Alisamix

American Express Germany currently has a offer that you can pay your balance with points -> 125 MR for 1€. So technically I could exchange 1 MR for a 1 AC, do you think that makes sense? Consider that Germany can't normally transfer anything to Aeroplan, and that one-way Lufthansa F ex-Germany only costs about 300-400$ in taxes.

canadiancow

My general advice to people debating spending thousands of dollars on something like this is that if you need someone else to tell you it's worth it, it's not.

I've effectively been buying 1M+ miles per year through EYW, and spending them, so I have a very good personal model for what I consider good value. My only concern is whether the current economic situation is a good time to spend money on miles, and whether I think I need more miles right now. I've been going back and forth all day. But my question is not whether I can get good value out of the miles.

nexusCFX

I'm trying to decide if I should get in at 90%. 1.1c USD per mile, that's $1100 for 100k miles and free P25K thrown in. It's still not clear to me if that P25K gets extended or not though, if it just invalidates at the start of 2021 it's kind of pointless. Otherwise it's probably worth it for the miles and the eUpgrade credits, and I guess waiving the little bit of YQ on YYZ-SFO redemptions.

jasdou

This could be an opportunity for those with the Amex Platinum card to take advantage of the Double Rewards promo, to effectively convert Amex MR points to Aeroplan at a higher rate than normal.

Normally, you could convert 100,000 Amex MR points to 100,000 Aeroplan miles if you wanted to, at no extra cost.

Now, taking advantage of the 115% bonus miles sales, you can buy those 100,000 miles for 0.014CAD per mile, meaning the purchase will cost you 1400 CAD. You can then redeem Amex MR points against this purchase, at a rate of 1000 points : 20 CAD, which means you would need 70,000 Amex MR points to offset the 1400 CAD purchase. Effectively, this means you can convert Amex MR points to Aeroplan miles at a rate of 1:1.4 if you go down this route. I have omitted the sales taxes but you can adjust the numbers as needed depending on your local tax regime.

The downside is that you are losing out on the Travel at Home promo because if you transfer directly MR -> AE, 100% of the transferred miles count towards the milestones, whereas with this route, only 50% of the purchased miles would count (roughly 23k in my example).

JCKOTT

I find this all muddied. I am considering buying the 250,000 points for the altitude status upgrade but I don't know where I would end up

Current attitude status E35 (earned in 2019)
2020 earned 27AQS, 19kAQM, 4k AQD.

I know my E35 is valid through 2021 but ..

If I purchase the 250,000 Aeroplan points would my current status and by extension next year be E50?

jasdou

If you purchase 250k miles, 50% of those miles (125k) will count towards the Travel at Home promo. As such, you would earn 4,500 AQM, 20 eUp credits and 1,000 AQD. You would need to earn or transfer an additional 125k through other means to level up to E50K status. I think.

And welcome to FT!

JCKOTT

Thanks jasdou.

Given the uncertainty around Aeroplan and the amount of AP miles I would need to get to Altitude 50k I will take a pass. I only wanted 50K to get access to *G lounges in the US.

mileageking

For those with AMEX Plat, don't forget the current earn double MR for every dollar spent promo Apr 21st to July 20 (6 MR on dinning, 4 MR on travel, 2 MR on all other purchases). Unfortunately this Aeroplan miles purchase will not qualify as travel, hence it'll be 2 MR / dollar spent.

So if I purchase 500,000, I'll end up with 1,075,000 (250k x 2 plus 115% bonus) at 1.4c/mile + 13% Ontario tax, equates to C$17k or C$1.6c/mile after tax and will also give me 34k MR (double promo).

C$17k spend would give me few Asia 2 / Europe mini-RTWs: 5 x F @ 215k or almost 7 x J @ 155k. Approx. C$3.4k/F or C$2.4k/J.

Flyingbunny88

I would have to agree with the analysis as i did it too myself yesterday. Thanks for sharing.

LesDorgo

All status is extended, it would end Feb 2022.

I plan to buy the points needed (100,000) for my cousin to get P25 status.

I will buy the max points I can if it is the 115% or 90% bonus.

They should let AC SE 100K buy the points first for the bonus. Then people can buy more points like zone boarding. rewarding the most loyal Air Canada members with the best bonuses.

Adam Smith

For some reason, I thought you said you were burning more like 1.1-1.2 a year the other night.

So in normal circumstances, you have about a year's worth of miles in the account.

