UpgradedFirst

I am trying to blow away some aeroplan points so I am looking for best value long haul flights (first class?). Open to destinations. I need some help.

2 people
First class all the way (business for very short hop is fine)
Depart and return to YYZ
From Dec 15, 2018 to April 30, 2019 window
Around 14 days
Minimal surcharge from Aeroplan. Good first class product like Singapore, Emirates..etc.

Try to fly as long as I can. i.e. South Africa for 7 day stay over then head to New Zealand. for 7 days.

How do I search that in aeroplan website? Thank you in advance.

Any suggestions?

Prince Mugabe

How many points do you have to blow?

InTheAirGuy

(null)

jasdou

I suggest you start by identifying Star Alliance carriers with First Class cabins that you would like to fly and narrow down the potential destinations of interest. Then cross-reference to find out who flies to where you want to go. You can use FlightConnections.com to do that.

Emirates is not *A, by the way,

IluvSQ

1) you cannot redeem AE miles for F Class on ( long-haul) SQ, nor for any class on Emirates.
2) Most airlines do not offer F class on short/regional flights, so any F reward almost has to include some J travel.

This week I redeemed the following reward. You have to decide if you consider it worthwhile or not:

YYZ- ( AC J) - LGA // JFK - ( OZ F) - ICN - ( OZ J) -PVG - ( SQ J) - SIN - (SQ F) - CGK - ( SQ F) - SIN - (SQ J) - ICN - (OZ F) - JFK//LGA - ( AC J) - YUL - (AC J) - YYZ
( Stops in Shanghai, Jakarta, and Seoul on the return - the others are connections)

So the 2 longhaul flights across the Pacific are in F, 2 shorthauls on SQ are in F, and everything else is in J.
The week before I come home, if LH F is available I may change the return from ICN to ICN-FRA-ORD/BOS - YYZ.

UpgradedFirst

I have about 440K. I can get more to top up if needed.

UpgradedFirst

How do I find out if this your itinerary is available to book?

IluvSQ

Search leg by leg on Expert Flyer, or Aeroplan site.

IluvSQ

And, although this thread is very outdated, I suggest you look here:

*A First Class Routes Thread

Rowyourboat

See the mini-RTW guide for information on how to book a mini-RTW and how to maximize your flights.

I recently booked an F routing on Aeroplan so here's everything you need to know. These are the bookable *A carriers:
Air China
ANA
Asiana
Lufthansa
Singapore Airlines (short-haul, inter-asia basically)
Thai
United

Asiana has 3 F routes, ICN to LAX, JFK, and FRA. ICN-JFK is seasonal.
United flies everywhere but UA F isn't really worth it.
CA F has lots of routes, and I heard the hard product is pretty good.
Thai F has lots of routes from BKK to NRT, SYD, FRA, CDG, and others.
LH F has good routes from MUC/FRA to SFO/LAX/ORD/JFK/EWR/IAD/IAH/MIA/etc., but only releases 14 days before the flight departure. So you'd either have to book very close to flying, or call and upgrade later. ANA also has lots of routes, the US ones are to LAX/SFO/ORD/JFK/IAD. Pretty good availability.

So you need to decide where you want to go, and a lot of routes have a maximum permitted mileage. But generally speaking, you can get three first class flights in on any given route. A North America to Asia hope (ANA/Asiana/Air China), Asia to Europe (Thai/ANA/Asiana/Air China), and then Europe back to NA (Lufthansa). There's variations where you go from Asia to Australia on TH F, or you go for inter-asia F with Thai/SQ. Even BKK to NRT is a 6 hour flight and a good amount of time to enjoy a F cabin.

Each redemption will cost about 200-215K miles, so you're covered for two people. What helped me a lot in planning was using Mini RTW listing - Turn Left AtTurn Left At. I would just check the "current" rule, enter cities I wanted (JFK, ICN, etc.) and then found valid itineraries. Then I used the United and Aeroplan sites to find availability for segments. Once it was all available for the dates I wanted, I called Aeroplan to book.

ffsim

Great post ^

The only thing I'd add is that an investment in ExpertFlyer could be a good idea if you book a "placeholder" routing in business class and want to be alerted as soon as first class becomes available. Paying a change fee sucks, but as you mentioned LH availability typically only pops up at about T-2 weeks so waiting until the return portion is available may cause availability on the outbound to disappear.

I'd suggest booking as ideal a route as possible once you know where to go, then be open to different routing options to hop into F as those segments become available.

drvannostren

Yikes 450k in miles and nary a clue how to use them.

Honestly OP, your best bet might be to pay and use one of the services to do this for you. With all due respect, it sounds like you've got no clue how to put this kind of redemption together.

Paying someone to do this might get you a better redemption than you can find yourself and it'll save you the hassle of doing it. Keep in mind the windows for flight bookings as well. Not everyone releases F space, not everyone who releases F space releases it in advance, etc etc. There's just so many things you need to take into account before saying "I've got 450,000 miles, I wanna fly in F as far as I can go, oh and there's 2 of us."

ridefar

Awesome post.

At the risk of being pedantic, AI (Air India) has international F class redemptions available. Because I personally think that would be a waste of points, I haven't followed up on how often. But they definitely pop up in my AE searches every now and then. I can't even tell you if they are short haul only (like SQ). But your post was amazing, so I thought it should be complete.

UpgradedFirst

I am open to getting people to search and book for me. Any suggestions? Will they keep monitor F class availability for me until departure?

jasdou

You should check out Award Expert. Here's a very recent example of what they did for a customer: MY THOUGHT PROCESS IN BUILDING A MULTI-CITY AWARD TRIP