Aeroplan is offering a new promotion where you’ll receive a 35% bonus when you transfer hotel points to its program through August 21, 2017. Even though transferring hotel points to airlines is often not a very good deal, these bonuses often make them reasonable in certain situations and I think this is one of those deals you should at least think about.
Aeroplan is a spin-off loyalty program of Air Canada and has been independently owned and operated by Aimia for almost a decade. However, this soon won’t be the case any longer as Air Canada will be “taking back” its loyalty program in 2020, though Aeroplan will still be around.
Aeroplan is one of my favorite award programs. They are a 1:1 transfer program of American Express Membership Rewards and offer some competitive redemption rates for Star Alliance partners. In particular, their rate for business class travel from North America to Europe can be as low as 55,000 one way. And you can avoid surcharges by flying on any one of these partners:
There are several different hotel partners participating in the promotion:
They key thing to be aware of is that the transfer rates differ for these different hotel programs. I’ve bolded the first two rates from SPG and Marriott because they are the deals that I would consider. But here are all of the hotel transfer partners and their respective transfer ratios.
SPG Members can convert their Starpoints to Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 1 for 1
Marriott Rewards members can convert points to Aeroplan Miles (10,000 points for 2,000 miles).
Wyndham Rewards: Wyndham Rewards members can convert their Points to Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 5 points to 1 mile (starting at 6,000 points for 1,200 Miles)
Best Western Rewards members can convert their Points to Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 5 points to 1 mile
Choice Privileges members can convert their Points to Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 5 points to 1 mile.
Coast Rewards Members can convert their Coast Rewards points to Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 1 point to 1 mile. Conversions are allowed in 1,000 point increments
Club Carlson members can choose auto-conversion (every 10,000 points will automatically convert into 1,000 Aeroplan Miles) or convert as needed (in increments of 2,000; 50,000 or 100,000 points)
Members earn both Aeroplan Miles and Hilton points for the same stay or can convert points to miles in increments of 10,000 points for 1,000 miles.
Le Club Accorhotels members can convert their Le Club Accorhotels points into Aeroplan Miles at a rate of up to 2 points to 1 mile (in increments of of 4,000 Le Club Accorhotels points= 2,000 Aeroplan Miles)
Golden Circle members can convert their Golden Circle Award Points into Aeroplan Miles at a rate of 1 point to 1 mile. The minimum amount of Golden Circle Award Points to convert into miles is 2,500 points (with the subsequent of 500 point increments
SPG
SPG points are usually great for these types of promotions for a couple of reasons. They offer a 1:1 transfer ratio to airlines on top of a 25% built-in transfer bonus when you transfer points in increments of 20,000. So for example if you transfer 20,000 points to an airline you’ll receive 25,000 airline miles.
And what makes this even better is that this 25% bonus stacks on top of the bonus promotion. So 20,000 SPG points would earn you 5,000 points from the 25% bonus and also earn you 8,750 since the 35% bonus is stacked on top of the 25% bonus. So that would be a total of 33,750 miles.
If you value SPG points at 2.5 cents per point and Aeroplan miles at 1.5 cents per point, you’re going from $500 to $506 worth of value with the conversion of 20,000 SPG points to 33,750, so there’s an overall increase in value.
Marriott Hotel + Air Packages
JW Marriott Houston Galleria.
Marriott Hotel + Air Packages can be good deals without any type of promo being offered. They allow you to use Marriott points to redeem for a set amount of miles plus hotel stays at Marriott properties. The amount of miles and the category of Marriott property you’ll receive a free night for depend on how many Marriott points you’re redeeming.
The only real drawback to these is that you must book your free hotel nights consecutively. So whether you get a 5 night package or a 7 night package, you must book them all consecutively, which means you need to find availability for an entire week. Even if you don’t end up staying all 5 or 7 nights, though, the deal can still be worth it.
The most common Hotel + Air Package talked about is usually the 7 free nights at a category 1-5 + 120,000 miles. To redeem for this, you would need 270,000 Marriott points. If you utilize this bonus, you would end up with a 162,000 Aeroplan miles.
At .8 cents per point for Marriott points and 1.5 cents per miles, that’s an exchange of $2,160 of Marriott points for $2,430 of Aeroplan miles PLUS the 7 free nights at a Marriott property up to a category 5. With Marriott Gold Status, it’s possible to stay at a Marriott category 5 and receive up to $320 per night in value. So it’s possible to get over $4,500 worth of value from converting 270,000 Marriott points with this promotion.
I’m not crazy about transferring hotel points from many of the other programs because you lose so much value.
