Lazarev

Hi!

I have been lurking a long time on this forum (for various information) and have perused search capabilities to garner much better understanding of how this whole game works (occasionally, it felt like drinking from a hose).

I have somewhat awkward question to ask, if anyone can help: what is upgrade availability on TATL flights?

This is the scenario: I'm not flying at all, but I do spend big on credit card (60K+ a year, currently no-fee 1% cash back in groceries). I do travel once a year YYZ - BEG, and I'm yet to go on same airline twice - so, no particular miles (and not a single flight yet on AirCanada). The reason behind it is cheap tickets I'm able to obtain through local travel agency, buying in January. I don't mind locking myself to one airline, but then it would have to be Lufthansa (maybe Austrian), as it is only airline that will consistently support unaccompanied minor all the way to BEG (I need that every other year).

I'm looking at all the Aeroplan options (seems to support spend to earn miles behaviour), and thinking that there might be a way for me to garner enough points to upgrade regular economy fare to business. I'm just uncertain of availability of upgrades/awards in high season. (And I know that dirt cheap tickets I got from travel agency are not upgradable.)

So my question(s) is:
- are there ever Y/B fares that are reasonable price for high season (I usually book 6-8 months in advance, have no problem planning waaaay in advance)
- if I can't find meaningful price on AirCanada website (right now, their "Y" economy is more expensive than minimum Business fare?!?), I would go to Lufthansa (they have upgradable economy at 15% premium to non-upgradable economy): what is the transfer rate of Aeroplan miles to Lufthansa?
- can I even expect to have availability for upgrade, since I'm booking for travel in high season, but 6-8 months in advance?

If all of the above is not possible/likely, I would then look for award tickets. Assuming I can accumulate enough points for 4 TATL (economy or business), do I even have a chance of booking those 6 months in advance? I'm not going to be picky about the exact date, but it is going to be high season (last week of June into July - return last week of August into September). Do I need to book 10 months in advance? Maybe 12 months?

jackal

Since this question seems primarily about Aeroplan, I'll move it to the AC forum where the experts therein can provide further input.

Please note this thread originated in the flame-free Information Desk forum.

jackal
Moderator, Information Desk

Symmetre

Welcome to FT.

Upgrade availability on Air Canada's TATL flights varies by route, but is typically very limited. The airline's top tier frequent fliers (aka Super Elites), who travel more than 100,000 miles annually with AC and spend upwards of six figures in travel expense with them each year, still often find difficulty upgrading some routes, particularly in the summer when demand peaks. As these folks are first in line for available upgrades, those who travel less often see very few opportunities. It is not unusual to find eight or ten Super Elites listed for upgrades on a given flight that may have only two or three available seats.

At present, upgrade availability on TATL flights is even more difficult for Aeroplan members who are not Super Elite (i.e. fly less than 100,000 miles per year with AC and its partners). In the event a seat did become available, that traveler is required to pay a fee to access it - generally in the $500 - $700 range. These upgrades are not available in the lowest fare buckets.

Air Canada's fares do tend to fluctuate, so although you may be able to find a reasonable Y/B fare six months out, there's no saying you won't find an even better deal as your travel dates loom closer. And as you observed, it is not unusual to find discounted business fares selling for less than some economy fares. Air Canada's pricing structure can sometimes appear to make no sense at all, and this forum has many threads on this very subject.

Booking four business class seats on points would be one way to ensure you travel up front, but be aware that Air Canada imposes a hefty fuel surchange on award tickets. A single business class return ticket to Europe will generally cost 90,000 points plus about $1,200 to $1,300 in taxes and fees (collectively known as "scamcharges"). Similar fees are charged by Lufthansa, while other carriers (United, Swiss, SAS) charge far less. Regardless, in view of the spending required to accumulate that many points to begin with (times four), you'll find you're often farther ahead to simply buy four business class tickets from whichever airline has the best deal at the time.

Availability of award seats can also be an issue, especially for a larger group (yes, four is a larger group in Aeroplan's world). Again, there are threads on this forum that deal with this in depth.

I understand that's not exactly the answer you were hoping for, but the simple reality is, Air Canada, like all airlines, has been cutting costs and trying to maximize revenues by reducing or eliminating perks like cheap upgrades. Try pricing your travel using a tool like Google's Matrix (see http://matrix.itasoftware.com/) and you'll often find you can just buy what you need with less fuss and at a lower price.

danapop

Welcome to FT. to properly answer your questions, I think we need a little clarification... You have no-status, so you don't care about the copay the other poster mentioned. This has not affected availability sandro the contrary, eupgrade space has been more plentiful as fewer people are willing to pay the charge to upgrade.

So, I assume you are looking at Y/B fares so you ca use aeroplan miles to do A star alliance upgrade - I have no experience with this and have no idea what fare buckets needs to be available for this to clear...

