Originally Posted by
adam.smith
What's wrong with booking a one-way? The cost of a one-way Aeroplan booking is equal to 50% of the round-trip cost. If you like what you can get in one direction, you can book Aeroplan that way, then buy a revenue ticket the other direction. Or sit around and wait to see what opens up and either book a second one-way Aeroplan ticket.
You could also book a round trip Aeroplan award, but continue monitoring the leg you don't like to see if something better opens up later, then make a change at that time.
Yes, I guess so. One way revenue fares are sensibly priced these days I guess? Don't like paying penalties for changing reward flights, however. And those penalties are going up soon, btw.
Originally Posted by
martzipan
I find it ironic that you say this, considering I have redeemed 4 rt flights this year on such AC dominant routes (YYZ-YVR and YYZ-SFO). All about 1-3 weeks in advance, and all in such a way that when push came to shove, I wasn't terribly flexible with dates either. For some of these, I was keen on not just specific dates, but very specific times, too. And got them!
The key, in my short experience, is persistence. When timeframes are around 1 week in advance, availability may pop up tomorrow even if it was not there yesterday. I was checking their stupid website obsessively every few hours.
I must admit though that this strategy is hard to implement if you're planning a vacation and need to give ample notice to your employer, or if you are concerned about hotel availability and pricing.
Now that I think about it though, most hotels actually have very generous cancellation policies, so you can book a hotel for your target date, see if airfare shows up, and if it doesn't, oh well, cancel hotel, follow plan B.
Good for you. Unfortunately I'm talking about vacation dates that have little or no flexibility--not because of work, but because of cruises booked, usually. In the case of Tahiti next year, we will fly (hopefully) AF Premium Economy. They only fly three times a week, LAX-PPT. So fly out of YYZ on Monday, spend the night with friends, then fly to PPT on Tuesday night, arrive Wednesday morning, board the boat on Saturday, with 3 nights pre-cruise at a hotel. Fly back to LAX on the last morning of the cruise, arrive in the late afternoon, on a Wednesday. So it's either a redeye to Toronto or stay overnight and fly out on the morning of Thursday the 19th. At that point don't want to stick around for more days.
I foolishly thought I could grab some biz reward flights for those days--I've managed to do it before.
Waiting until a week before doesn't work for me, especially when I want to book my AF flights months in advance.