For example, 10,000 Hilton Honors points would be worth $40 at .4 cents per point and they would convert into 1,350 Aeroplan miles. At a valuation of 1.5 cents per point, that $40 becomes $20 worth of value. As shown above, the SPG and Marriott conversions actually brings you more value so for many of these hotel programs, I don’t think it’s worth it to lose value when transferring to Aeroplan.
However, since Aeroplan is also a member of American Express Membership Rewards, these programs may be a great way to top-off your Aeroplan miles so that you have enough for a given redemption.
Final word
Overall, this promo is pretty decent since there’s no tiered approach that you often see requiring you to transfer a lot of points to maximize value. I’d probably only go for it with SPG or maybe Marriott points but I’d also have to have some type of redemption plans for Aeroplan in mind. I would not make this transfer just for the sake of accumulating Aeroplan miles.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and creator of the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned full-time credit card rewards/travel expert and has earned and redeemed millions of miles to travel the globe. Since 2014, his content has been featured in major publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, US News, and Business Insider. Find his full bio here.
Guide to Booking Award Flights with ANA
The reward program for ANA has some very valuable sweet spots for both economy and business class redemptions to pretty much every corner of the globe. In addition, it’s pretty easy to rack up ANA miles from transfer partners making it a solid option for redemptions. However, the booking rules can be a bit confusing to comprehend. Here’s a guide for booking flights with both ANA and ANA partner airlines with ANA miles.
Star Alliance
ANA is a member of the Star Alliance, the largest airline alliance out of the big three (One World, Star Alliance, and SkyTeam). This means that you can use your ANA miles to fly on any of these other airlines (subject to availability).
The trick is to find availability for seats that can be booked with Star Alliance partners. The good news is that ANA is one of the best sites to perform searches for Star Alliance partner availability. Read about how to find Star Alliance availability here.
ANA Partners
ANA also has several non Star Alliance partners that you can book with.
ANA non-alliance partners
How to Get ANA miles from credit cards
Aeroplan is a transfer partner of two major reward programs:
There’s also the ANA Card USA. It has an annual fee of $70 and offers 5,000 miles upon your first purchase. This abysmal sign-up bonus should be a last resort and I would only consider it if you just had to have the 5,000 miles and had exhausted all opportunities with American Express.
Unique program policies
ANA has a few unique program policies. For example:
You can pool points with other family members but they must be registered and you must “apply” while paying for the application fee with 1,000 ANA miles
You can put reservations on hold for 24 to 48 hours by calling in (although YMMV)
Cancellations cost 3,000 ANA miles per person
In addition to these unique policies, there are several other booking policies. I don’t wont to bog down readers with all of them, so here are some of the important ones:
You must begin your trip within one year of ticket issuance
You can apply from 9:00 a.m. (Japan time) of 355 days before your boarding day (not including the date of departure) until 96 hours before departure.
You are able to change the boarding date or flight up to 24 hours before departure.
The name of the passenger, and the name of the individual supplying the miles cannot be changed.
The airline, passenger, sector, and route cannot be changed. (However, in certain cases where both ANA and Air Japan operate flights over the same sector, passengers may switch between the 2 airlines.)
ANA definitely implements some unique booking policies
Fuel surcharges
You are almost always going to incur fuel surcharges when using ANA miles to book award flights. However, United Airlines is an exception, and thus can be a very valuable partner to redeem miles with. Air Canada and Air New Zealand are also great partners to use to avoid or mitigate charges.
The surcharges imposed by ANA aren’t the highest in the industry and many can be quite reasonable, but they are often pretty much impossible to avoid unless you book United Airline/Air Canada flights. For a closer look on fuel surcharges, keep reading further.
Stopovers and Open Jaws
The rules section for “transfer partners” on ANA’s website is a little unclear but after playing around with bookings on the website and calling in to verify, I realized that the below rules apply to both ANA bookings and bookings with Star Alliance partners
1) One stopover is allowed on either leg
2) One open jaw is allowed subject to the following rules:
When the point of departure and final point of destination differ, both locations must be within the same country.
This means you can fly out of Chicago and come back to Houston, for example. (Confusingly, many regions like Europe and the U.S./Canada are considered one “country.”)
If the destination of your outbound trip and the point of departure of your inbound trip are different, they must be within the same area.
This is what confused me because they use the term “area” versus “zone” and then they provide a small chart that doesn’t completely describe the areas. (See the chart below.) Thus, if you’re wanting to explore options for open jaw for inbound flights, I suggest experimenting with the website or calling in to see if the destination of your outbound trip and point of departure of your inbound trip fall within the same “area.”
