How to find Aeroplan flights

[Investor7]

Ideally, I want this itinerary: SYD > TOKYO > BKK > BOM, leaving for Tokyo next week with a few weeks stopover there and in BKK. I'd settle for just SYD > TOKYO next week and then play it by ear. But instead of new flights appearing on Seats.Aero, I'm seeing flights disappearing, probably because it's coming up to the Christmas holiday time. Have I left it too late? Has anyone noticed flights appearing just before Christmas in previous years?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Ideally, I want this itinerary: SYD > TOKYO > BKK > BOM, leaving for Tokyo next week with a few weeks stopover there and in BKK. I'd settle for just SYD > TOKYO next week and then play it by ear. But instead of new flights appearing on Seats.Aero, I'm seeing flights disappearing, probably because it's coming up to the Christmas holiday time. Have I left it too late? Has anyone noticed flights appearing just before Christmas in previous years?

You’ll only be able to have one stopover on the ticket.

I’d keep an eye out for last minute availability, but generally speaking, left it a bit late for peak period!

 

[Clayton]

I'm about to make my first booking using Aeroplan for 9 Dec'24 MIA- ZRH-stopover 14 days-FRA-SIN-ADL. Because of the 14 day stopover and the need to grab 2J seats on SQ for the FRA-SIN-ADL leg that I will need to call Aeroplan at least once to add those segments to the booking as soon as they are made available (in early January). As I've never used Aeroplan for a complex booking before, I'm unsure of the process and whether I should make the original booking ending in ZRH or whether I should make the stopover only one day and book the entire trip, then call 14 days later to extend the stopover and change the dates of the SQ flights.

I'd be very pleased to hear back from anyone with experience of this situation, with your advice.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

I'm about to make my first booking using Aeroplan for 9 Dec'24 MIA- ZRH-stopover 14 days-FRA-SIN-ADL. Because of the 14 day stopover and the need to grab 2J seats on SQ for the FRA-SIN-ADL leg that I will need to call Aeroplan at least once to add those segments to the booking as soon as they are made available (in early January). As I've never used Aeroplan for a complex booking before, I'm unsure of the process and whether I should make the original booking ending in ZRH or whether I should make the stopover only one day and book the entire trip, then call 14 days later to extend the stopover and change the dates of the SQ flights.

I'd be very pleased to hear back from anyone with experience of this situation, with your advice.

It’s going to be expensive to do it that way, with $100 change fee per ticket.

I’m also not entirely sure if they will allow the back-track from ZRH-FRA (and you cannot open jaw). I suspect it will be ok, but there’s a very small possibility it could be considered against the rules. (Although that being said for my return from europe in February would have been allowed a small backtrack of a couple hundred miles.)

Can you not fly SQ out of ZRH?

What is the likelihood of the MIA-ZRH going so quickly? Can you wait the 14 days? In your situation I’d likely do a search looking to see how quickly seats are snapped up once they are released. If they go same day, then you might need to book in two halves. If the seats sit there, you might be able to wait the 14 days.

But lots of options to go TATL… there are probably plenty of other airlines you could take to get to ZRH.

 

[Clayton]

It’s going to be expensive to do it that way, with $100 change fee per ticket.

I’m also not entirely sure if they will allow the back-track from ZRH-FRA (and you cannot open jaw). I suspect it will be ok, but there’s a very small possibility it could be considered against the rules. (Although that being said for my return from europe in February would have been allowed a small backtrack of a couple hundred miles.)

Can you not fly SQ out of ZRH?

What is the likelihood of the MIA-ZRH going so quickly? Can you wait the 14 days? In your situation I’d likely do a search looking to see how quickly seats are snapped up once they are released. If they go same day, then you might need to book in two halves. If the seats sit there, you might be able to wait the 14 days.

But lots of options to go TATL… there are probably plenty of other airlines you could take to get to ZRH.

Thanks for this advice. You're right the TAP flights from MIA-LIS-ZRH don't tend to sell out quickly, so my nervousness about holding back before booking all in one call is simply FOMO. I'm tempted to do a trial booking in the next week booking a premium fare with free changes and 100% refundability to see what AP are willing to do. Your thoughts?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thanks for this advice. You're right the TAP flights from MIA-LIS-ZRH don't tend to sell out quickly, so my nervousness about holding back before booking all in one call is simply FOMO. I'm tempted to do a trial booking in the next week booking a premium fare with free changes and 100% refundability to see what AP are willing to do. Your thoughts?

Yes, the fully flex option will work. But is quite a bit more expensive. Roughly around the same as having to change or cancel IIRC? I have heard reports of people changing from full flex to a saver award, but it’s not necessarily very easy, and they may have been too tiers.

Swiss is obviously non-stop, but there are TAP options as you say.

