lespoir

Aeroplan points have already devalued so much that generally these days, they have long become useless junk accumulation concept.

If you are not a frequent flyer, using accumulated miles to redeem an economy seat is almost like, or sometimes it is a better option to, buying a seat with cash. If you want to redeem a business class seat, it will be extremely hard for you to find one.

Frequent flyers face similar options, but generally have better access to the business class seats. Airlines offer this better access to more business seat capacity to the most frequent flyers for the sake of their routine business.

alexbc

I am Elite now and get benefits flying with AC, but I haven't seen any Aeroplan point benefits so far. Also, I'm confused why they're asking 85 or 100K for econ flights where their own chart shows only 60K is required???

km101

The value of each mile totally depends on the holder.
In the OP's case those miles represent a $700 savings per ticket. If that is the difference between going to London or not going to London, then that is a good use of miles.

My personal best uses of miles are 15K short haul last minute flights, or J on UA for the wife while I fly paid J. That way she gets a near free J seat, and I gather more miles and climb the status ladder. Win-win.

DJ Bitterbarn

Some of us only do that when we're trying to make a case to the Mrs

Or when I want to delude myself and feel really good about a reward booking, I'll price it out at current market price in ITA. I know it's voodoo math at its finest, but those are some big numbers being thrown about and they look impressive on paper. I know I didn't "save" $34,000 on my last redemption (even though ITA says I did), but I did save a few thousand over a similar Y ticket and got J/F instead. And I get to feel like a travel genius for a few minutes.

I just had a discussion with a friend about the value of points, as he was just about to give up, convert all of his miles to gift cards rather than pay taxes on a "free" ticket, and instead buy a Y ticket outright. In the end we worked out that what he wanted to do was possible, but it was extremely difficult to do with conventional thinking (e.g. I want to go to XYZ, I will get Aeroplan to show me XYZ via ZYX and take whatever comes up). Instead we had to ask what he wanted to do and how flexible was he on this plan (e.g. did it need to be direct - for which I said there is nothing I can do for him) and although I couldn't get his "free" ticket down to proper free, I did find a way to reduce it to under $500 for two in J, plus a quickie LCC hop (not on FR) for less than the cost of UK APD (that adds the chance of them visiting us again). For the restrictions we had to work with, this is probably the best I could have done, and any way you slice it he is looking at two J tickets for half the cost of one Y ticket. He thought this was a fine idea.

What's the point? The "value" of a mile is up to the person using the points, but it is a function of how much effort you want to put in and how flexible you are in using them. If he wasn't flexible in routings then his points were pretty much worthless since he's never flown long-haul J and has was looking at it purely from a money factor.

Personally, I would call it good value so long as the trip you were planning on taking (i.e. not just wishful thinking, prepared to take out card and pay planning) comes out much (i.e. half or more) cheaper than what you'd pay in Y and in J or better.

KathrynInCanada

IKK is a benefit to SuperElites that converts a revenue seat to a reward seat on a flight where the reward seats are already taken. At no additional points required. It is a great benefit if you are bringing a spouse along on a last minute trip or if your dates and routings for travel are inflexible. But it is no available in J on all flights.

Off the top of my head, there are several ways to upgrade a flight.

1. Be a status member with eUpgrades and buy a more expensive ticket in a fare class that is upgradeable and then hope your upgrade goes through a few days before the flight (we call this Aerolotto since you win sometimes and lose more often.) This is, I believe, solely an E50 and higher benefit, lower status members don't get eUpgrades.

2. Use your Aeroplan points to buy a Star Alliance upgrade. This is severely restricted and 'expensive' so considered very poor value for points. If I understand it correctly, there is not guarantee of an upgrade. This is available to any Aeroplan member with enough points.

3. Buy a Last Minute Upgrade (LMU) offered when you check in. This is offered to anyone (aeroplan member or not), including those traveling on a reward ticket. Search LMU in the forums for threads that talk about price and availability. This appeals to me more because I don't pay more for the chance of a upgrade as I would if using eUpgrades. It is a straight monetary transaction, no luck involved, except as far as the flight having upgrade room available and checking in early so the offered LMUs are not all taken.

yyzprincess

I am with OP. For award tickets in J or F it is worth to pay several hundred dollars in YQ for most direct route. Small price to pay for not having to do a milk run to save few hundred dollars in YQ. Even in J or F Milk Run is a Milk Run. When, it comes to award travel. I do not want a tour of gate areas of the world to save few hundred dollars in YQ. I am happy to pay several hundred dollars more in YQ sans tour of gate areas of the world thankyou.

Let’s keep in perspective, with an award ticket in J or F one is still saving thousands of dollars. I agree with the poster YQ charges are a drop in a bucket for long haul J & F award tickets.
Doing 6 segments in J or F for award ticket to save few hundred dollars in YQ is not my idea for a premium travel.

There is a case to be made for doing milk runs on revenue ticket because of tangible benefits, status, additional e-upgrades and considerable saving $$$ by scheduling shorts airport meetings.
For example for business travel to LAX, I will route YYZ-YEG-YVR-LAX.
Do 3 hours layover in YEG & YVR book Airport meetings, saving my company costs of travel to YVR & YEG on another day.

canadiancow

eUpgrades are given to all status members, from P25K to S100K.

rankourabu

and this makes you the perfect AC customer, exactly who AC wants.

