Best use of MR points - Air Canada's Aeroplan?
 

I've tried three times in the past 12 months to book two BC tickets on Delta. Once I booked for 200,000 miles each but we had to cancel the trip because of a back injury. Twice we refused to give 350,000 miles each and went to Air Canada.

The first time was a trip to SCL (Santiago) with a return from GIG (Rio). We got Business Class tickets for 75,000 miles each!!! These tickets could not be held and AMEX was able to complete the transfer online while I had Aeroplan on the phone. The next was even more amazing. I needed two summer tickets to VCE with a return from FCO (Rome). Aeroplan took over an hour to book me on Lufthansa. The agent apologized that no business class seats were available and asked whether I was willing to use 100,000 miles per ticket for first class!!! Again an AMEX instant transfer saved the day.

I am now down to just under 240,000 MR points. My primary card is the Starwood Amex but it lacks instant transfers. I believe that I may start back using my AMEX card and use the Starwood points on hotels. In Venice I have a $480 room for just 12,000 points.

By the way, the First Class tickets I got would have cost $16,000 each if I paid a full discounted fair to Lufthansa. I doubt many do and suspect that the 16 seats going over will be filled with people using miles and upgraded business class passengers. Still pretending that I got $0.16 per mile is fun. Really I just got a little over $0.033 cents per mile (adjusted for miles not earned on a paid ticket) because I would have at most bought an advance purchase business class seat for $3,600. This will be my first ever TATL first class flights and I guess that is worth something extra.

Anyhow, when traveling consider Air Canada and MR points as possible ways to get premium seating for a reasonable number of points/miles.

Excellent post.

I too mostly ditched my AMEX for the Starwood one but now that I have gotten more savvy using alliances, I realize, as you stated, that the instant transfer is worth a lot to me. Add to that AC's very reasonable redemption schedule and the availability on Lufthansa and Swiss to Europe and the combination can be hard to beat.

I have a slew of Starwood points that I too can use mostly for hotels now. Got the BA Visa (as did my wife). Already booked their 2-4-1 special to Israel in First this May and still deciding what to do with my wife's 2-4-1 so I agree it's best to accumulate AMEX MR points again.

Of course the bad news is that things can change overnight!

One other tip - for those willing to pay for Business Class to Europe, you also might consider purchasing 50,000 miles from US Air. Under the current promotion, they will double that amount to 100,000 at a total cost of about $1400 - and you can get BC to Europe - a steal for those who don't have the points and would like BC for less than half price!

Beware of limited availability. You might pay $1,400 for 100,000 miles and find that seats require more than that.

Have bought a bunch of miles from the US offers, including a huge batch when they offered bonuses for "share" miles. No problems redeeming at all. Four of us went to turkey via uk in F this summer, and wife and I did a domestic F trip to the west coast in August. We have three F tix to Asia booked at Christmas too. Great option when you can use purchased discounted miles at US plus earned MR miles to Aeroplan for same itineraries under different PNRs. Must have access to ANA tool or KVS to assess inventories before trying bookings.

Good to know. When trying for South America trip US wanted 100,000 miles and Aeroplan 75,000. Neither had availability on Air Canada down but seats available on US Airways back. Air Canada agreed to book Y down but upgrade to C if available at no cost. US wanted a $150 change fee. So far I snagged one C seat down and the business class cabin has plenty of open seats. Odds are i will get second seat and end up having saved $300 in change fees and 25,000 miles. We have a couple of months to try for that last seat.

US has left me with a bad taste with the change fees when the change is based on lack of availability on the booking date and lacked availability for domestic trips when I needed seats. Glad you have not had issues.

Aeroplan can definitely be a good use of MR points, but it probably isn't always the "best." Other airlines do instant transfer (CO and DL at least) and there are probably some routings that are cheaper on other programs than Aeroplan. You have to do your homework and compare.

