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Serious question about switching airlines

Serious question about switching airlines

Old Sep 27, 2007, 4:58 pm
  #1  
Original Poster
 
Join Date: May 2006
Programs: Aeroplan SE, HH Diamond, Hertz 5*
Posts: 22
Serious question about switching airlines

Hello all,

I am in my second year in a row as an AC SE. I am racking upwards of 200 - 350 K points per year. And I have realized that for travelling, these points are pretty much worthless. The cost in points is extremely high. Most flights even within Canada (unless something like YYZ-YUL) are typically ClassicPlus asking for more points.

Since 95% of my travel is cross border travel, I am hoping that among this crowd there is some experience here. Both Delta and AA promised to transfer 50% the points I currently have in AP to theirs plus give me full status if I move my business to them so lost points is not the issue. The real question, is whether their points system are any better than APs.

I ask this, as I see they want 78000 points to simply fly my wife and daughter to Moncton. Considering I flew my parents and brother and sister and nephew from Montreal last Christmas for 75000 points, I find this to be excessive. Outside of the points being spent on "luxury" items that I pretty much have no interest in, I am finding Aeroplan to be pretty much useless.

Thanks in advance.
macyyz is offline  
Old Sep 27, 2007, 5:11 pm
  #2  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
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Originally Posted by macyyz
Hello all,

I am in my second year in a row as an AC SE. I am racking upwards of 200 - 350 K points per year. And I have realized that for travelling, these points are pretty much worthless. The cost in points is extremely high. Most flights even within Canada (unless something like YYZ-YUL) are typically ClassicPlus asking for more points.

Since 95% of my travel is cross border travel, I am hoping that among this crowd there is some experience here. Both Delta and AA promised to transfer 50% the points I currently have in AP to theirs plus give me full status if I move my business to them so lost points is not the issue. The real question, is whether their points system are any better than APs.

I ask this, as I see they want 78000 points to simply fly my wife and daughter to Moncton. Considering I flew my parents and brother and sister and nephew from Montreal last Christmas for 75000 points, I find this to be excessive. Outside of the points being spent on "luxury" items that I pretty much have no interest in, I am finding Aeroplan to be pretty much useless.

Thanks in advance.
What you are saying, i.e., the demise of IKK, is only true for overseas J class aeroplan tickets. Which BTW for many of us is really the key part of what IKK used to be until it got castrated.

However, if what you do with your points is stuff such as flying to Moncton or within North America in general, you still can, as an SE, get tickets at the old, so-called "classic" prices. Plus of course "surcharges."
Stranger is offline  
Old Sep 27, 2007, 5:22 pm
  #3  
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Join Date: Jun 2007
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My limited experience:

In May 2006 I tried to book 2 tickets from Toronto to Acapulco for any Friday to Friday, Saturday to Saturday or Sunday to Sunday for February 2007 in economy or biz class. I think I was being pretty flexible. (I am Elite, but that means nothing as far as reward availability.) I think this was before the introduction of Classic Plus flights, because there was absolutely NOTHING available, not even at some outrageous point level.

My brother who collects AA miles offered me the use of his account. I was able to find about 10 potential dates that would work for us in economy or biz class. We had to route through Chicago, but we flew in biz class for 60K miles and $90 taxes per person.

I've been collecting AA miles ever since! I never fly with them, and I have 110K miles in my account just from Dining Rewards and my TD AA Visa.
margarita girl is offline  
Old Sep 27, 2007, 5:33 pm
  #4  
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
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Posts: 5,938
The best place to ask this question, unless there is some unique Canadian perspective I am missing, would be on the DL or AA forums.

Speaking for myself, as a DL PM, the upgrade system is different (less certificates, only earned once a year, but can upgrade using miles), and you do face the fact that you will have to go via JFK or ATL (or sometimes CVG) if you want to travel overseas, as opposed to possible direct flights from Canada.

Simon
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Old Sep 27, 2007, 7:28 pm
  #5  
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: YUL
Programs: AC SE
Posts: 2,103
Originally Posted by macyyz
Hello all,

I am in my second year in a row as an AC SE. I am racking upwards of 200 - 350 K points per year. And I have realized that for travelling, these points are pretty much worthless. The cost in points is extremely high. Most flights even within Canada (unless something like YYZ-YUL) are typically ClassicPlus asking for more points.

Since 95% of my travel is cross border travel, I am hoping that among this crowd there is some experience here. Both Delta and AA promised to transfer 50% the points I currently have in AP to theirs plus give me full status if I move my business to them so lost points is not the issue. The real question, is whether their points system are any better than APs.

