WaytoomuchEurope

Hello Geniuses!

My wife has been asking me for years to take her to eastern Canada. I am not stuck on any one city over another.

Looking to maximize use of Aeropesos where possible. Looking to spend ~1 week away. Looking in the summer of '19. Originating in YVR. Really it's all wide open and I'm looking for input from the people who know Aeroplan the best. That's you folk!

Cheers,

WTME

tcook052

As this is the Air Canada & Aeroplan forum let's please confine the input to Aeroplan redemptions. OP is encouraged to seek more general Maritimes tourism info in the FT Canada destination forum.

Regards,

tcook052
AC forum Mod.

Symmetre

Fly into YHZ, rent a car with unlimited kms and drive from there. You'll have far more Aeropeso availability flying into YHZ than anywhere else. It's certainly the best bet if you're redeeming for J, since many east coast destinations are only served by CRJs or turboprops. Or - worse yet - rouge.

YHZ is more or less central to everything, so you can do a cook's tour and see a little of NS, a little of NB, a little or PE and still be fairly close to your airport. I'd recommend against doing an open jaw booking, i.e. flying into YQM and leaving from YHZ or YYG for example, simply because the car rental costs will be much higher if you don't return the vehicle to point of origin.

Feel free to PM if you want where to go / what to do suggestions that aren't directly relevant to the forum.

kevinharding

As Symmetre says, open-jaw car rentals in the Maritimes are ridiculously expensive. I agree with the suggestion to fly into YHZ. It's tempting to fly to YYT, but the ferry complicates matters. You could fly there and then take a short hop to YHZ and see more of the other provinces.

I don't believe Air St Pierre is on the Aeroplan redemption schedule - too bad, because you can fly to little French outposts from YYT. Bring your passport! There's also a ferry.

WaytoomuchEurope

Great input so far! Thanks for the tips, I've already got a much better idea of how to approach this.

yyznomad

I agree with Symmetre's gist of flying into a "homebase" like YHZ and then driving around. I truly believe that region is best experienced via driving, IMHO.

And yes, I've done something similar before. Big Canadian eastern/maritime roadtrip after renting a car out of YQB.

I can't comment on YHZ availability since I've always been doing IKK when booking such trips.

jasdou

yyznomad

I think s/he was talking in reference to not having mainline J.

FlyerTalker70

Im in the same boat as everyone else fly to YHZ and make it your home airport whilst visiting the maritime.

One thing to consider on the way back is whether you want to take advantage of the free stop over benefit with Aeroplan. Since you’re travelling between YVR and YHZ pretty much the whole country is available as a stop over. Montreal and Quebec are great if you want to experience culture and historical sights, Mount Royal is very pretty in in the late summer and autumn time. Ottawa is another possibility, that way you can tick off the NCR from your bucket list. Some FTers have mentioned YGR in the Canadian Caribbean but availability can be limited. If you’re an AVGeek can’t go wrong with Gander, which used to be the international gateway for aviation. Then ofcourse there’s Winnipeg, Thunder Bay, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton, none of which I have visited so I can’t comment. Finally if you’re feeling adventurous try Yellowknife or Whitehorse to experience the 24 hour sun and unique aboriginal culture.

Safe Travels,

James

YEG USER

Stranger

Can't you fly to PEI (on E75s) then continue to maybe YHZ on the same reward and finally come back from there? Or to NFL? Also look at ferries and open jaw.

Lots of possibilities there.

fin 645

Just got back from PEI and can highly recommend it. AC flies into 3 NB cities, YFC, YQM and YSJ - fly into the latter, see the tides on the Bay of Fundy, drive to PEI across the Confederation Bridge and back on the ferry to NS, visit YHZ, then back to YSJ to complete the loop. No great driving distances involved, and a good taste of 3 Provinces.

arf04

FlyerTalker70

Just thought I'd add that YHZ is arguably the logical choice for the maritimes. Having flown to YHZ and YSJ I can understand the appeal to YSJ (i.e. it's a small airport, there's no queue for security and there's also no gates or services ). OTOH you have to keep in mind that YHZ has way more flights going out of it than an airport like YSJ. If your return flight goes sideways there will always be way more options flying out of a YHZ than a YSJ. The other benefit to YHZ is you'll also have access to the MLL (did I mention YSJ hardly has a gate let alone a MLL ).

Also, FTers can correct me if I'm off base here but I think OP could also add a stopover stateside on these rewards as well, so long as it doesn't exceed MPM (i.e. he could do something like YVR -> YHZ -> SFO -> YVR or YVR -> YHZ -> BOS -> YVR for instance). Also if you've got more than week next summer to spend enjoying travel, you may want to look at booking an international itinerary with Aeroplan which lets you add 2 stopovers en-route. I've personally used this benefit before to fly YYZ -> DXB then DXB -> CAI then CAI -> ZRH then ZRH -> YYZ all for the same amount of points as a YYZ -> DXB roundtrip. In fact some members on this community have put together round the world tickets using this approach. Again, this may not be for everyone but certainly a great opportunity to stretch those Aeropesos before they can only be used for flights between YTZ and YUL on a sunny day with Porter

Safe Travels,

James

skybluesea