Originally Posted by
tryinginvain
You're not going to find the flights you want on the aeroplan site. You need to use other tools (united, ana, etc) to find the available award flights on non-scamcharge airlines and build your itinerary yourself. Then, you call Aeroplan and give them the dates & flight numbers and pay the $30 telephone booking fee. Not a quick process, at least not for me. I spent about 2 weeks researching the last one before I found something I wanted to book.
I did my first mini-rtw in Y and realized after my 2nd one in J what a mistake that was. Seats, food, lounge access, IFE - many reasons why it's worth it in most people's opinions.
Thanks for the tip, I started playing around with a couple different sites and going much better than just looking at aeroplan. How far in advance should I be booking?
Keep in mind the only long hauls I have done is to Paris, Barcelona, London and they have all been on Air transit. I'm only 25 and good with going cheap for a little while longer. I am just getting a lot of points now as I travel more and more for work so rather save them for multiple trips rather than dump than on one.
Next year for example I want to do Australia, Istanbul and Rio/sao paulo that's a lot of points needed. I am also exploring putting in stops along the way if time permits, singapore for example is somewhere I want to go (and know someone there). I did a rough calculation, I will now be doing approx 50-60K status miles plus 30-40K in points from CC and hotels etc so probably going to pay for one of the flights out of pocket.