Are you interested in booking a free flight with all those Aeroplan miles you’ve been saving? You’ve signed up for credit cards just for the points, leaving you with more credit than most people have mortgages. You’ve bought those rock hard granola bars so that you can get the extra 25 points as a bonus. You’ve even drove an extra 10kms to find an Esso instead of the local gas station. You’re an Aeroplan junkie, but that’s OK because you’re the one taking the free flight! I’ve experienced this for the first time. After booking my first trip with Aeroplan, what I thought would be a simple process turned into something more.
Destination: Holetown…Population: This Guy
The next travel journey is to Holetown, Barbados. This is taking place in April so there is much in the way of planning and preparing before departure. Most of which will be documented in some form or another for your benefit or amusement depending on how the rest of the planning goes. The trip is a little over 3 weeks, so we should have a good feeling for the island in that time, but for now the story of Aeroplan flights.
Aeroplan and the Man
For 40,000 Aeroplan points you can get to anywhere in Zone 1. Just what is zone 1? It’s a pretty significant chunk of plant to say the least. Anywhere in North and South America. This could result in some killer deals and even Hawaii is included. For a full list of Aeroplan destinations and their point levels check out their website.
The Most Important Aeroplan Point
Something that is not often advertised by Aeroplan is the multi-city and open-jaw options for booking tickets with the flight rewards company. This is the perfect way to get two vacations in one ,or get you out of a flightless jam if that may be the case, like it was for me.
Basically, when booking with Aeroplan point you are allowed one stop over during your trip at no extra charge provided that it is in the same zone. This can be done via a multi-city booking or an open jaw ticket.
Allowable Travel Configurations with no extra charge:
Multi-City: City A –> B B –> C C –> A
Open-Jaw: City A –> B [...] C –> A or
City A –> B B –> C
Clearly the big winner value for money wise is the multi-city option since it allows you more flight time for the same $. In my it was the open jaw option that came in handy. There is even more possibilities for free awesomeness with connecting flights, but I’m not going to cover that here.
So Here’s How It Went Down
Two return tickets from Charlottetown (YYG) to Barbados (BGI) is 80,000 points. Sounds easy until I try to book it for our specific time-frame. The flights show fine for the way to BGI but there is no way home for another 2 weeks after we need to be back. That’s the big problem. My solution was to try and outsmart Aeroplan’s booking system by check out the StarAlliance flights for Barbados for our scheduled departure +/- a few days. I have the multi-city option in mind.
“No best value seats available.” There were indeed flights available, but they did not fall under the typical Aeroplan value seats and would need to be “purchased” with points. The kind souls at the flight rewards company wanted 127,000 points instead of the humble 80,000 I was willing to part with. Apparently there is no tricking Aeroplan.
So then I think, one way with points and one way with cash! Eureka! Think again. Those “best value deals” only apply on round trip tickets. If you want to use points for one way, be ready to fork over the cash equivalent or 78,000 for two one way tickets. If you’re keeping score that’s only 2000 less than a round trip. Foiled again.
The Final Solution
Since there was no way around Aeroplan’s limited availability of cheap flights, it was time to start thinking of the open jaw plan options. We would pay for a flight from BGI to anywhere that we could make work for a return flight home. So the search for cheap flights from Barbados began. We lucked out and found some decent flights to New York City (JFK) and were able to book the open jaw component of our Aeroplan flight from LaGuardia (LGA) to YYG, therefore completing our round trip ticket for 80,000 points total.
After all of this we get to go back to the great New York City for a spring time encounter which is a real bonus that wasn’t planned. A longer stroll through Central Park will be required and more Chinatown haggling too.
If you don’t mind a little hassle, you can really get a lot more out of Aeroplan miles than local domestic flights. Travel rewards programs offer their pluses and minuses, which one do you prefer? Have any travel rewards stories? Leave a comment!
image credit: striatic
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Written by Journeyman
Topics: Air Travel, Travel Planning, Trips