Originally Posted by
nave888
I just found out that my travel next year may have to be on tango fares only, meaning a big drop in my mileage accumulation on my short domestic flights. I usually do 40-60 segments a year within Canada, mostly YEG-YYC/YQR/YVR, with some YYZ and YUL in there too. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on alternative *A programs that may give me more miles/better perks from tango fares than AC moving forward?
Please let me know if you have any suggestions!
What is your primary concern? Mileage for redemption, or status benefits? Do you normally qualify via segments or miles?
40-60 segments/year means you'll likely qualify for E50 (and E35 at a minimum). My advice is not to worry about the Tango thing. For YEG-YYC/YQR you'll be on CRJ/DH3/DH4; it's not like you'll have a chance to upgrade anyways. For all other trips with ML service seat selection is not nearly as big a deal any more since most "priority" seats got switched to "preferred" and non-SE's can no longer access them for free (unless that changes soon).
My experience with lowest logical fare is that about 50% of the time Flex is the lowest fare anyways. If you can get 2 of your YYZ/YUL RT's in Flex you'll likely use up your annual allotment of eUpgrades anyways (or save them for personal trips).
There are 2 main downsides to the Tango fares; lack of advance seat selection and 25% miles.
- Lack of advance seat selection is overcome at T-24 via OLCI so IMHO isn't a big deal.
- Regarding points, there are so many ways to get AE points that these can be made up other ways (FWIW I stopped collecting AE miles through all non-flight related earning mechanisms as I'm sitting on a huge number of miles I'm trying to burn through, I only collect miles for Altitude accumulation, so my view of AE miles may be somewhat skewed). Assuming 50 segments at the 500 mile minimum you'd earn 25,000 miles on Flex vs. 6,250 on Tango (and a fair number of your flights will likely be in Flex anyways). Assuming you hit E50 and selected the tier bonus you'd also earn an additional 12,500 miles on Flex (or 3,125 on Tango). Total Flex miles would be 37,500 vs 9,375 miles - there are often CC sign-up bonuses that can more than offset this difference. If you know you'll primarily be on Tango fares, my advice would be to choose a different select benefit than the tier bonus.
There are also other options available to you. If you want to get an AMEX Plat card you can give up on AC and fly WS. The CC will get you lounge access in all airports (except YQR, which isn't much of a lounge), and you can collect in WS' program (although my preference would be AE's continually enhanced program over WS').