November 25, 2016 update: the website is clearer on this point now.
For zones in which the destination of your outbound trip and the point of departure of your inbound trip are different, the required number of miles will be calculated by halving the required number of miles for each zone and adding them together.
The stopover can be combined with the open jaw rules for pretty flexible routing that can somewhat make up for the lack of one way redemptions in some cases. For example, I was able to book the following on the website:
Outbound trip:
IAD -> LHR [stopover] -> CDG
Inbound trip:
LHR [open jaw]-> IAH [open jaw]
I called in just to make sure that this was a valid booking and didn’t get a 100% yes — it was more like, “we are pretty sure you can do that but the only way we can tell you for sure is if you transfer miles to ANA…” Thus, while this route should work according to the rules above, I’d always try to double check with ANA before planning on such a booking.
ANA sweet spots
ANA has several sweets spots that are worth mentioning.
Here’s a summary of the sweet spots for ANA:
North America to Europe
Business class: 88,000 miles
Economy: 55,000 miles
North America to South America
Business class: 88,000 miles
Economy: 55,000 miles
North America to Africa and the Middle East
Business class: 104,000 miles
Economy: 65,000 miles
North America to Japan
Business class: 75,000 miles
Economy: 40,000 miles
North America to Asia 1
Business class: 80,000 miles
Economy: 45,000 miles
Keep reading below to see details on booking these sweet spots and to see how much you would pay on fees.
North America to Europe
ANA offers one of the cheapest and most efficient ways to get to Europe with award bookings. Take a look at the award chart below.
Notice the sweet spot from North America:
88,000 in business class
Compare that to the following
Aeroplan: 110,000 miles
American Airlines: 115,000
Delta: 125,000
United: 115,000 miles (140,000 miles if booked with alliance partner)
Here’s a real world example of a flight between IAD and LHR. First, you can see how much this trip would cost on United’s website.
United offers flights from North America to Europe for 115,000 miles but only if you fly with United. Partner airlines require 140,000 miles!
So you’d be looking at 115,000 miles assuming you were able to find United availability. If you booked the same trip on another partner airline, you’d be looking at 140,000 miles!
Now, take a look below at how much this same flight would cost with ANA miles.
ANA requires only 88,000 miles and $183.70 to fly business class roundtrip to London from North America
88,000 miles plus $183.70 in fees to fly business class from North America to Europe is an absolute bargain, espcially given the product level of ANA.
And the deal is even sweeter when you book with Air Canada because the fees go down to $68!
But remember, those low fees are with flying United and Air Canada. Here is an example of what you’re looking at if you can’t get around the fuel surcharges
North America to Europe with TAP Portugal requires $613 in feesNorth America to Europe with Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa requires $497 in fees
As you can see, the fuel surcharges can be pretty hefty and so I’d try my best to find availability on a United or Air Canada flight to avoid the charges.
Getting more value with stopovers
Now let’s say you wanted to add a bit more value to the prior trip from D.C. to London by making London a stopover en route to Paris, and let’s just throw in an open jaw back to Houston so you can see how it works.
So this flight path is going to look like this:
IAD -> LHR [stopover] -> CDG
CDG -> IAH [open jaw]
This route is legal because it has one stopover in the zone of your destination [CDG in Europe] and you are returning to the same zone of your departure [United States and Canada]. (You could also make your second leg depart from anywhere within the same “area.”)
So let’s see how much more we’d pay in fees.
So that’s $155 more in fees to get the extra addition of Paris to your London trip.
If you searched long enough you could probably find better stop over deals than this but I noticed that a lot of the stopovers in Europe would incur pretty significant fees. For a true budget flyer, it might make more sense to just buy a one-way ticket on a budget airliner to your desired stopover location and then open jaw back from there to North America.
For example you could do:
IAD -> LHR
London -> Paris [with budget airline]
CDG [open jaw] -> IAD
And finally, don’t forget about economy flights from North America to Europe… at only 55,000 miles, that’s not a bad deal at all.
Therefore, ANA is one of the best options for getting to Europe from North America!
North America to South America
Getting to South America can be a lucrative way to redeem ANA miles, too. In fact, with the potential for lower surcharges, I’d argue there’s even better value in flying to South America than to Europe in business class. For example, Houston to Rio De Janerio is only 88,000 miles in business class and the fees are only $62!
Here are the miles required by other airlines or this route.
