canalskater

Hi, I am in awe of those of you who know how to search non computer system reward flights. My previous requests have all been successful.
Here is what I would like to do with my Aeroplan points:


• Fly on an airline that doesn’t charge a lot of taxes
• Preferably J class but will consider economy
• My 16 year old son is flying by himself YOW-BKK around June 27 to July- 3
• I will join him approximately YOW- BKK leaving 10 days later July 7-13
• We would like to return together to YOW, via Europe with approximately 5 day stop before returning to YOW
• The Europe stop would be in order of preference, Barcelona, anywhere in Spain, Paris, anywhere in France

In summary routing would be YOW-BKK-Europe-YOW. We would also consider going to somewhere else in Thailand other than BKK. We would also skip Europe if meant could get a J class to Asia with extremely low taxes.
Thank you.

mudd_stuffin

Seems like you have specific dates. Have you tried using AP booking engine or the ANA tool? You may be late in trying to score a J seat.

Admiral Ackbar

Believe you are about a year too late to be looking for summer J tickets on non-scamcharge airline with such specific dates, but miracles do happen...

jerryhung

Look right in this Aeroplan section
I believe there was a previous thread also for YOW-Europe availability for Sept 2014, and he eventually did find it (not the best routes, but it worked anyway)

You'd have better luck with Economy redemption (75K to Asia 1) vs Business (150K to Asia 1)
FYI - Spain and Paris are not *A friendly, so very few *A carriers fly direct into them (UA has EWR/IAD into CDG I think), as most *A routings would recommend you fly via FRA on LH (big no no because of YQ)

Tools like AwardNexus, Flisea.com, UA website all can help you narrow down the dates first
Find availability for East Coast - Europe first
Europe - Asia/BKK should be very available
Asia/BKK - YOW via Pacific will be very limited

Anyway, do some legwork for us first and we can help you pick options
Good luck

ChrisA330

There's actually a lot of business availability to BKK from YOW during the time you're looking for. Unfortunately it's on airlines that scamcharge. ie: AC and TG.

What's the priority? Business class, dates, or cheapest option. You can't always have all three.

canalskater

In order:
dates within a few days
cheapest
business
Thanks

ChrisA330

You might have confused my comment as an invitation that I would search for you. It took me 5 minutes to find options using Aeroplan.com. You can do the same.

tryinginvain

As suggested, other tools are better - but if you must use aeroplan search segment by segment. You need to know which airlines and which routes you want.

Not the best, but there are several yyz-cai-bkk dates open in J on MS. It's a dry airline and a long layover in cai - but it gets you there in J at almost no cost.

Otherwise, I suggest trying to find at least one long haul segment each way in J and hope the other one opens up. I don't have the time to try and build an itinerary - but here are some segments I found by spending a few minutes searching:

yyz-waw (Lot J) on July 4 & 5. zrh-bkk (Swiss J) July 1 & 17. vie-bkk (Eva J) June 27, 29, July 2, 13, 15, 16. ams-bkk (Eva J) July 8, 15. ist-bkk (Turkish J) June 27, July 7, 10, 14, 16. Maybe a yow-yyz-cai-ist-bkk would be good? I flew cai-bkk in Dec and it was ok.....that's about all I'd say about it.

TATL outbound looks pretty tough - yyz-tpe (Eva) was the only TPAC route I looked at and that wasn't available.

Follow up in this thread and post what you end up booking.

canalskater

I did the Aeroplan.ca search and that is why I came here. Aeroplan.ca mostly does the expensive AC flights. It's not worth 150,000 points and $1000+ in taxes. I was looking for alternate suggestions like the ones going through other cities or other search tools.
Thank you to those of you who did that for me.

mudd_stuffin

So now that you have someone else find flights for you, have you booked them?

canalskater

Thank you everyone for your help. Bangkok is too iffy so changed to Kuala Lumpur. I will then fly with AirAsia anywhere I want to go in Asia.
I have the following Aeroplan itinerary:
YOW-YYZ-Taipei (EvaAir)-Kuala Lumpur (EvaAir)
next route is KUL-IST-Barcelona with (Turkish)
after 5 days in Barcelona will fly:
BCN-Munich-Warsaw(Lufthansa)-JFK (LOT air); overnight in New York and fly Laguardia-YOW

I was able to book 2 tickets J class for 155000 points/ticket. The taxes were $280/ticket.

mudd_stuffin

Nicely done. Taxes were not that high.