I ask this, as I see they want 78000 points to simply fly my wife and daughter to Moncton. Considering I flew my parents and brother and sister and nephew from Montreal last Christmas for 75000 points, I find this to be excessive. Outside of the points being spent on "luxury" items that I pretty much have no interest in, I am finding Aeroplan to be pretty much useless.

Thanks in advance.
You are doing something wrong. As a SE you have full access to the aeroplan seats (including J) within NA for the classic prices.
fly-yul is offline  
Old Sep 27, 2007, 7:48 pm
  #6  
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
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To the OP:

If you want to be able to fly family members around North America on points, you cannot do much better than AC*SE. You have access to every seat, Y and J, at Classic levels, especially if you want to be able to book these flights last minute.

If you are generally satisfied with the service, schedule, and other SE benefits, it isn't really clear that changing airlines would be your optimal decision.

When you say "racking up 200-350k points", do you mean flying 200-350k status miles, or accumulating that many points to redeem through flying, bonus miles, and credit card miles? If you are flying over 300k and (again) want to fly family around on points, you will have been able to gift E and SE to family members along the way, making life quite comfortable for everyone.
Or, if you are flying that much, you could earn top tier on multiple airlines and alliances. But no airline program in the world has redemption abilities that even approaches AC*SE (even though they took away international J).

If you are flying 100k and earning redeemable miles to make 200-350k, you would only be able to make one top tier or two middle tiers. You could choose to earn in US or UA and use those points to redeem in Canada on AC through Star Alliance awards, but of course if you are regularly encountering Classic Plus redemption levels (because the AP website is so messed up it won't recognize your SE status properly) then you aren't going to see those flights available for Star Alliance redemptions either.

So you need to tell us more in order for good advice to be given. How do you generally feel about AC and what do you want to get out of a frequent flyer program?

There are plenty of people here who will be itching to advise you to jump ship. I'd suggest considering your options very carefully before being dragged down in others' bitterness.
zorn is offline  
Old Sep 27, 2007, 7:52 pm
  #7  
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
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Originally Posted by fly-yul
You are doing something wrong. As a SE you have full access to the aeroplan seats (including J) within NA for the classic prices.
Yup, I was going to say the same thing. If you have been using the AE website, it is due to either the incompetency and/or the money-hungry AE management.

You can call the AE center and tell them the number of Y and J seats (in NA) that you want and you will always have them at the Classic points at anytime. But good luck fighting with them on waiving the call-in fees. Man I am getting worked up about this fee already.
aaac is offline  
Old Oct 1, 2007, 1:21 pm
  #8  
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Originally Posted by aaac
Yup, I was going to say the same thing. If you have been using the AE website, it is due to either the incompetency and/or the money-hungry AE management.

You can call the AE center and tell them the number of Y and J seats (in NA) that you want and you will always have them at the Classic points at anytime. But good luck fighting with them on waiving the call-in fees. Man I am getting worked up about this fee already.
I am very glad that I posted here. After reading this, I found out that though I have SE status, the website was not showing this to me. It still isn't fixed for booking, but I can just call and get the points. Now my wife and daughter are flying to Moncton for 40k points. I don't care about the fees and such, all airlines do that.

The main reason for the post in addition to that, was that for me, my flying tends to be all from Toronto to points in the US. If I was making a switch to a new program, then I was interested in peoples experiences with those programs from a Canadian perspective.

Thanks for the response. Hopefully my bookings will be doable online at SE status... god knows for the 100 flights I have done this year, I deserve a bit of a break.
macyyz is offline  
Old Oct 1, 2007, 7:07 pm
  #9  
 
Join Date: May 2003
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Originally Posted by macyyz
I am very glad that I posted here. After reading this, I found out that though I have SE status, the website was not showing this to me. It still isn't fixed for booking, but I can just call and get the points. Now my wife and daughter are flying to Moncton for 40k points. I don't care about the fees and such, all airlines do that.

The main reason for the post in addition to that, was that for me, my flying tends to be all from Toronto to points in the US. If I was making a switch to a new program, then I was interested in peoples experiences with those programs from a Canadian perspective.

Thanks for the response. Hopefully my bookings will be doable online at SE status... god knows for the 100 flights I have done this year, I deserve a bit of a break.
I can certainly sympathize with you. I wonder how many other Se's do not know about their IKK capabilities and rely on the website for booking where it clearly says that the selections include all those available for superelite members. I have a similar situatino this past weekend trying to get my wife to LGA from YYZ this weekend. Something about pre-packaged options only being available and the flights I wanted having to spend 178,000 points unless I wanted to call the SE line for an additional $30.00 per ticket. So, when aeroplan claims they are available on the website and you get access to any unsold seat, it is not completely honest.

