It used to depart around noon for years if not decades, I see that they have now changed it.

Or you can just buy Alaska miles outright, they often run promotions to this effect, for example now: Alaska Miles + 40% bonus It's very easy to complement or top up economically your AS account even with just one MasterCard option, especially for West Coasters who can reasonably fly AS to the U.S. and Mexico as an alternative to AC. Alaska will also status match your AC elite status.

I know it sounds controversial to some but a FFP is actually meant to be flown and in that regard, it's actually very easy to earn AS miles even living in Canada because YVR is actually an AS hub and AS Elites earn up to 125% of elite bonus on a long list of airlines, not limited to just AS: https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...-overview.aspx Even if you fly the cheapest economy class fares, it's very easy to earn 225% of miles flown once you make AS top tier elite. And if you happen to fly paid F with BA, that number goes up to 425% per mile flown. After you renew your top tier elite status, AS gives you a fat welcome back bonus of 50K miles, just like that. Can Aeroplan top that? Either way, deeply discounted economy fare or full F fare, AS Mileage Plan is much easier than Aeroplan in terms of earning miles unless of course, your source of "easy miles" is in fact serial churning, in which case you better pray that it lasts. The lack of serial churning is also one of the reason why AS Mileage Plan doesn't have to inflate every other year and why the doomsday predictions will fall flat.


At some point, the churning will be stopped. It's not as if there are 10 different Aeroplan issuers in Canada either. You have TD, CIBC and AMEX, that's it. TD is now restricting churning to every 6 months but more likely than not, they will tighten up on serial churners as they explicitly state and I quote: Better take that as a warning, they didn't add this into the T&C of their card application for nothing.

Serial churners are money losers for the bank, do that often, and you will for sure find yourself on a very special list by the bank soon or later because banks are in the business to make money, not to give you very cheap miles for almost free.

I don't recall saying the Asia Miles' high earn rate has anything to do with living in Hong Kong either. Vast majority of CX regulars churn Asia Miles in HKG via gazillion of sign up offers, not limited to credit cards. But that's not what I was referring to. In any event, this is off-topic so I will leave it at that.

Forgive me but I don't churn credit cards and I actually fly. That said, I suppose what you said is true. BA and AA have such generous bonus promotions for flying (you know, how controversial is that) even the deeply discounted I fares qualify as paid Business class for up to 125K bonus this fall to Europe. There was another earlier this summer, again to Europe for AA/BA/IB for well over 100K after just a few trips in First and Business Not just Europe, AA also has a double mile promo to Asia this fall. So either way you go, Europe or Asia, Oneworld bonus for flying is far more generous than Aeroplan. AA also runs a separate year long bonus mile promo based on status and fare paid for up to 12,000 miles per flight. Airlines giving miles for flying premium fare is less problematic than airlines that encourage churners that cause banks to lose money. When people said AA will for sure devalue their FFP very soon - the same doomsayers have been saying that for years now ever since Delta went to hell. What they failed to understand is AA is still focused on flyers, not churners. CC earning on AA credit cards are virtually all limited to 1 mile / $1US spent, unlike some programs that easily give up to triple or in the case of CX, multiples and multiples of that. While Citi is running a 75K promo at the moment, keep in mind the last time they had a similar promo was at least 4 years ago, so it's very hard to churn AA miles when the only issuer is limited to Citi and it rarely runs special promotions and prevents churning to once every 24 months. So if you want AA miles, you have to fly. If you fly, you will be rewarded generously and not just on premium fares. Incidentally, AA is also financially healthier than both UA and AC, who would have thought!?

I am going to disagree with you and here is why. Many other FFPs also offer generous stopover rules on awards as well, this is not limited to Aeroplan. Let's again limit ourselves to those FFPs for which Canadians can gain direct access to via both flying and CC spending in Canada so I am not about to take you on a pointless theoretical discussion. Here are 2 examples:

1) Singapore Airlines - Kris Flyer (via HSBC Premier World MasterCard)

Business Class Mini-RTW in SQ J

Here is SQ's Saver Award Chart: link

SQ roundtrip saver award comes with one free stopover but you can purchase additional stopover for only $100 each, so you can have more stopovers than an Aeroplan mini-RTW if you so choose to. Source: here

So let's do a "Mini-RTW", shall we?

JFK-FRA-SIN-DPS-SIN-NRT-LAX

Frankfurt (Europe) is the free stopover, you can transit via SIN twice and turned them into virtual stopovers if you so choose to given there are many flights from SIN to DPS to choose from, as long as you stay in SIN for less than 24 hours each time. Bali (DPS) is the destination here. On your way back, you decide to stopover in Japan (NRT) by paying $100 extra and finally you arrive at LAX for example to return to North America. All flights are in SQ J, which you can't get using Aeroplan they are on A380 or 77W.

Cost is calculated as follows: 85,000 miles (US East Coast to Indonesia) + 80,000 miles (Indonesia to US West Coast) = 165,000 miles. If you book online, SQ will give you a 15% discount on an all SQ itinerary. Even in this case, because you want to do extra stopovers, then you must call but if you explain that you can't add stopover online, then the phone rep will manually give you the 15% discount instead. 165,000 miles - 15% discount = 140,250 miles. Add $100 for the extra stopover. Aeroplan will ask 155,000 miles vs. 140,250 miles on SQ on a comparable itinerary except with Aeroplan, you can't fly SQ J on the long-haul flights. You have same number of stopovers.

