Euroflyer

American, USAirways and Delta have all announced specials of only 15,000 miles for USA & Canada tickets until Nov. 15.

Does anybody think AC will be matching these anytime soon? Perhaps after Canadian Thanksgiving?

Just thought I'd ask.

skofarrell

Not an AC expert, but doesn't AC already offer a 15K east of the Mississipi "short haul" award? This isn't matched by any of the US carriers.

Euroflyer

Yes, they have the 15k for North American short-hauls. I'm wondering if they'll match the entire continental USA & Canada for 15,000 miles specials that the other airlines are offering, though.

Andrew Yiu

I doubt we will see it on AC. We might see the return of award special for booking online. AC already has the double miles promotion in place for the next 3 months which is a lot longer than all the other airlines.

Shareholder

Unlike AC, most US carriers don't offer short haul and long haul NAmerican awards, just the single variant. Also, AC is now in its discounted award period for elites, so a short haul usually 15K is available for 12K, and a 25K long haul is down to 20K. It also discounts its J-class domestic awards by 5K at this time of year too. So there is no real need for them to offer a further discounting, but they might. This "sale" runs from October 1st through December 14th, and restarts on Janurary 16th through to the end of February.

If UA agreed, AC could offer a similar discounting on UA award flights.

Euroflyer

Delta, American, USAirways, Northwest and now United have all announced 15k specials.

When will AC join in?

Shareholder

I think we already answered you several times. They already have, to all intents and purposes with the current discounts available to elites. A further consideration: Given the 50%+ premium of the US dollar over the Canadian one, AC's awards could be said to actually be cheaper than US ones, even at their new discounted levels.

A Hospitality Class ticket between YYZ and LAX might go for US$300 on a seat sale. This translates roughly to C$450. So you can say that AC's current award at 25K is actually worth 17.5K in UA miles. And the current discounted level of 20K is actually 12.5K in UA terms, thus AC is actually cheaper than UA, or any other US carrier.

Now I know some will say, yes but it takes more flying to earn AC miles since discoutned domestic fares only earn 50% mileage. But since this has been posted by a Europe-based FFers, I assume even discount miles earned will be at full value. And as we are talking for the most part US/transborder flights, such credits earned would also have been at full mileage.

I rest my case: AC awards are actually cheaper than UA, AA, DL, NW and the others!

FlyerAl

I'm having difficulty understanding your formula. Maybe it's because math was never my forté - I don't know.

Whenever you fly AC, you earn the same amount of mileage regardless if you choose to deposit them in Aeroplan or Mileage Plus. Also, the award levels are similar (except UA lacks the 15k AC short haul award). So it would cost you 25,000 Aeroplan miles or 25,000 Mileage Plus miles for a YYZ-LAX ticket. I don't see how 25,000 Aeroplan miles translates into 17,500 Mileage Plus miles.

FlyerAl

In addition, I think it's difficult to rate a program as having cheaper awards than another. It all depends on one's status, travel patterns, the type of award, methods of earning rewards, etc.

If you're going to rate a program based on cost of awards, it would make sense to calculate how much $$ you spent to achieve that award. It would be different for everyone.

For example, I could say that US Airways Dividend Miles has cheap awards. If I were to fly a YYZ-PIT-LAX r/t next week, I would earn:

5,260 Actual Miles
5,260 Gold Preferred Bonus
+10,520 Amex Triple Miles Bonus
--------
21,040 Total Miles

At the current reward sale, that would be enough for a free ticket to Mexico/Caribbean at a cost of CAD$450 (using your example), with 1,040 miles leftover.

But then for someone else, they might do a lot of full-fare travel within Canada - which makes the Dividend Miles program useless for them.

So I think it's really hard to compare programs on an equal basis.

[This message has been edited by FlyerAl (edited 10-05-2001).]

Hussar

whoops, wrong topic

[This message has been edited by Hussar (edited 10-05-2001).]

NoahVail

To follow up on Shareholder's point,

--
If UA agreed, AC could offer a similar discounting on UA award flights.
--

does anyone know if this is possible?

Cheers.

blackjack-21

Okay, maybe I'm missing something here, but... Isn't the issue "competition"? Sure the elites have reduced point requirements now, but why would you use a slightly reduced awards amount on AC, when the other major North American carriers are encouraging people to get on their aircraft using by using less award mileage. Just as AC usually follows the other NA majors in seat sale pricing, so should they now be trying to fill their aircraft by competing with the mileage awards reduction.
And--aren't the mileage points carried on the airlines' balance sheet as a liability? This would encourage people to use some of their mileage points, thus decreasing, by however little, the carriers liabilities on their balance sheets.
Maybe I'm oversimplifying and missing something, but this makes sense to me.

bj-21.