Originally Posted by
PrinceWilliam
Hi all,
I'd value some quick feedback from the other frequent travelers here.
I'm an east coast coast Canadian who travels quite a bit, often chaining smaller one-way flights to make longer trips. I visit both Asia and Europe frequently, and will soon be doing lots of intra-continent travel (intra-Asia, intra-Europe, and intra-South America). I mainly travel domestic and my priority is minimizing taxes and fuel surcharges.
I currently have about 300,000 Aeroplan points and 200,000 BA Avios points. I also have about 250,000 Amex MR points.
My Amex gold is coming up for renewal, so I either need to pay the annual fee or transfer the points. My question is about where you think I'll find the best value.
I've found great value with Aeroplan in the past (e.g. North America to Africa for $30, Middle East to Canada for $40, Canada to SE Asia for $60). I've had a really tough time finding value on BA, even with all the helpful websites out there showing the best routes (which almost never seem to be available). The only good use I've had out of the BA program is Montreal - New York, which has been a steal on a regular basis.
As it stands, I'm tempted to just dump them all the MR points into Aeroplan, but I wanted to check with you savvy folks first as a sanity check.
Many thanks!
I'm confused. I know Prince William flew commercial sometimes, but I had no idea he's in the points game too
You've pretty much hit the nail on the head, though. With that many points, you're not likely to find any additional value in Avios unless you can make use of some of the more niche redemptions (ie BOS-DUB on Aer Lingus, or HKG-NRT/KIX on CX F). So I'd probably just convert to Aeroplan - that's fraught with disaster too as they keep devaluing the points, but at least that's a useful program. Ideally though, I'd just blow as many as I could ASAP. I do not recommend keeping more than one or two trip's worth in an account at any time, as past experience indicates this is NOT an appreciating currency.
Another thing you could look into is trading some points with someone. Maybe you can find someone who has a stash of USDM points but really wants to go somewhere only Star Alliance flies. That could be a very worthwhile trade.