Buying Air Canada Aeroplan points

[I love to travel]

This seems to be the main Aeroplan forum that people use so just double posting this PSA

A PSA warning about aeroplan and schedule changes. Often they do not let you know. I only found out because I went to do my seat assignments weeks later. It was a complete re-route too. So garden your reservations!! I liked the change though as saves me 6 hours in GVA airport.
Also, when I accepted the change, it did not exchange the ticket correctly, I did get a little pink message to call them. Sorted within 5 minutes and I was answered in 2 minutes with ack that I was a 50K whilst waiting to speak to an agent - so it did recognise phone number and status.

All in all good outcome but you do have keep gardening Aeroplan bookings.

 

[Lewis]

Buying Aeroplan Points on Sale @ the maximum points of 250,000

And using them to pay points & cash on their flight BNE to YVR

Does it save you any money?
Cheers

 

[I love to travel]

Buying Aeroplan Points on Sale @ the maximum points of 250,000

And using them to pay points & cash on their flight BNE to YVR

Does it save you any money?
Cheers

Be very careful about whether to buy Aeroplan points with their recent devaluation. With regards to your question prices change with dynamic policy so hard to tell but I suspect very little if any saving, especially in Y

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Buying Aeroplan Points on Sale @ the maximum points of 250,000

And using them to pay points & cash on their flight BNE to YVR

Does it save you any money?
Cheers

That would depend on what the award is priced at. For flights operated by Air Canada the amount will be variable. In other words it could be as low as 80,000 for business (a real cost savings) but more likely will be several hundreds of thousands of points each way (neutral or potentially money losing proposition). For flights operated by partners like United the price is fixed provided there is business availability. From what I recall the redemption amount for something like Brisbane to Vancouver via LA could be 75,000 points which again is a great deal.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is next month United award flights will also be priced using dynamic pricing which could potentially mean that same award will cost considerably more (only time will tell here).

One benefit of Aeroplan though is you can add stopovers for as little as 5,000 points more. So for instance if you wanted to visit say Tokyo, Singapore or Auckland before heading to Vancouver you can add that to your booking for very little more. Indeed 2 years ago I flew Sydney to Toronto with a 2 week stopover in Zurich for 115,000 points all in business class the whole way. Not a bad redemption for what was effectively half of a round the world award

 

[Lewis]

Thanks I Love to Travel
My problem is my wife won't fly for more than 8 hours

And thanks to you Kangarooflyer
Great info

I tryed booking it on Virgin Australia through Air Canada with points & cash as I have 750,000 points, the site accepted it all the way through to payment and then I got an Error message to ring them

Agent then said You Can't book normal airfares on their affiliates airlines
You Can Only book Rewards flights
Then said Minimum points to book would be 1.8 million a business class seat
She did ask fellow operators and they all said they can't remember ever seeing any Rewards Seats with AC

So thanks to all for your help, it's back to the drawing board

 

[jase05]

My problem is my wife won't fly for more than 8 hours

BNE-YVR is 13hrs so I’d imagine you are going to need other options

 

[kangarooflyer88]

Thanks I Love to Travel
My problem is my wife won't fly for more than 8 hours

And thanks to you Kangarooflyer
Great info

I tryed booking it on Virgin Australia through Air Canada with points & cash as I have 750,000 points, the site accepted it all the way through to payment and then I got an Error message to ring them

Could you clarify how many points you have in Virgin Australia and also how many points you have with Air Canada? Also do you have specific travel dates in mind? I might be able to provide some guidance here.

-RooFlyer88