Aeroplan: 110,000 miles
American Airlines: 115,000 miles
Delta: 150,000 miles
United: 110,000 miles
88,000 miles and $62.24 for North America to Brazil in business class!
Getting more value with stopovers
Let’s say you were planning a larger scale trip to South America where you wanted to see Rio de Janerio, Santiago Chile (and maybe take a flight to Easter Island), and Lima, Peru (and take a short flight to Cusco to get to Machu Picchu).
For the same amount of 88,000 miles you could get to Rio de Janerio, Santiago, Chile, and Lima, Peru. You’d still have to cover your tickets from Rio to Santiago, Easter Island, and Cusco, but having everything else worked out with business class tickets for only 88,000 miles would be great.
A sample flight path would like this:
Outbound: IAH – YYZ -> GIG
Inbound: SCL[open jaw] -> LIM [stopover] -> IAH
This is all legal because your inbound leg departs from the same area (SCL in South America) as the destination of your outbound leg (GIG in South America) and you only have one stopover on your route (LIM which is also in the area of your destination).
The best part of this routing is that your fees would only come out to $101.25.
Take a look at what this itinerary looks like booked on the ANA website. Again, when I called in to verify this route I got the same “we’re 99% confident you can book this route but you’ll need to transfer your miles to ANA for us be sure.”
Note: you could probably find better routings not flying through Canada but I just wanted to show how much value you could get from 88,000 miles!
Total fees number to only $101.25!
Also, economy awards from North America to South America can really be bargains at only 55,000 round trip!
North America to Africa and the Middle East
104,000 in business class to Africa and the Middle East in business class is another bargain, in my opinion. Availability might sometimes be an issue, especially without the added flexibility of one way awards but being able to get to places like South Africa and Dubai in business class for 104,000 miles round trip is pretty phenomenal.
Aeroplan: 165,000
American Airlines: 140,000
Delta: 170,000
United: 140,000 (160,000 on partners)
Just keep an eye out for those surcharges, as you can see on the routes below they can be quite pricey. (Partner Etihad is known for having little to no surcharges, so seek availability with them.)
$498 in fees with Turkish Airlines$593 in fees with Ethiopian Airlines
Also, economy awards from North America to Africa and the Middle East can really be bargains at only 65,000 round trip!
Getting more value with stopovers
Don’t forget that Africa and the Middle East are part of the same zone (Zone 8). That means you would be able to combine a trip to the Middle East with your trip to South Africa. I struggled to find some availability for this trip so I wasn’t able to price out the fees but with enough time and willingness you could probably secure this route for a mere 104,000 miles.
Partner Restrictions
There are some restrictions when booking with certain partners that you should be aware of:
Even if your itinerary includes ANA flights, the Chart of miles required for Partner Flight Awards will apply if the itinerary includes even one flight partner airline.
Flight award passengers cannot use Suite Class, First Class and Business Class on certain aircraft flown by Singapore Airlines (A380, A380 and B777-300ER).
Flight awards for Hawaiian Airlines flights can only be used only be used for flights within the Hawaiian islands.
When you book directly with ANA you are subject to different rules. They operate with a different map and on a seasonal basis.
They have low season, regular season, and high season, which change for different years. Take a look at the season chart for North America/Europe and Japan.
There are some real sweet spots for getting to Japan and Asia 1 (China, Guam, Hong Kong, Macau, Philippine, Taiwan).
The following rates apply during low season:
North America to Japan
Business class: 75,000 miles
Economy: 40,000 miles
North America to Asia 1
Business class: 80,000 miles
Economy: 45,000 miles
The drawback is that you’re going to have to pay fuel surcharges for ANA flights. The good news is that they really aren’t that bad. In fact, as you can see below, the total fees for flying ANA from North America to Japan are actually cheaper than those including a United flight!
Since there is one partner leg on this trip, the partner rate of 90,000 miles applyOnly 75,000 miles and $85 in fees for round trip business class to Japan is great!
Remember, that while one stop over is allowed on ANA flights, no stopovers can be made for flights departing from Japan.
Final Word
So there you have it, ANA is one of the most valuable transfer partners of American Express Membership Rewards and Starwood and should definitely be considered an option if you’re planning a trip from North America to any of the zones discussed above.
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and creator of the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned full-time credit card rewards/travel expert and has earned and redeemed millions of miles to travel the globe. Since 2014, his content has been featured in major publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, US News, and Business Insider. Find his full bio here.
