Are Air Canada Points still useful ex Australia?

[elanshin]

Any suggestions for which tool works well at the moment ? Seems to be a rapidly changing space


I have a stash of card points that I dumped into AC a few months ago in anticipation of a trip that didn't eventuate. Now trying to use them for late September 2026 to do SYD-mediterranean-SYD, and there is bugger all that I can see...

Are you solo travelling or couple? family?
Lots of options for BNE departure to SIN. From SIN you can go to IST or FCO?

Seat Aero is still a reasonably solid tool to use.

 

[Grrr]

Are you solo travelling or couple? family?

Family, but in guessing it might be too ambitious to get 4 reward seats…

you can search for TK awards via United,

Thanks, will sign up to United to take a look

For your trip in September you could fly air Mauritius via Perth to Europe

I couldn’t see anything from Perth to Istanbul or Athens; but tbh Syd - Perth then another ?2 stops to Europe might be a bridge too far for the family

Seat Aero is still a reasonably solid tool to use.

Thanks, will try this too

 

[Grrr]

Well having trawled through most of those options, I’m coming up with basically nothing for September 2026 SYD to either IST or ATH

Anything I find is either fully Y or at most one short leg J and the rest Y; or if there are full Y legs I assume I’m basically paying cash as the points are 400k per person

Bit disappointed given that I’m looking just under a year out. Does make me wonder whether the points game really only works if you have total schedule flexibility (eg retired) and can book whenever you get an alert ?

 

[luxury-lizard]

@Grrr - there are 2 seats ex-SIN to some European cities on Monday and/or Tuesday in Sept 2026 - you could just buy cheap Y tix PER-SIN then travel on 2 separate days - i.e. split up the family (one adult + 1 child each flight or whatever assuming your children can travel on their own) - of course this adds hotel costs etc along the way. But I agree there seems to be no award seats PER-SIN in Sept in business.

I also agree with a family - this approach gets complicated - might need to buy cash fares.