Air Miles

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by InglewoodFan

With Aeroplan, the biggest downside are the taxes and surcharges. I was a business flyer for years in a previous life and earned probably close to 500000 aeroplan miles. It used to be a sweet deal, total taxes and fees on a biz class ticket to Auckland 10 years ago - $80. Contrast that with wanting to take my family of four to Italy last year - taxes and fees were $3200. Hardly worth it. One secret is to fly on AC metal as little as possible, United flights booked as an Aeroplan reward for example have much lower taxes and fees. We are looking at United to Cancun via Houston for example, a quick stopover saves us hundreds.

Aeroplan definitely isn't the deal that it used to be. I get access to my company's pool of points as a perk, and the days of $100 trips to Europe and Australia were fun while they lasted, but there are just so many fees now. I recently inquired about a London flight, and it was about $600 in fees and taxes. Still better than full fare, but a big chunk for a "free" flight.

And your advice to avoid Air Canada flights as much as possible is spot on. I have heard that Lufthansa is also pretty pricey with their fees. But the Aeroplan agent can often give you some alternate routing that can save you some money by avoiding LH and AC, but from Calgary that usually means extra connections, so you often pay for it with time and hassle.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Stang

Aeroplan definitely isn't the deal that it used to be. I get access to my company's pool of points as a perk, and the days of $100 trips to Europe and Australia were fun while they lasted, but there are just so many fees now. I recently inquired about a London flight, and it was about $600 in fees and taxes. Still better than full fare, but a big chunk for a "free" flight.

And your advice to avoid Air Canada flights as much as possible is spot on. I have heard that Lufthansa is also pretty pricey with their fees. But the Aeroplan agent can often give you some alternate routing that can save you some money by avoiding LH and AC, but from Calgary that usually means extra connections, so you often pay for it with time and hassle.

I didn't know there used to be a better deal, but yeah, $600 in taxes and fees seems to be the norm when you use your points for a flight that would normally cost around $1,500 to $2,000.

[Robbob]

I think I have only used miles for a flight a couple times. We spend most of the points on hotel GCs so when we do go that is covered.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I didn't know there used to be a better deal, but yeah, $600 in taxes and fees seems to be the norm when you use your points for a flight that would normally cost around $1,500 to $2,000.

This was just for an economy flight, and the full fare was just about $800, including taxes, if I recall. Still cheaper to use Aeroplan, obviously, but harder to justify impulse trips. Add a kid into the mix these days, and it all adds up.

But I kid you not, it was pretty awesome before. My wife and I used them for trips to Australia/NZ, Europe multiple times, the States a couple of times, often in business class, and the most we ever paid was about $250 each in taxes and fees, and that was unusually high at the time, possibly due to the airports and airlines that we were using that particular time. But still well worth it.

[GeoffSK]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I didn't know there used to be a better deal, but yeah, $600 in taxes and fees seems to be the norm when you use your points for a flight that would normally cost around $1,500 to $2,000.

Airmiles does off an Amex Credit card that allows you to use points to cover taxes. Its the amex reserve but has a $300 per year cost.

There are other benefits to the card like one short haul companion flight free per year.

Sent from my LG-H812 using Tapatalk

[Jimmy Stang]

Air Miles is being criticized again, this time for devaluing vacation and cruise packages:

Air Miles collectors will now need to cough up more miles when booking vacation or cruise packages. That's because the rewards program has lowered the value of miles in the category by about 20 per cent.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/air-...ards-1.3955506

[REDVAN]

Air Miles sucks. I remember there was a time I would go out of my way to collect points. But now, I will go out of my way not to collect them.

[JonDuke]

Albertans can no longer collect points at the pharmacy: Court decision

https://globalnews.ca/news/3763447/a...rd-points-ban/

Was fun while it lasted. We earned a decent chunk from Safeway over the past couple of years.

[Amethyst]

Thank-you courts for protecting my from myself and the danger of free travel.