And those of us who are NOT happy AC dipping into our pockets for hundreds of dollars, will be in the seat next to you without being scammed using a real FFP.

chinatraderjmr

I have to disagree. As someone who regularly buys full or discounted F international tickets ( well, my company does at least), Awards are very valuable & in many cases the restrictions are far less then a full fare ticket. If I buy a ticket in F from DXB-JFK round trip I can change my date as often as I like but that's about it. And if I buy it in A class, many times I can't even do that but a saver LH F award not only can be changed as often as I want (for a small fee if not Elite & no fee if Elite) but I can stop in Europe for free on my way over or back. I can't do that w full fare LH or EK tucket unless in the case of LH I am willing to pay even more then the regular F / A fare DXB-JFK

Granted, not many people pay full F but many do pay full unrestricted business fares that can cost many thousands of dollars. If you are one if those people then every award you get in F or J is worth quite a bit of money

lespoir

If you are 35k elite, you are not "frequent" enough to receive more Aeroplan benefits. You have to propel yourself to at least 75k or 100k levels, in order to begin to see more seat access.

Less frequent flyers only have limited seat access, so you really have to bank all your savings in exchange of a reward seat. So it used to cost 60k Aeroplan points to get a reward seat to Europe, but over the years as people build up mileage savings, redemption years come to airlines, so they don't want to give out these seats (they decide rules generally). So at a low level, you just can't find any of those legacy "free" seats. However, Air Canada is more than happy to give you one such seat now considered as the revenue seat, and its value can be measured as a market value. Since the legacy seats are supposed to be cheap, or supposed to be free (equivalent to deeply discounted fares), the revenue seats are sold as the rack rates, say $5000 per seat as a full fare economy to Europe. Using the same $0.01 per AP mile, now this seat will cost you 500,000 to book. You know you will not book it, and airlines also know you will not book.

But in case you book it, it still achieves the airlines' original goal: find ways to honor old contracts while wiping out your accumulated miles.

How to distinguish less frequent flyers and true frequent flyers? (1) Airlines give more miles to their top tier flyers and help them to accumulate more miles in order to match the inflation or they have to spend more miles to book those revenue seats as well, (2) give them slightly better access to discount seat booking. These two measures are important because airlines need to walk thin lines and make sure true frequent flyers are not pissed off en mass.

When Aeroplan was spun off from Air Canada, it was probably more than a desperate measure to unlock revenue potentials from the original Air Canada. In long run, as airline business has become a broken business model, more than twenty years of Aeroplan accumulation could not be just thrown to the drains, how to allow reward seat redemption becomes urgent, as billions of miles saved will have to be allowed to redeemed over time.

I can imagine the executives running Aeroplan would have to scratch head everyday to think of ways to make the billions of AP miles disappear. Hire a Harry Porter! But there is an airline business to run, there is legal procedure not making all these so obvious so they loose in a court, there is negative publicity.

So there is not a lot for flyers to do, other than playing the games at the same time. One thing is very obvious: unless you are a frequent flyer, banking Aeroplan over long time and dreaming a good reward seat holiday, would not be a great idea.

Most frequent flyers these days would not really value much about building a mountain of AP miles; they are still useful and particularly if they are the casual outcome from the travels. The best values and benefits of being a top flyer come from other things.

danapop

what is IKK?

Stranger

Answer above in this thread. Six articles above yours.

TimMinYYZ

I disagree. As others have noted (see below, e.g.), the value depends on the holder. I am non-SE and get way more than 0.8 cpm.

Not dreaming. If you save your miles for opportunities where you get good value, you can beat 5 cpm. I just came back from a trip where two of us flew J YYZ-SIN, returning from NRT-YYZ. Value of >7 cpm. Some will argue that I wouldn't have paid for the J seat, so it's not a valid comparison, blah blah, but they have no idea what I'm willing to pay for. Again, depends on the holder.

To beat the dead horse. Yes.

canadiancow

I agree.

Where I am now in life, I could afford an annual long-haul trip in J, but it would be a significant expense, so I wouldn't do it.

However, that doesn't mean that a J redemption is only worth a Tango fare. If I were paying cash, I'd book Flex. So at minimum, it's worth that. Except it's J. So... it's worth more.

Does this mean I would do an RDM MR at 5cpm? No. But it doesn't mean my miles are worth less than that.

danapop

I think there are two fundamental questions here that get lumped into one:
1) How much is an Aeroplan Mile worth to us?
and
2) How much is an AP Mile worth to AP?

Question one can virtually not be answered as it is wholly based on personal preference. If I feel there is value is using 33K to get an iPod - that is how much a mile is worth to me. With flight costs that fluctuate on a minute-to-minute basis, it is impossible to peg a value of an AP mile to a flight. Sure, we can use the law of averages to determine your average value, but the number of variables is astronomical. My point being, if your reward has value to you, that is the value of your Aeroplan miles...

Question Two, on the other hand, is a much simpler answer. An Aeroplan mile can be considered what it costs for a merchant to supply that said mile. I believe it is 1 cent per aeroplan mile (Please correct me if I am wrong). To further support this theory we can look at Altitude Threshold Gifts. Take the 60K threshold give package. You can choose 5000 AP Miles, 1500 AQM or $50 for amazon. This would indicate that a standard aeroplan mile is worth one red discontinued penny where an AQM is worth 3.33 cents per mile.

Lastly, for frequent flyers who collect AQM, calculating the value of a reward is much more difficult as you have essentially two valuations of AP miles in your account and no "easy" way to determine the ratio of status miles to reward miles.

When it is all said and done, does it really matter if there is a value on the Aeropeso? Its not currency so we have the wonderful ability to assign whatever value we feel it is worth to us.

Cheers,
DP