then redeem for gift cards.

 

[bev r.]

This past Friday, I redeemed my points for 4 tickets to London, England at 60,000 points each for the last week of March 2007. I got the dates I wanted. I was even able to get the direct flight from London to Edmonton on the return flight. The going out flight we got pretty good flight times too. I tried looking at flights to Florida for that time period but the number of points were rediculous (no cheap flights left).