Guide to Booking Flights with Aeroplan Miles
After several disappointing (and quite drastic) devaluations over the past few years, Aeroplan miles aren’t quite the valuable currency they once were. However, there are still some valuable perks and ways for you to redeem Aeroplan miles that surpass other airlines. This article will highlight some of the most valuable ways to use Aeroplan miles when booking trips.
Star Alliance
Aeroplan (Air Canada) is a member of the Star Alliance, the largest airline alliance out of the big three (One World, Star Alliance, and SkyTeam). This means that you can use your Aeroplan miles to fly on these other airlines (subject to availability).
The trick is to find availability for seats that can be booked with Star Alliance partners. The good news is that Aeroplan has one of, if not the best, websites to perform searches for Star Alliance partner availability. Read about how to find Star Alliance availability here.
How to Get Aeroplan miles from credit cards
Aeroplan is a transfer partner of two major reward programs:
I personally value the transferability to Aeroplan because I live near a United Airlines hub and fly them often. United transfers at a 2:1 ratio from SPG and is not a transfer partner of American Express Membership Rewards, so I originally thought I was out of luck. However, because I can book United flights with Aeroplan (sometimes with far fewer miles as shown below), I really value the transfer potential here.
There’s also the TD Aeroplan Visa, which offers a 25,000 mile sign-up bonus. You get the 25,000 miles with only $1,000 in spend within the first 3 months of account opening and the $95 annual fee is waived the first year so it’s not a bad deal.
These three options make it pretty easy to accumulate miles for Aeroplan and can make life a lot easier for folks who rely on United Airlines for reward seats.
Avoid costly fuel surcharges
The first thing to look at when redeeming Aeroplan miles is avoiding fuel surcharges. These fees can put a huge dent in your wallet and really take away from your savings.
For example, take a look at the next two flights below.
Notice anything different?
There’s a huge difference in the price. It’s a difference of $190 USD vs $834 USD due to fuel surcharges, so always do your best to book with a partner that does not incur fuel surcharges when booking with Aeroplan.
The following airlines do not carry surcharges when you book them through Aeroplan:
Air China
Brussels
EgyptAir
Ethiopian
EVA Air
Scandinavian
Singapore
Swiss
Turkish
United
LOT (has small surcharges)*
Stopovers and Open Jaws
Aeroplan is one of the rewards programs that allow for stopovers and open jaws and they are pretty generous with those. If you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, I suggest reading up on maximizing open jaw and stop overs. In short, stopovers allow you to break up a route so that you can spend time somewhere on your way to your destination. So if you are flying from Chicago to Paris, you could stop over in Geneva en route to Paris.
Open jaws on the other hand allow you to return or depart from from a different destination. So, for example, you could fly from Chicago to Paris and then have your return route be London to Chicago. You would be responsible for getting from Paris to London, however.
Stop overs and open jaws can get a little complex but they can add significant value to your redemptions, essentially offering you free one-way flights.
Air Canada has very generous open jaw and stop over rules.
So here’s a breakdown of the Aeroplan rules on stop overs and open jaws.
On roundtrip rewards, stopovers are permitted as follows:
Travel within Canada or between Canada and the Continental USA (not including Hawaii/Puerto Rico):
One stopover permitted in addition to the point of turnaround. One open jaw is permitted in lieu of the one stopover.
Between Canada/Cont. USA and Hawaii/Puerto Rico/Mexico/Central America/Caribbean:
Rule for rewards containing only Air Canada flight: Two stopovers are permitted in addition to the point of turnaround. One open jaw is permitted in lieu of one stopover.
Rule for rewards containing a minimum of one flight on a Star Alliance partner other than Air Canada: One stopover is permitted in addition to the point of turnaround. One open jaw is permitted in addition to the one stopover.
Intercontinental travel (travel between two continents):
Two stopovers permitted in addition to the point of turnaround. One open jaw is permitted in lieu of one of the two stopovers.
Intracontinental travel (travel within the same continent) except for travel within Canada/Continental USA, or between Canada/Cont. USA and Hawaii/Puerto Rico/Mexico/Central America/Caribbean:
Stopovers are not permitted. One open jaw is permitted.
North America to Europe
Aeroplan is one of the best ways to get to Europe from North America. Photo by Daniel Gillaspia
I think the best way to utilize Aeroplan miles right now is to book flights from North America to Europe. For Aeroplan, Europe is divided into two regions (Europe 1 and Europe 2). I’ll use a booking to a country found in Europe 1 as an example of how lucrative these redemptions can be.