I don't doubt you'll be back to travelling as soon as things open up. But I think that with various quarantines, border restrictions, etc, it could be a very gradual opening. So maybe you'll be able to do a trip to Canada in June or July, but I suspect there will be a lot fewer opportunities to, say, fly LH F to Europe for a few days in August or September.

So I don't doubt you'll be burning some points, but could your burn rate be down by 50% or more for a while, potentially?

Not an unreasonable way of looking at it. I would just add that, while a massive devaluation is somewhat unlikely, the talk seems to be more and more around dynamic pricing, and a devaluation could be really awful from that perspective. Have you ever tried to redeem SkyMiles? It's a joke. So you might be in a situation where you're having to find rewards only with partner space in order to benefit from a devalued partner award chart (e.g. 150K points to Europe in J, maybe?), but without the ability to enjoy IKK or YQ waiver on any segments, or pay some stupid price (250K points on AC metal to Europe in J?) to enjoy IKK and YQ waiver.

All speculative, of course, but hard to do anything else when they've given us very little clarity on what the program will look like.

That's all I'm trying to encourage. Doing the same myself

I have to agree and reiterate this advice. Those of us who are experienced at earning and burning miles can get comfortable with the risk of a big purchase like this, but for someone less sophisticated, there's a much higher risk of coming to regret it.

Interesting concept, I really hadn't thought about it that way

canadiancow

Certainly possible.

The vast majority of my intercontinental redemptions do not have AC metal, so that's really no change.

Within North America, I've been slowly moving from Aeroplan to FPs. I do not foresee any further SFO-YYZ/YOW/YUL redemptions. So even there, a complete elimination of fixed mileage and IKK wouldn't have as big an impact on me as it might on someone who lives in Canada and basically has to either connect or fly AC.

That being said, I think it's highly unlikely IKK would disappear. And dynamic pricing on all redemptions is the equivalent of IKK disappearing. SE IKK is defined as requiring the same number of miles as a fixed mileage redemption.

I seem to recall the only statement being made was that most NA redemptions would be dynamic, which means it's possible for some to not be dynamic. And I'd take that to mean IKK isn't going anywhere.

BenSenise

thinking out loud here. just out of curiosity, i had a look at some prices, in cash or points, for flights.
let's say i want to go to YQB in feb for the winter festival. YYJ in business is from around $1175 on rouge flights to around $1500 on a 789 between YVR and YUL.
it's 50,000 aeropesos plus around $200, so the 50,000 points would save between $975 and $1300 depending on the choice of comfort.
buying those points during this "sale" would cost around $800 if i got in at the second tranche at 0.016 CAD. i choose this because i seriously doubt i would get in on the first since they'll be gone in nanoseconds.

so $800 for the points plus tax plus the nearly $200 in "fees" will bring me over $1000. if i chose the rouge flights, the savings would be non-existent. lie-flats on a 789 could save somewhere near $400-500. interesting but not earth shattering.

question about sales tax; if i go to points.com now and look at the purchase price of 10,000 miles, it shows a TOTAL PRICE of $300. No mention of GST or PST. The page gives you the fields to enter your CC information and there's a "purchase now" button which i assume would trigger the transaction. i can't see them adding tax when the summary clearly showed TOTAL PRICE on the purchase page.

when chose a flight on my aeroplan account and need to "top up" with purchased miles, it appears to be 5%, so just GST. Is that correct or is "sales tax" both provincial and federal?

canadiancow

Select your province on points.com. Then the tax will appear.

Adam Smith

I don't think it's likely IKK disappears, but I do think there's a high risk it becomes a much less valuable benefit. After all, at one point IKK allowed access to any unsold seat, and look where we are now.

If you did the rouge flights, wouldn't the savings be more like $175? Of course, you'd earn no AQM etc.

The big risk for someone without SE status and wanting to redeem miles for J at a specific time is availability of I space. Is there currently I space on the flights you want? If so, the risk is a lot lower. But often times for non-SEs, even simple TCONs require stupid connections or terrible timing to find space in J.

If you have flexibility to go somewhere a day or two earlier or later, it's easier, but if you're trying to do a short trip for a particular events, it can be a lot more challenging.

Once you enter your address on points.com, it will calculate the taxes. It appears that only GST/HST is applicable but not PST. So the applicable tax is 5% everywhere except Atlantic Canada (15%) and Ontario (13%).