Originally Posted by
WWannabe
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.
Fares within North America on AC or US carriers are priced as one-ways. Other than occasional idiosyncrasies like point of sales and sales taxes, a return trip costs the same as two one-ways. So, really the only disadvantage to you in booking a one-way reward and a one-way revenue ticket is that it could possibly (but not definitely) cost you more to change/cancel should you need to do so.
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.
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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.
I'm not sure what you have in mind from the past, but I remember even 10 years ago when I started paying attention to Aeroplan, it wasn't easy to just snag seats on whatever flight I wanted, whether economy or business. Easier than today, perhaps, but I remember flying YYC-YOW-YYZ-YUL-YYC in 2007 to get economy award seats for a weekend trip to Toronto, because that's what was available.
Understood you may not want to wait until a week in advance given you have pretty fixed plans, but is there really a ton of downside to waiting a bit to see whether more award seats open up? The price of revenue tickets may go up in the meantime, but nearly 12 months out, they're unlikely to skyrocket quickly. You could monitor the award availability for a few months and see what opens up before pulling the trigger on revenue tickets.