Air Miles collectors, take note, can earn miles on other airlines when redeeming!
 

I know it's been posted elsewhere, but just wanted to add another data point.

I redeemed 1050 Air Miles and $234 taxes :td::td::td: for a YYZ-JFK flight on AA. Just got 500 AA miles posted to my account for my outbound flight (returning next week).

Honestly feel it's the least they can do for the stupid amount of taxes I had to pay!

OUCH! Given you can fly taxes in for about 250-280 right now (AC to LGA) I hope this was last minute!

-Brian

No it wasn't. But I really wanted to fly into JFK instead of LGA. We had a connecting flight there. Could have flown BUF to JFK for $148, but inconvenient flight times.

The full price on AA (w/o Air Miles redemption) was around $350.

At that point I'd say it'd be well worth it to forget using points, pay cash, and cash in the airmiles for gift cards or something.

Michael

The taxes on all Canadian airlines are ridiculous.

I thought about that, but that's not great value either. 140 Air Miles will get you a $20 Metro (formerly Dominion) gift cert. So 1050 Air Miles is equivalent to $150. Not that much different, and I actually have a lot of Air Miles in my account.

And that's one of the better redemptions. A $25 Cara gift card costs 200 Air Miles. So 1050 Air Miles would be equivalent to $130.

You can't win. It's a bad program all around.

Speaking of value of Air Miles ...
 

I transferred some assets into my BMO Investorline account in May to take advantage of their "Words of Financial Wisdom" promo.

With the promo, I have the choice of 1000 Air Miles or $200 preloaded on a BMO Mosaik M/C. When I signed up, I had planned on taking the Air Miles. But after going through this little exercise of booking flights with Air Miles, and doing the math on the gift cards, it became very obvious that the $200 Mosaik card is the better deal! 1000 Air Miles will only buy $143 worth of Metro gift cards.

BTW, I just noticed that FT added another category under Other Loyalty Programs/Partners called Gaming Loyalty Programs. Why don't we have one for Air Miles???

I typically value an Air Mile at 15c... the gift card from BMO would have been a better deal in this case.

Ron.

I used to be an avid AM collector, but having booked once to Vegas for 2 costing somewhere upwards of $500 plus 6000 points....it doesn't sound that good of a deal anymore.

The problem with that program is that you have to use their travel agency which charges booking fees, but once the tickets are booked, they cannot be changed (which is ridiciulous). Even with the cheapest Tango fares allow you to make changes nowadays.

I have stopped actively collecting AM now.

Me too. I have 36000 air miles, and have stopped collecting and switched to Aeroplan.

Still paying the 100ish dollar fee for the BMO Gold mosaik card to save the 20% on airmiles redemption. Hoping to use my airmiles within the next year.