To top if off in my case, when my wife and her friend tried to standby for the earlier flight to LGA on Friday, they were told they could only standby in Y, even though I had bought them J tickets, they were told that to go on the earlier flight they would have to pay $50.00 to be confirmed in J. Apparently another agent at YYZ doesn't have a clue what they are doing.

I will be attempting to get their $100.00 back for the AC mistake at the ckin counters.
stinger is offline  
Old Oct 1, 2007, 10:13 pm
  #10  
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
Programs: S.E, Preferred Select, SPG Platinum
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Originally Posted by zorn
To the OP:

If you want to be able to fly family members around North America on points, you cannot do much better than AC*SE. You have access to every seat, Y and J, at Classic levels, especially if you want to be able to book these flights last minute.

If you are generally satisfied with the service, schedule, and other SE benefits, it isn't really clear that changing airlines would be your optimal decision.

When you say "racking up 200-350k points", do you mean flying 200-350k status miles, or accumulating that many points to redeem through flying, bonus miles, and credit card miles? If you are flying over 300k and (again) want to fly family around on points, you will have been able to gift E and SE to family members along the way, making life quite comfortable for everyone.
Or, if you are flying that much, you could earn top tier on multiple airlines and alliances. But no airline program in the world has redemption abilities that even approaches AC*SE (even though they took away international J).

If you are flying 100k and earning redeemable miles to make 200-350k, you would only be able to make one top tier or two middle tiers. You could choose to earn in US or UA and use those points to redeem in Canada on AC through Star Alliance awards, but of course if you are regularly encountering Classic Plus redemption levels (because the AP website is so messed up it won't recognize your SE status properly) then you aren't going to see those flights available for Star Alliance redemptions either.

So you need to tell us more in order for good advice to be given. How do you generally feel about AC and what do you want to get out of a frequent flyer program?

There are plenty of people here who will be itching to advise you to jump ship. I'd suggest considering your options very carefully before being dragged down in others' bitterness.

Completely true. As an SE the availability of reward seats at the lowest possible point redemption values is quite high. I have been quite impressed during the times I have redeemed last minute to find availability and not be ripped off like the non status aeroplan holders.
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Old Oct 1, 2007, 10:35 pm
  #11  
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
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I looked up a couple of dummy dates where the seatmaps showed J completely empty. Then I tried AP and low and behold they had no seats at the regular reward levels. Now I know an empty seatmap does not always mean J is completely empty, but I think most of the time it does, after all you automatically get assigned a seat when you upgrade, even online. Perhaps AP could explain themselves here.

Last edited by seanthepilot; Oct 3, 2007 at 10:07 am Reason: Deleted Unnecessary Adjectives
shore9 is offline  
Old Oct 1, 2007, 10:53 pm
  #12  
formerly known as 2lovelife
 
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We can certainly advice you on the switch. We may not give the best advice, though

Tell us again how many miles you fly a year (as opposed to earn a year) and what type of fares you book.

It may well be that you are better with Aeroplan, but are not using all the Super Elite benefits that you have.

Do you see that you can pay the lowest mile price for tickets, even if the seats are not available to regular members? This SE benefit, that it looks like you're not using, may be enough to stay.

Now, if you're doing ALOT of miles, you may want to think of earning status on 2 carriers. That's why it's important to have more info 1st.
seanthepilot is offline  
Old Oct 2, 2007, 7:54 am
  #13  
 
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Call AP and they can open up revenue seats for you when they are not listed online

Last edited by seanthepilot; Oct 3, 2007 at 10:46 am Reason: Removed Quote of Deleted Post
1st Class Gekko is offline  
Old Oct 2, 2007, 10:19 am
  #14  
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
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Originally Posted by zorn
To the OP:

But no airline program in the world has redemption abilities that even approaches AC*SE (even though they took away international J).
I don't think that's true. AAdvantage treats its EXPs at least as well as AC treats SEs. And guess what? Their website works.
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Old Oct 2, 2007, 10:36 am
  #15  
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
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Originally Posted by Siempre Viajando
I don't think that's true. AAdvantage treats its EXPs at least as well as AC treats SEs. And guess what? Their website works.
AA offers AAdditionAAl MileSAAver AAwards to its EXP, but it isn't guAArAAnteed. Of course I have no idea how it works in practice, and AA could very well be better in many other ways.

An AC*SE can move any flight in the schedule from J1 to J0 with a Classic award redemption. No other airline comes close to that.

The OP sees value in flying family members within Canada on points. I don't think AA would be very useful in that regAArd.

Last edited by zorn; Oct 2, 2007 at 10:41 am
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