Struggling to use your Frequent Flyer Points?
Frequent Flyer Concierge takes the hard work out of finding award availability and redeeming your frequent flyer or credit card points for flights.
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Some good availability in SQ J around that time of year to/from BOM out of SIN
You need to find saver award availability, which Air Canada typically only releases at the last minute and only sporadically on high-demand routes such as Australia-Canada.
Many thanks. Got stuffed around with a travel agent (which I generally don't do) and was hoping to do RTW and as we are away for four months, this only became available in the last month or so.
Would you be offended in having to visit Europe for a couple of days before heading to Montreal? The reason I ask is that I find it is sometimes easier to actually fly via Europe (with a short stopover) than it is to fly direct from Australia to North America since there are only two carriers that provide direct service between Australia and North America: Air Canada and United. United very rarely opens up business awards on the lucrative transpacific market whilst Air Canada uses dynamic award pricing which is why you are seeing those eye watering prices.
The best availability was arguably during COVID! I booked Sydney to Saint John for 80,000 points in business class on Air Canada, then booked Toronto to Sydney for 80,000 points in business class, again on Air Canada. Pre-COVID Air Canada didn't use a dynamic award chart for their awards but they severely limited how many seats they made available, consequently it was near impossible to find Australia to Canada on Air Canada. Your best bet with Aeroplan is always with partners, since they provide a better service (i.e. SQ, NH and UA come to mind) and most importantly have that fixed award chart.
So the one thing that Aeroplan offers that few other frequent flyer programs have is a stopover feature, where you can add a stopover en-route for just 5,000 points more. You can't add stopovers in North America, so your best options for adding stopovers would be Europe or Asia. To give you an example of how I solved this "riddle" of getting from Australia to Toronto (and back) with Aeroplan I booked the following:
The above recommending things like [Aust > Europe] and [Europe > North America] separately (or as a long-way-round itinerary with a stopover in Europe) are all good ideas. One possible additional recommendation I would make is:
In the case of Aeroplan you can't do an open jaw (i.e. arrive in Heathrow then depart out of Paris) without those legs pricing out separately as a multi-city. That being said, you are right in saying that if you were to elect the stopover to be anywhere outside of the UK such as Zurich, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Paris, Frankfurt, etc. you'll save hundreds in APD since it appears Aeroplan doesn't eat those costs like other airlines do. All of that said, it could also very well be the case that the only fare business award into Europe is the UK, in which case spending those couple of hundred dollars to potentially save many tens of thousands of points can be worthwhile. The other thing to consider is also the itinerary: if you get to fly Singapore all the way over to London with a short stop in Singapore, for some that could be worthwhile, particularly if there are no comparable options to Europe available on the days you want to travel. I should also point out too that Heathrow is a really nice airport - in Terminal 2 (Queen's terminal where Star Alliance partners depart) there are 4 lounges you have access to flying business: Lufthansa, Air Canada, Singapore and United lounges. In addition, as an arrival into Heathrow you can also access the excellent arrivals lounge.
Great to hear we provided some value here, although I will point out that contrary to popular opinion, QF points aren't worthless. The key thing about them though is you need to get even more creative to make availability "appear". Whereas with Aeroplan sometimes you need take circuitous routings (i.e. stopping over in Europe) with QF you need to go even further, booking multi-city awards involving one or more of QF's mistresses (i.e. CI) to make something "appear". All of that said, yes, buying points can be an exceptional value particularly if you have an itinerary in mind with business saver availability!
With Frankfurt, there is a Gold track line if you're in business class that lets you skip the queues. That being said, yes the airport is annoying, it's a cavernous maze that requires it's own map. I can't tell you the number of times I've been questioned by German Federal police for going down random hallways that are supposed to connect me to other non-Schengen terminals. For a capital city airport and for the largest airport in Germany, yes it is a disgrace. This is why I prefer flying into a city like Zurich where the airport is compact, the lounges are nice (including a terrace) and the airport is clean. Zurich also has the benefit of being the hub for Swiss with fellow Star Alliance partners like TAP, SAS and SQ flying into there, to say nothing of EK or EY. Even Heathrow with its stupid APD has redeeming qualities like the lounges and relatively straight forward connection process.
Yep I do agree, Q are not value-less, just need things to re-right themselves over the next 12-24months, so we can get a crack at using them. Interested to know more about the mistress CI and any others? That is, who is CI?
Agreed, I think it took about 2 hours for us.
The big issue QF has is they don't have the same strong route network that Star Alliance has and when combined with the many mistresses Aeroplan has like Emirates and Etihad, makes the value proposition quite good!
China Airlines. There are a number of classic reward partners QF has which aren't the usual suspects (i.e. aren't part of OneWorld) such as KLM, Air France, China Airlines and El Al to name but a few (more discussion on that here).Interested to know more about the mistress CI and any others? That is, who is CI?
Sample AFF with no advertisements? More..