I had pretty good experience via DL (shocker, I know) recently. Little problem finding AF availability in J to Europe for a relatively last-minute trip. 20% MR bonus points. No fuel surcharges, instant transfer. One itinerary wouldn't finalize the ticket issuance online and I got a message to call in, and then they charged me $20 for their technological incompetence (without telling me), so I'm still fighting that. And the $150 fee for any award changes sucks.

Yes, AC is best for MR. I got $.17cpm retail. No transfer fees.

I am not really a OneWorld guy, but we did move a ton of MR to BA and used those miles for a trip to DPS in CX F. Tremendous value.


(eek, look at all those abbreviations).

Moderator request
 

It would be helpful if anyone who posts in this type of thread would mention the carriers who operated the flights to each destination. It may be obvious to someone who has made the trip that the only carrier offering F service between XXX and YYY is ZZ, but this isn't self evident to others (including me :) ).

Fortunately, this has not been my experience.

Last summer, we transferred Starwood points during one of the 50% transfer bonus promotions and flew FC is Swiss to Venice and back from Athens. That meant we used 70,000 Starwood points per person to end up with the 125,000 needed for FC! We had friends going on the cruise with us who did not have any points. The cruise included free economy airfare and wanted $2000 per person for Business - in other words, the tickets were valued at $2800 since they gave an $800 credit if you did not take the airfare.

At the time, US wanted 80,000 miles for BC to Europe. I had them each buy 40,000 miles ($1100) and booking them on either Swiss or Lufthansa could not have been easier. And this is without the instant transfers that AMEX MR offers!

Just purchased some miles to bring my leftovers from that trip back up to 100,000. Miles were doubled and we are ticketed in First to the West Coast.
Things change every day but so far we are very happy. But I agree that the advantage of having points with credit card companies that allow you to transfer to a host of airlines is the flexibility to follow the best deal and the best availability of the moment.

Couldn't Agree More:

Example 140k Itinerary

DFW -lh- FRA -lh- [AMS] -lh- MUC -lh- [BKK] -tg- [SYD] -tg- BKK -lh- FRA -lh- DFW

The strange routing is because I didn't want to fly united (or any other us based airlines for that matter). And I like tg and lh (sq f isn't available any more).

Oh yeah that's all in F (except the short FRA-AMS-MUC segments, which are 2 cabin planes).

Though the taxes/fees have gone up, a whopping $300US

For DEN-ORD-AMS-FRA-NRT-HNL-LAX-DEN it was 100k miles in first and $70US in taxes/fees.

Just sucks we can't get in on SQ F any longer.

We have been transferring MR to Aeroplan for a few years now and find the best use for us is a mini RTW in F class. we fly a combination of business and first class to go to Europe where we make an permissible stop; from there to Thailand for our final destination (we then take local flights to travel around SE Asia); then to West Coast USA and another permissible stop; then back to Ottawa.
Our segments to Europe, Thailand then to the west coast USA are in F and the remainder in business. All this for 120,000 points^
Looking forward to another one in late 2011..

No problem! Here are the details, all *A awards:

Turkey trip, London stop: IAD-LHR F UA; LHR-IST C TK; IST-FRA C TK; FRA-IAD F LH; 100K miles each x 4 all booked on US (supervisor granted exception for London stopover)

West coast: DCA-PHL-PDX F US; PDX-PHX-DCA F US; 50K miles each x 2, booked on US

Asia: IAD-FRA-SIN F LH; SIN-CMB C SQ; CMB-SIN C SQ; SIN-FRA-IAD F LH; 120K miles each x 2 booked on Aeroplan and 160K miles x 1 booked on US, identical itineraries

I'm still new to this - I thought it was 120K miles for F to Europe. But you got it for 100K?

Also, what was the exception required for the London stopover? It has something to do with stopovers only being allowed in US hub cities?

These rules still confuse me. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure US<->EU in F is 100k miles, i've booked these before.