sxc234

my heart just dropped...will be interesting to see how this is working. wondering if we're able one last churn since they changed the terms only recently.

pokee

Yeah, I just found out about it today too, since I've been away on vacation. I am quite bummed about it, because I had a nice 1 Amex card every 2 years system going that was working nicely, and didn't stand out too much.

DealAddict

This card isn't great for European redemptions, right? Availability doesn't seem to be very good....lots of British Airways flights with high surcharges

Smiley90

Depends on where you're flying from and to? I've never had an issue seeing availabilities, and they have the cheapest NA-Europe Economy redemption (40k for a roundtrip) of any FFP. AND no surcharges!

edit: or do you man within Europe?

DealAddict

Montreal to Madrid for example.... next year in April. There are a lot of 3 stop AA options with crazy connections, limited 2 stop options

Smiley90

There are some 1-stop AA options available too, you just have to search the calendar a bit

E.g. YUL-DFW-MAD (not the most awesome routing tho), YUL-MIA-MAD is slightly better. The best one is probably:

YUL-JFK-MAD, 20k+79$ for coach on April 12th (11:55am - 8:55am)
MAD-MIA-YUL, 20k+66$ for coach on April 19th (11:15am - 11:39pm)

so round-trip YUL-MAD for 40k miles + 145.- isn't so bad.

If you find availabilty in coach for the return flight on MAD-JFK-YUL then the flight times will be 10:55am - 10:50pm, very similar. The week I randomly chose just only had Business available for the return flight for the JFK routing, but I'm sure there's a week where coach goes both ways.

Next year seems wide open for AA for YUL-MAD tho, I'm sure there's something! Unless you wanna fly business anyway, then it's 50k on AA one-way.

DealAddict

Yes, i saw that one... the first flight is fine, but unfortunately 11:39 pm is really late since I live in Ottawa. there aren't any 2 stop flights that arrive in YUL before say 6-7 PM. There are only 2 that less than 24 hours (1 on British Airways).

jerryhung

I think NA (especially East Coast) to Europe is still Aeroplan (star alliance) for the win

but AS has its sweet spots too, just like Avios or AA miles do

DealAddict

What's the best use? Asia?

Too bad about the European options

nucleosidase

I think Europe is a pretty good use (40,000 miles is a great deal), but I may have a much higher pain tolerance for crappy routings, being a cheap student. I also like the 40,000 miles to South America, but the routes are also going to be awful.

Alaska is pretty frustrating to work with from Montreal. People who live on the west coast or closer to an American airport have way more options. If you have some avios to spare, you can get a positioning flight to JFK which improves your options tremendously. You can get a fancy Emirates flight to Milan from there.

If you're willing to fly out of Toronto, Cathay flies out of there.

crimsona

West Coast to anywhere for Alaska, given that feeder flights through Seattle are quite available

chokko

Just applied got instant approval and just wondering how long it takes for the points to transfer to my Alaska Air Account.

Thanks

banffflyr

It took about 3 weeks for Ms. Banffflyr's most recent application to post.

On another note, has anyone else had problems accessing MBNA's online banking site recently? I have been getting a technical error message for the last 4 days.

jerryhung

I logged in to see my 0% BT statement yesterday fine

Cerenity

Alaska pts appear a few days after statement date for us, like most co-branded program points.