The cheapest option to you is likely booking the lowest economy fare (tango) and purchasing a last minute upgrade (LMU). Note that these are not always offered and the price range is extreme. I have seen YZ-LHR for $400(good deal) and in February it was $4500 - not such a good deal.

Also to note - it is not uncommon to see latitude fares higher than lowest business because they are an unrestricted ticket and there are heavy restrictions on Z/P fares.

Good luck and happy hunting.

markandrew

Your best hope for consistent upgrades at a fair fare transatlantic is British Airways; you can but a World Traveler Plus ticket for +/- $1300, and use only 10,000 miles each way to upgrade. You earn miles back as if you bought business class so YYZ-LHR is 7,500 miles approximately. You do have to pay any extra taxes or fuel surcharge which tend to be minimal. Reward J space is required but currently availability out of YYZ is very good if booked early.

Lazarev

Thank you for all your answers, this has been very helpful (even if not the ideal answer I'm hoping for).

With those outrageous scamcharges, buying by points will make no sense - I did not expect to see $800+ per ticket in extra charges ($100 to $200 I would pay, but $1000?)

Since I have no status (or at least, will have no Altitude status, I can get Aeroplan "Distinction" easily), can I even access upgrades? What exactly are eUpgrades, and are there scamcharges that I did not discover yet? I have tried searching, but the term is used everywhere, with no clear distinction on what it is, or how it is accessed.

I might resort to buying only 2 tickets on upgrades, if there is no availability for 4. Thank you for confirming that 4 is too much for upgrade availability, I have kind of suspected it since too many folks are fuming about availability.

Now, I seem silly to myself - I'm trying to "play" the game of catching up enough points to allow for 4 upgrades a year for TATL, with no flying to boot. I truly believed I can earn the points (likely true) and use them 8 months in advance to spare my family of economy 9 hour TATL (likely not going to happen).

Symmetre

OP - don't feel silly at all. The rewards playing field has changed significantly in the past few years, and keeping up with all the new realities is not easy at all. Thank goodness for Flyer Talk!

The scamcharges that AC and LH charge are quite high. As a comparison, for a round-trip Canada - Europe flight in an economy seat you're still looking at 60,000 Aeroplan points plus about $650 in scamcharges per person. When you can often buy the very same seat on sale for about $1,100, it shows how little value the points actually have. In this case, 60,000 of them are realistically worth about $450 (i.e. the difference between what you pay on top of your Aeroplan points, and what you would pay if you just bought the seat on sale without redeeming anything). Needless to say, you don't want to be paying a premium to be earning these points to begin with.

If you have the points anyway through your credit card spending, you can redeem for flights on partner airlines that don't eye-gouge you the way Air Canada or Lufthansa do. If you were to book that same economy seat, return flight to Europe on United, for example, it will still cost you 60,000 Aeroplan miles, but the taxes and fees are normally under $150. That's a full $500 less than AC charges for basically the same thing! However, it will likely add a connection or two to your routing, making the travel time that much longer. Whether that is worthwhile or not is up to you.

You could also search availability on Aeroplan partner airlines like Swiss, SAS, LOT, or TAP, since they also don't charge much in the way of fees either (and I'm sure other posters can recommend additional options for you). Booking eight months out should still give you reasonable availability.

Or, as markandrew suggests, say stuff it and fly on BA. If you get an RBC Avion card, you can earn the 10,000 miles to upgrade pretty easily.

jcoop

In a nutshell, eupgrades are given to Altitude elites/super elites, and they are used to upgrade from a Flex or Latitude economy fare to business class, if capacity allows.

Those Aeroplan upgrade certificates are only useable with Latitude tickets, which as you note are often more expensive than discount business tickets. Partly this is because elites can buy Latitude tickets and use eupgrades to instantly upgrade to business and the tickets themselves are very flexible.

It is all very complicated, but for a non-status person you have basically only three options for traveling in business class:
- buy a cash fare (Z class, not flexible)
- use Aeroplan points for straight business class tickets (105,000 points for one ticket to Europe 2) and route through somewhere less than optimal to avoid fuel surcharges
- buy a Latitude ticket and try to upgrade using Aeroplan points. If unsuccessful you can exchange that ticket for another date, buy another flight and save the different for later, etc.

danapop

Or the cheapest option: Tango Fare + LMU

jcoop

I knew I was forgetting something... although LMU (for the OP's benefit, that's a Last Minute Upgrade - an offer at boarding to pay cash to upgrade) are also subject to availability and cost can be variable (what is it, at least $500 per person per direction so that's at least $4,000 cash total?) so not a great option for a once a year family vacation.

Basically none of the options are very good...