 

[Clayton]

Yes, the fully flex option will work. But is quite a bit more expensive. Roughly around the same as having to change or cancel IIRC? I have heard reports of people changing from full flex to a saver award, but it’s not necessarily very easy, and they may have been too tiers.

Swiss is obviously non-stop, but there are TAP options as you say.

Thanks MEL_Traveller. I'm finding plenty of J award availability with TAP on AP but very little LX , and zero LH except 2 weeks out. I'll provide some more data points as I engage with AP.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Thanks MEL_Traveller. I'm finding plenty of J award availability with TAP on AP but very little LX , and zero LH except 2 weeks out. I'll provide some more data points as I engage with AP.

There should also be UA, brussels airlines, SAS. And Turkish, although that will possibly get you in trouble with back tracking.

 

[Clayton]

There should also be UA, brussels airlines, SAS. And Turkish, although that will possibly get you in trouble with back tracking.

Thanks for helping me out. I've had a look for UA J flights also, but they seem to be scarce domestically and internationally due to their dynamic pricing, similarly with AA when trying to book them anywhere using Avios. I'd love to go to Istanbul on TK and they have good J availability, but yes, the backtracking is a bit extreme from there. I havent looked at Brussels or SAS yet.

 

[Clayton]

There should also be UA, brussels airlines, SAS. And Turkish, although that will possibly get you in trouble with back tracking.

Today I booked our Miami to ADL trip by calling the Aeroplan call center at 11am ADL time (about 7:30pm Canada ET). Wait time about 1 hour, and spoke with Sophie and French/English speaking Canadian, who efficiently took our details for 2 J pax on TAP air flights MIA-LIS-FRA then 9 day stopover and the Singapore air flights FRA-SIN-ADL. Total cost per pax - 120,000 points plus CAD$300. Booking was completed within 15 minutes. I verified all flights and selected seats on the TAP and SQ sites. As we intend to visit Scotland and Germany during the 9 day stopover but the details still TBD, I'll either pay cash for cheap intra-Europe flights or book with Lifemiles closer to the time.

All in all I found the Aeroplan booking experience satisfying and look forward to planning our next trip.

 

[Ecco]

Has anyone noticed that seats.aero frequently can’t access the Aeroplan award space lately and it has a notice saying to search united or sasbonus for availability. That would be a shame if air Canada is blocking seats.aero from searching award availability for Aeroplan.

 

[levelnine]

Has anyone noticed that seats.aero frequently can’t access the Aeroplan award space lately and it has a notice saying to search united or sasbonus for availability. That would be a shame if air Canada is blocking seats.aero from searching award availability for Aeroplan.

It's because Air Canada is suing seats.aero. They've drastically slowed their Aeroplan searches as a result.

 

[Investor7]

I thought I'd offer my experience of travelling around the world using Aeroplan as it may help others thinking about Aeroplan or planning itineraries. I stayed 5 days in most places and booked most of my flights 5 days or less before departures, so that restricted my options significantly. Here's my itinerary so far, and it's all Business Class:

• Sydney > Perth > Singapore (using the Stopover option)
• Singapore > Bangkok
• Bangkok > Pune via Delhi (booked cheaply with Air India instead of Aeroplan)
• Pune > Delhi > Frankfurt (using the Stopover option IIRC)
• Frankfurt > Copenhagen
• Stockholm > Vienna > Athens (using the stopover option IIRC)
• Athens > Rome > Zurich (using the stopover option IIRC)
• Zurich > Amsterdam

I wanted to go to Spain this weekend, but there were no flights. So I thought of swapping to Amsterdam > Lisbon > Montreal, but 7 seats on the Amsterdam > Lisbon 11am flight disappeared overnight, and Lisbon > Montreal jumped from 58k points to 240k points. It seems Air Canada flights must be booked a minimum of 5 days in advance, and there's usually only one seat available if you leave it to the last minute.

Also, it might be good to consider non-Aeroplan flights to bridge some legs, e.g. I did Bangkok > Pune using Air India direct because I was keen to go to Pune. Similar cheap flights from Amsterdam to Spain are available using Google Flights search, but I'm not that keen.

BTW, this Canada roadblock turned out to be beneficial because it gave me time to realise that I'm sick of Europe's cold weather, so why go to cold Canada? Now I'm going direct to Houston and there are plenty of seats each day. The 10 hour flight is a drag, but at least the weather will be good when I arrive.

I bought 400k points in a sale and it cost $7800. I've used 210k points so far, so I have 190k points left, which should get me back to Australia via Houston, LA, and Tokyo. Might fit in Costa Rica or something else that's tropical. Note that it's hard to find flights with Seats.Aero not updating like it used to due to the law suit. I spend too much time looking for flights because I'm booking last minute.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

In business class? Not a bad deal. Something screwy going on with some availability to Lisbon. I made a booking the other night and as soon as I booked one seat, ALL the remaining seats to LIS disappeared, despite showing 3+.