If you want to do First Class Mini-RTW in SQ F for the same itinerary, the cost is calculated as follows: (110,000 + 107,500) X 0.85 = 184,875 miles. Aeroplan asks for 215,000 miles, quite a bit higher. Not only that, if you want do the mini-RTW in F, the transatlantic portion will have to be either UA or LH. UA F is really just a glorified J class. Even those who like to use the last minute switch trick to avoid LH YQ, no guarantee that LH F will open up in the last minute and your trip must have already begun or that trick will not work. In any event, for the FRA to SIN portion, you can't fly UA or SQ so you will have to pre-book into something else other than LH F hoping that it will open up T-14, once again, not guaranteed and you have to pay all those change fees, which can add up quickly. So it can be quite a challenge, in practice, to secure F class award using Aeroplan miles from North America to Europe then to Asia, a hassle not everyone wants to go through. While SQ does charge some YQ, it is in fact reasonably low, nothing like the level of LH or BA.

2) Alaska Airlines - Mileage Plan (via MBNA Alaska Air MasterCard)

Business Class Mini-RTW in CX/AF J

Here is the AS Award Charts in question: link

Suggested itinerary: YYZ-HKG-JNB-CDG-YYZ

Alaska Air allows one stopover per each one-way award or two free stopovers per roundtrip. You can therefore book the mini-RTW as two one-way trips. Except in this case, you get to visit an extra continent of your choosing other than just Europe and Asia, which is Aeroplan is limited to in its "Mini-RTW".

With JNB in South Africa as the turnaround point, you can fly CX J from YYZ/YVR to HKG, free stopover in HKG, then continue on to JNB on CX J. To come back, you can fly Air France (AF) in Business class to Paris, free stopover there, then back to YUL/YYZ/YVR again in Business class. AS does not charge any fuel surcharge on either CX or AF. The itinerary is terribly simple but it's no longer a "Mini-RTW", it's now a full blown RTW visiting 4 continents on one trip, crossing both norther and southern hemispheres and both Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The cost you'd ask? 62,500 + 70,000 = 132,500 miles Keep in mind Aeroplan's Mini-RTW using Asia 1/2 can't be routed via Africa. Once again, another FFP's RTW award has Aeroplan beaten by a long mile.

What about First Class RTW using AS miles? The answer is it's still very cheap, much cheaper than Aeroplan but the challenge here is the routing and combination of airlines given that some routes do not have First class, unlike SQ. There are a couple of ways to do a RTW in F using AS miles. Here is a sample itinerary:

YVR-LAX-DXB-NRT or ICN-LAX-YVR

You can fly a combination of AS F, Emirates F and AA F

Emirates F is from LAX to DXB then to NRT or ICN. The flight from Japan or Korea back to the U.S. is AA F. Once again, you are entitled to two free stopovers + your destination. The cost is 100,000 + 62,500 miles = 162,500 miles.

Alternatively, one can also do: YVR-HKG-JNB-LHR-YVR using a combination of CX and BA

There are two caveats however, no First class between HKG and JNB. Fuel surcharge applies on BA flights. The overall mileage cost however is cheaper than even Aeroplan's so called "Mini-RTW" in J. You can fly F on CX between YVR and HKG and JNB-LHR-YYZ/YVR on BA F. The mileage cost is 70,000 + 80,000 miles = 150,000 miles in RTW F award. Once again, much cheaper than anything Aeroplan can come up with and you get to visit one more continent.

See the above reply to cow, but I suppose if you are one of those that get miles in a quasi-free fashion via serial CC churning, then paying 50-60K miles more per roundtrip is really not material. Just keep in mind, once TD has grown comfortable with its Aeroplan portfolio and successfully established its foothold in the market which is still fairly new to the bank, it will very likely start to crack down on serial churners that are nothing but leeches. Many US banks have either started to impose no churning of same card within 24 months or outright limiting same bonus/card to once per lifetime, it's safe to assume the Canadian banks will soon follow as they always do.

Asia Miles can be redeemed on the entire CA network. CX and CA own each other's shares, their ownership structure is complicated and CX vetoed against CA joining *A multiple times making CA management very upset until CX finally relented. Short-haul rewards remain relatively cheap using Asia Miles but I'd say Asia Miles' best buck for money is the mixed carrier J class awards under 5000 miles of total distance each way.

Hmm...let me think for a second? Maybe because the banks will start to catch up on this "game"? @:-) And this free source of miles may eventually dry up, probably sooner than you can say: "Oh no!"? But when that happens, Aeroplan reward chart will not revert to the previous versions or get any cheaper.

Something tells me you will have to hasten your plan early by a few years, just a hunch.

Oh? Funny, because I found multiple availability easily on first try from West Coast to DPS via HKG on multiple dates in August. Perhaps you need to visit the BA forum and look up how to use the search tool properly?