Lee A Carney

I called Aeroplan today to inquire about the availabilty of an instant-KK seat on Flight 922 on 28-Feb (YYZ-MCO). The agent told em that the flight was oversold by 5, and yet ITN shows M, B, H, V and Q = 1 (and Y=6, M=4). I'm well aware that I probably couldn't have picked a more popular flight, which is why I checked ITN to see if there were open seats.

Obviously Air Canada will continue to oversell in Y, knowing that they will be bumping a lower fare passenger if they can fly someone at full fare. Sucks if you're the guy who gets bumped, but I guess I can understand Air Canada's motivation here - why fly a passenger at $299 when they can fill the same seat with a guy who will pay $1500.

But it doesn't seem fair that they won't release one of those discounted seats to an Elite member willing to pay double miles, does it? Or is my desire to go to Florida this weekend clouding my judgement?

keithguy

So AC is willing to overbook the flight by 11 in Economy - no big deal really. It doesn't neccessary mean the flight will need bumps as there can be op-ups, people missing the flight (either no-shows or standing by on earlier flights or misconnects).

Lee A Carney

True enough. Yield management at work.

Any advice on my best bet for getting last minute Aeroplan seats (and let's assume I'm willing to pay double miles)? 2 seats, depart Friday evening after 5pm, return Sunday evening, ideally to a sun destination. Or maybe all that shovelling yesterday made me crazy enough to hope this can be done.......

As an aside, wouldn't it be nice if the Aeroplan web site had the ability to show all available reward seats to all destinations for a given date?

B767

Not sure if this helps but if you interested why not check out www.southwest.com out of BUF direct to MCO. They have an early morning non stop and the price was around $ 200.00 USD return. Not sure if this fare is still available but may be worth a shot. As pointed out many times by FlyerAl, BUF is a great little airport, clearing US Customs at the border is a breeze and Southwest is not that bad on this route. May be better than burning 50K, if they would let you. Just a thought.

Andrew Yiu

The number of seats which AC is willing to overbook the flight by depends on many factors. I've seen countless flights where there are still regular W seats available even though the flight is overbooked as a whole.
YVR.

Lee A Carney

Andrew Yiu

Believe me - I am surprised to see how sunny and warm it is here when I got home yesterday. I went from +10 in YVR to -20 in YYZ to +2 in LHR to +20 in HKG to +10 in YVR now - all in 1 week.

shuuy

Whilst I 'sun-it-up' in London (hasn't rained here at all in the 11 days that I've been here), YYC's gotten some -30 and lower weather. It always works out like that, doesn't it?

Lee A Carney

+10 in YVR, huh? 5 hours is a pretty long way to go for a weekend, but it's better than snowy Toronto!

Are the cherry blossoms out yet?

Ken hAAmer

They come out in January.

It's water skiing season now.

Tractor Boy

Aeroplan blacks-out most sun destinations on at least Fri/Sat/Sun for Dec-March so your choices are limited if you are not SE. Even 200% instant KK seats don't override black-outs. Virtually alll other major NA FF programs have eliminated black-outs, but Aeroplan continues to make life as difficult as they can. I'd look at fares out of BUF.

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Saturday nights should be spent with family.

Andrew Yiu

I've witnessed many happy Elites over the past week. Those who were able to upgrade on flights to/from HKG. You will start to notice a trend that some flights will automatically go to C0 at 4 days because Elites can now upgrade from H or higher.

AC gets more $ because those people would just be buying the lowest fare if they couldn't u/g from H. Why would the Elites go fly someone else over the ocean if they could u/g from as low as H while no other airlines allow them to do that?

So are there Elites out there that are really happy with the changes - you bet.

Ken hAAmer

I believe I've been saying that for over a year.

stargold

***Observations about ITN***

I have noticed in the past that ITN can give very inaccurate pictures of space availability. For example, I have never gotten accurate availability levels on SQ, and often wrong on AC flights too.

So, whilst it is a good indicator, it's not always the most reliable (nor is it 100% accurate) way of checking flight availability.

Besides, I doubt an agent will actually lie to you about whether a flight is oversold or not... or maybe I just don't have enough experiences with some agents?

Tractor Boy

Empress: If your logic makes sense, then shouldn't AC extend the policy to Europe and the Middle East?

Aeroplan's main problem is not U/Gs - it offers reasonable U/G policies and is competitive with other NA carriers on this issue (I'm saying something positive about AE here ). Where it is not at all competitive is seat availability - all major NA carriers guarentee seat availability "where you want to go, when you want to go" to ALL members through their instant KK program. Aeroplan
is pathetically uncompetitive on this.

I take some hope in that the Onex execs recognized that seat availability was AE's biggest problem. I await the end of March date that they stated as when improvements would be announced.

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Saturday nights should be spent with family.