Europe 1 consists of the following countries:
Austria
Belgium
Denmark
France
Germany
Ireland
Italy
Luxembourg
The Netherlands
Norway
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
The United Kingdom
Let’s say you want to go from Chicago to Paris in business class on Swiss Airlines. This trip will require 110,000 Aeroplan miles. Compare this with the miles required when booking with other airlines:
United: 140,000 miles (with alliance partners)
American Airlines: 115,000 miles (no stop overs)
Delta: 125,000 miles (no stop overs)
As you can see, it’s a great deal but the deal gets even better. That’s because on international flights, Aeroplan allows:
“Two stopovers permitted in addition to the point of turnaround. One open jaw is permitted in lieu of one of the two stopovers.”
In this case, the “point of turnaround” would be Paris and so you’d be able to book two additional destinations with this itinerary, free of charge. I’ll show you how it would work.
Let’s say you wanted to visit Geneva, Switzerland and Brussels, Belgium in addition to your destination: Paris France. Your trip would look like this:
Chicago (ORD) -> Geneva (GVA) [stopover] -> Paris (CDG)
Paris (CDG) -> Brussels (BRU) [stopover] -> Chicago (ORD)
In order to find availability for this route, I would suggest researching on Aeroplan’s website, segment by segment to that you can find the best flights available and then call in to book them. Below are the steps I recently took to search for the above trip, segment by segment.
Here’s the first leg, from Chicago to Geneva.
The second leg from Geneva to Paris…
Now you want to head from Paris to Brussels…
And finally, it’s time to go home again to Chi-Town.
So let’s breakdown how much you’d spend if you booked these reward flights separately.
You would have spent 155,000 miles, or 45,000 more miles for these flights if you did not utilize the stopovers! Instead, you’re only using 110,000 miles to see three countries in business class for a grand total of ~$175 USD in fees — pretty remarkable value in my opinion.
And let’s see how much you would be paying in cash for these same flights.
Chicago (ORD) -> Geneva (GVA): $7,617
Geneva (GVA) -> Paris (CDG): $430
Paris (CDG) -> Brussels (BRU): $603
Brussels (BRU) -> Chicago (ORD): $3,025
The total cash price of these flights is $11,675.
Subtract the taxes and fees and you come out to $11,500 USD worth of value. The cents per mile value for your 110,000 redemption thus comes out to 10.45 cents per mile. That is a great redemption rate!
Many people value Membership Rewards at around 2 cents per point so if you transferred Membership Rewards to Aeroplan for this redemption you arguably more than quintuple the value of your points!
One way awards
With Aeroplan you can book one way rewards for 50% of the value as a round trip reward. Don’t get confused if you come across articles stating you need to be traveling to or from North America to book a one-way reward ticket — that rule was changed recently in December 2015. Now, you can book one-way rewards for 50% of the value of a round-trip ticket from anywhere in the globe.
No stop overs on one way flights
Aeroplan does not allow stopovers on oneway flights. From their rules:
“Stopovers are not permitted on one-way flight rewards.”
Lap-child fares
Aeroplan is known for having some of the best lap-child fares. Basically if you’re going to be flying with an infant on an international flight, you’ll incur the following expenses:
Economy Class – $50 or 5,000 Aeroplan Miles
Premium Economy Class – $75 or 7,500 Aeroplan Miles
Business Class – $100 or 10,000 Aeroplan Miles
First Class – $125 or 12,500 Aeroplan Miles
These are some of the best rates that you will come across, so if you’re going to be traveling with a little one then definitely consider Aeroplan.
Cancellation fees
The cancellation fees are pretty reasonable for Areoplan. If you cancel a booking 22 days before departure, you pay $90 and get your fees refunded and points redeposited to do as you please with them. If you cancel within 22 days of your departure, you must use those points within one year of booking on a single reservation, or you lose those miles.
For example, let’s say you have a flight booked for next week and you cancel it today. You will then have one year from the time of booking to use those 110,000 miles. But if you use that credit for a 60,000 mile redemption, you lose out on 50,000 miles so be careful. Also, if you cancel within 22 days of your departure, you won’t be charged the $90 fee until you rebook your flight.
Phone service
Aeroplan has some of the best customer service phone representatives that can make finding your flights much easier. Sometimes the reps might even be able to find you flights that weren’t showing up on the Aeroplan website. Unfortunately, they charge you a $30 fee for booking over the phone and it’s very rare for them to ever waive the fee. But considering the level of service and potential savings you might come across, the $30 fee isn’t that big of a deal.
RTW options
I’ll have to reserve another post to discuss the RTW (round the world) options at length but Aeroplan is known for having some valuable “round the world” redemptions due to their stop over and open jaw policies. To read more about booking a RTW trip with Aerplan check here.