Lazarev, you could try doing some serious credit card churning (apply, get welcome bonus, cancel, repeat) with the goal of earning enough points for either economy or business tickets through Aeroplan. Of course then you would have to do some creative routing to avoid scamcharges but at least you could get economy tickets out of the program.

Cana2013

[QUOTE=jcoop;22749151]I knew I was forgetting something... although LMU (for the OP's benefit, that's a Last Minute Upgrade - an offer at boarding to pay cash to upgrade) are also subject to availability and cost can be variable (what is it, at least $500 per person per direction so that's at least $4,000 cash total?) so not a great option for a once a year family vacation.

QUOTE]
I tried couple times to do the LMU when travelling to Europe and both times it costed over $1000 one direction.

flyquiet

Lazarev, the above is all good input. As a relative newcomer, I relate more to the complexity of your task than to the answer to your question, but my 2c is that jcoop has answered your question about "eUpgrades".

You have to fly "butt in seat" to get those. As a self-identified "non-flyer", you can't use eUpgrades, unless you know someone willing to use theirs on you. That is becoming ridiculously difficult and let's say that's a non-option.

Even Altitude members below Super Elite have to pay ridiculous co-pays (or "add ons" in AC-speak) to use eUpgrades to upgrade Flex fares, and those fares are already priced above Tango, so the idea of a "cheap" upgrade for a "non flyer" is pretty outside the AC framework.

Last-Minute Upgrade offers are pretty pricey in my recent experience (e.g., something like $1400 for YYZ-CDG) which could double your fare AND you don't know until 24 hours before the flight if it's even available. You could very well be stuck in the back with $1400 burning a hole in your pocket.
In my opinion, Latitude fares violate your "cheap" criterion and involve the gamble of no available points upgrade or the nuisance of rescheduling, but theoretically that is a path to the Business seat.
"Z" fares are "cheap" relative to other business fares and even relative to Latitude, and the Business seat is a sure thing.
Redeeming Aeroplan points on a Business fare is great, but go read the thread that identifies which airlines don't have the scamcharges. It will not be on AC. You do not have to redeem Aeroplan miles on AC. You can use other airlines in the Star Alliance. Many non FT do not know this. You have the advantage of your lurking to make you wise. The consensus appears to be that Business redemption is the best use of Aeroplan miles, but it appears to take a lot of lead time, or occasionally a stroke of luck, to get the airlines, destinations, and date stars to align to avoid scamcharges.
Good luck.

Lazarev

Thank you all for amazing input. As self-professed non-flyer posting to FF forum, I was worried that my question would be snubbed or worse. This has been wonderful community and I'm grateful for all help.

One thing that I did not properly understand from Aeroplan is that desired business upgrade is impossible to obtain without elite status. (Apparently, I'm not the only one to figure out obvious fact that 50k points are much easier to obtain than $3000 - duh!) Nowhere does Aeroplan come clean in this tidbit, just very generic "use points to upgrade seats from Y/J to C/D". I wrongly assumed it is matter of simple availability. I hoped that booking 8 months in advance would give me a little bit of chance, as lot of FFs are playing R games at T-7. Oh, how wrong was I. To top it off, Aeroplan is not the only one guilty in omitting "elite status required" from reward descriptions - no other reward program comes forward with this info, and now I'm pretty sure it is quite similar in other programs. BA route of -buy economy-get silver status-upgrade- is also worth exploring.

All of this info provided here, steered me in new direction - travel points along the lines of Amex gold or similar. Churning cards, redeeming points for economy with airline with low fuel scamcharges, or transferring over to BA, all look better then straight Aeroplan miles with no status. I can now get a shiny new CC, apply for couple of airlines FF programs and monitor situation with availability and awards fluctuation while gathering points. I still have to see with my own eyes the true value of points, as I have been accustomed to buying dirt cheap tickes for past 7 years (this year, open jaw YYZ-BEG with 5 day stopover in CDG in August for ~$1000). Further complication is that I'm traveling to Europe's black hole BGD, serviced by unaffiliated AirSh.t, ugly cousin that no alliance wants, just merely allows it to coexist by serving unpopular route so big guys don't have to waste planes.

But I still think I can get good use of points, knowing that I'm setting up now - for my travel in summer 2016. I'm still mere non-flying mortal, but gods of FlyerTalk thought me wise. Thank you.

canadiancow

To clarify - Aeroplan is accurate. Anyone, regardless of status, can use miles to upgrade. But you generally need a Y or B fare, which often costs as much as a cheap business fare purchased far enough in advance. However, it does require space, which sometimes is hard to get.

Swiss is actually a nice exception, where they allow YBMU fares to be upgaded. I've basically told all my colleagues to never book lower than U on LX, just in case I'm feeling generous and there's space.

danapop

Is it just positive J space or does it need to have award availability.