Overall, don’t discount Aeroplan, especially if you’re interested in getting to Europe from North America with a couple of stopovers, because that redemption value is definitely among the best!
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and creator of the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned full-time credit card rewards/travel expert and has earned and redeemed millions of miles to travel the globe. Since 2014, his content has been featured in major publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, US News, and Business Insider. Find his full bio here.
How to Find Star Alliance Reward Availability
The Star Alliance is the largest of the three major airlines alliances (Star Alliance, Sky Team, and One World). If you’re not unfamiliar with airline alliances, they are programs that allow you to book tickets on partner airlines with miles from another program. So, just as one example of many, the Star Alliance allows you to book United flights with Singapore Airline miles.
One of the biggest issues with booking alliance partners is finding availability, avoiding surcharges, and knowing how to execute the booking. This article will focus on finding Star Alliance reward availability but will shed a little bit of light on the other two factors.
List of Star Alliance Partners
It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with all of the different Star Alliance partners right off the bat. Here’s a list of all of them to date.
As you can see, there are 27 different airlines that make up this alliance. That means that for each airline, you could potentially book up to 26 different airlines with their miles. With so many options, searching for availability might sound overwhelming.
The good news is that you can pretty much find all of the Star Alliance availability by just focusing your searches on a few websites. These are the the websites for: United, ANA, and Aeroplan (Air Canada), and Singapore Airlines. After reviewing these websites, you should have a thorough idea of the different routes you can book.
Searching United Airlines
Photo by Christian Junker
United’s website is one of the best to use for a few reasons. For one, I think it’s pretty simple and the layout will show you a full two months of availability for all classes. This is far superior to those sites that force you to look at one day at a time, or even sometimes one day and on air fare at a time. It’s also easy because United doesn’t even require you to have a MileagePlus account and to log in to view reward seats.
To get started, simply go to the United website and begin your search. Be sure to select “Search for award travel” to ensure that you’ll be pulling up results for awards. On United’s site, you can search for one-way, round trip, and multi-city trips.
When searching on United’s website you will be looking for “Saver Awards.” These are going to be the only potential seats that you will be able to book with alliance partners. You’ll easily see “Saver” listed for business and first class seats but pay close attention to the economy seats because the “Saver” designation is in a different area and in green.
United has a nice color system that makes viewing these at quick glance pretty easy.
As you can see, United provides an easy way to view the availability for each class of Saver Award over a time span of two months. Don’t forget to check the white boxes for availability that “may” be there.
If there are multiple legs, be sure to double check that each leg of the trip is the kind of class that you want to fly. If the class is different for different legs you should see the red “mixed cabin” as seen in the image below.
57.5K United miles for a one way flight to London from Houston
To get more details regarding the class fare, simply click on the “Details” icon and full details will drop down on the flight. As seen below, you can see everything from the types of meals offered, the class for each leg, the exact flight time, which airline operates which leg, etc.
As you scroll through the different flights, you’ll see the airlines noted right beneath the departure and arrival times and locations. As seen below, the flight is operated by Air Canada, a Star Alliance partner.
Multiple legs
I don’t ever have trouble finding reward flights with two legs but some people have trouble finding flights on United’s website with three or more segments. I’ve been able to find 3 segment rewards flights a number of times on United’s website, so it might just depend on the route. However, it’s never a bad idea to search for your flight leg-by-leg, just in case you might be missing out on something.
Important reminder: If you hold a United Mileage Plus Explorer Card or have status with United there’s a chance that you might see more reward availability than is actually available to other alliance partners. To ensure that you aren’t viewing increased availability, do not log in to your MileagePlus account when searching, or better yet, search the United website while browsing from Google Chrome Incognito or a similar private browser.
In addition, be on the lookout for “phantom reward” space, which are reward spaces that show up on a website but actually are not available to you. This happened to me recently when I tried to book United saver awards with Singapore Airlines. I called up Singapore Airlines about 4 times but each time they told me there was no availability. After I checked ANA, I saw that there was no availability and realized I must’ve seen the dreaded phantom rewards.
Searching ANA (All Nippon Airways)
Photo by Christian Junker
Unlike United, ANA requires you to have a rewards account with them before viewing reward availability. So first make sure that you sign up for their program. Their “application” appears a bit more daunting than any other frequent flier program I’ve encountered and they even have signage on their website as if you were applying for a credit card and were going to get a hard pull on your credit. But don’t worry, it’s nothing serious, just your standard contact information.
To get started on searching for rewards on ANA, make sure you select “Award Booking” in the bottom right corner when you input your search criteria.
No one-way flights
The functionality of the search tool isn’t bad but note that you can only search for round-trip or multiple-segment trips — you cannot search ANA for one way reward flight any longer. If you try to you will get an error screen popping up telling you that you are not allowed to book to single legs.
Thus, I suggest just picking a random date for your return date on a roundtrip in order to view reward availability segment by segment.
Once you select your search criteria you’ll be able to see the availability based on a weekly timeline if you select the “+/- 3 days” option. Click the dates with seats available to move forward with the booking process.
ANA allows you to view the final fees and mile requirements even if you don’t have the requisite miles to complete the booking, so it’s easy to see exactly how much you’d pay were you to book through ANA.
The biggest advantage to searching the ANA website is that it usually shows all of the alliance partners (with some exception mentioned below), which is very handy for airlines like Singapore Airlines which don’t usually show up on United or Aeroplan.
Multiple Legs
Most of the time, ANA is pretty good about showing multiple legs for rewards flights but just be careful when trying to find certain airlines, such as South African Airways.
I tried to find the same route from DFW to CPT that I found on United’s website but none of the routes showed up on ANA. Even when I broke the flight down into segments, the only leg that showed up was from DFW to EWR. Thus, not only was there nothing showing up for a multiple-leg trip, even nonstop South African Airways flights that showed availability on United and Aeroplan weren’t showing up.
That’s why it’s always good practice to check each of these websites when looking for your flight. You want to make sure that you fill in all of the gaps.
Searching Aeroplan (Air Canada)
Photo by Caribb
In the past Aeroplan’s website has caused many frequent travelers a bit of grief due its slow speed. However, recently speaking I haven’t had much trouble with it and actually consider it to be among the best.
Aeroplan does require you to sign up but that takes all but two seconds so it shouldn’t be an issue. Once you get your log-in information, sign in and click on “Use Your Miles” and then on “Travel.”
You should find the search process pretty straight forward.
Similar to United, you can scan for airline carriers on the left and also click on “Details” for full specifics on your flight.
When booking partner airlines with Aeroplan, you always want to be cautious to ensure that you’re not incurring unnecessary fuel surcharges. For example, take a look at the next two flights below.
Notice anything different?
There’s a huge difference in the price. It’s a difference of $190 USD vs $834 USD due to fuel surcharges. United is one of the Star Alliance partners that Aeroplan does not force you to pay fuel surcharges. So always do your best to book with a partner that does not incur fuel surcharges when booking with Aeroplan. The following airlines do notcarry surcharges when you book them through Aeroplan:
Air China
Brussels
EgyptAir
Ethiopian
EVA Air
Scandinavian
Singapore
Swiss
Turkish
United
United requires 30,000 more miles to get to Paris from Toronto than Aeroplan!
There’s another difference you should be made well aware of when booking as well. Above is the cost and fees for that same flight from Toronto to Paris but it shows what you would pay if you booked on United’s website. As you can see, you’d be paying about the same in USD but you’d be using 30,000 more miles for the booking!
I’ll have much more to say on maximizing your redemptions on Aeroplan later but this is a prime example of the things to be aware of when booking through alliance partners. If you’re not “in the know,” it can be really easy to lose out on thousands of points.
Multiple legs
Aeroplan is known to have good multi-segment search features, but again, I think you should always check on all three websites when trying to search for multi-leg flights. In addition, I would still break the flight down and search segment by segment to ensure that you’re seeing the maximum availability.
As an example, the screen shot below shows only two Star Alliance flights departing on this day but United’s website showed more than that. Granted, the additional flights on the United website included an airport change (JFK to EWR), it still goes to show that you need to be thorough with your research.
As an added note, check out the redemptions for DWF to CPT on economy on United versus Aeroplan. This time, United has the cheaper option, only requiring 40,000 miles for a one way economy ticket versus the 50,000 miles required by Aeroplan. This is another reason to make sure you check with the different websites: you can double check that you’re looking at booking the best rates for your trip.
United is 10,000 miles cheaper than Aeroplan from Texas DFW to South Africa CPT
So that’s it. It can be a bit time consuming to go through three different websites to search for different flights but if you really want to make sure that you’re not missing any availability, then searching all three of these websites for Star Alliance reward availability is a must!
Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and creator of the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned full-time credit card rewards/travel expert and has earned and redeemed millions of miles to travel the globe. Since 2014, his content has been featured in major publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, US News, and Business Insider. Find his full bio here.
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