March 6th, 2007

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Malta, Travel
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Air Miles, Aeroplan and the Myth of Free Flights

We’re planning a bunch of flights in the month of April. We’re departing Canada on April 18, and making several stops before settling into Malta on or about May 1.

Julie has enough Aeroplan points to fly free, round trip, to Europe. I don’t have quite enough. We booked some of our flights this morning, and there was a ridiculous rigmarole to ensure that our seats were next to each other. She booked on Aeroplan, I simultaneously booked on Air Canada, and then we immediately called Aeroplan to get her seat moved next to mine. That’s the prescribed strategy, and it’s absurd.

But that’s not the subject of this post. My flight on Air Canada was about CAN $750. That’s quite a good price, in my experience. Julie’s ‘free’ flight, turned out to be a little over CAN $300. That’s three hundred bucks worth of fees and, I don’t know, ‘plane oxygen usage’ surcharges. $300 is, as you know, a lot more than free. I felt more than a little screwed.

I think we can all agree. Unless you can afford the glorious first class, air travel blows.

Comments: 13 Responses so far

Laura
March 6th, 2007
4:09 pm

It most certainly does, at least when you fly Air Canada. I used to fly with them back and forth between Toronto and Vancouver several times a year throughout 5 years of university out east, and so I have some points accumulated. I intend to continue flying with them only until I have enough points to redeem my “free” flight, which apparently isn’t free anyway, and then will be promptly switching to ANY other airline when possible, they have to be better!

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degan
March 6th, 2007
4:29 pm

I just booked 2 round trip flights to Halifax through Aeroplan and it sucked too…we’re flying out at midnight for the economy price of 25,000 points each, but when I asked if there were any other times I was told that it was going to be 103,000 points - and still flying in economy. Nice!

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Chanelle
March 6th, 2007
8:38 pm

We used our Aeroplan points to fly home at Christmas time as Air Canada was charging $1200 return for two for an hour flight. Anyway, I only had 25,000 points so I took the last business class ticket that was available for 25,000. My husband then purchased his ticket which cost 44,000 points…to fly economy.

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Gwen
March 7th, 2007
12:36 am

It’s all about timing. Not sure how much in advance you need to book your international flights but I booked two Vancouver-Halifax flights in May back in January spending the “el cheapo” 25K points each and paying no more than $100 (wow deal!) in surcharges and other b.s. charges.
If you know you will flight around a certain time (like Christmas), I wondered if you could just book 6 months or a year in advance then pay $30 or so to change the time later when you have a better idea of your dates….

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Carlos
March 7th, 2007
7:28 am

Hmmm, I’m looking into redeeming my British Airways miles for a trip to London with my partner but I’ve been informed that if I want it for a trip in the summer , I have to book 11 months in advance! Damn.

Anyone know of the air miles comparison site that’s Canadian? I think Global TV had a reporting series on air miles plans and there was a website mentioned and I missed it.

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Tom
March 7th, 2007
9:51 am

Hmm…you’re all giving me pause. I’m about to redeem some airmiles on my new Avion card — which is marketing the idea of being a supposedly “no blackouts, no catches” card. I’d encourage you all to visit http://www.sutori.com — a consumer review blog — and repost your thoughts there. I’ll let you know how things go with Avion.

Tom

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Derek K. Miller
March 8th, 2007
10:57 am

Just to be contrarian, do recall that, (a) no matter what, air travel is a lot cheaper relative to median income than it was even 30 years ago, and especially compared to its early years, and (b) you probably wouldn’t be complaining too much if your other option was to travel by stagecoach and sailboat.

It’s still a miracle to me that we can get to Toronto in five hours, or Europe in nine hours, or Australia in just about a day, just by getting into a pressurized metal tube with a few hundred other people and being a little uncomfortable, and by spending a relatively small fraction of our annual income.

For almost all of human history, until very, very recently, for people like Darren and Julie living in this part of the world to decide to move to Malta would not have been a relatively whimsical one-year jaunt, but a near-lifelong commitment, requiring ditching everything they have here and setting out on a voyage that was life threatening and probably would have taken the better part of a year, were it even possible. (Actually, most of the time no one living here in B.C. would have known that Malta existed, let alone how to get there.)

My family flew to Hawaii on points last August. Hawaii! That place is in the middle of the bloody Pacific Ocean! Nearly as far from anywhere as it’s possible to be! And we got up for breakfast and were there by dinnertime. Like I said, a miracle.

Remember that next time you complain about how the airlines are screwing you on flight points redemption.

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flights » Air Miles, Aeroplan and the Myth of Free Flights
April 1st, 2007
4:09 am

[...] Original post by darren [...]

thesilly1
April 19th, 2007
11:33 am

I’ve never used Aeroplan but with the Mosaik Airmiles Gold Credit Card you can get ‘free’ flights for a pretty good deal. Continental North America (not where you’re traveling) for 1600 airmiles. 1600 airmiles is pretty easy to collect too.

I personally prefer airmiles because then I don’t have to be stuck with AirCanada.

All companies say ‘free’ flights but it’s not really free as you’re paying the taxes (which you’d have to pay anyway). SO really the flight is ‘free’ …

Have fun on your trip and good luck with the flights!

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John
May 1st, 2007
9:07 am

Most aeroplan agent in Canada will tell you that the return flight is restricted to a certain time and date. Don’t fight with them. When you arrive at your destination, tell the air canada booth, you want to switch the flight to this flight. They don’t have a clue that your flight is on points.

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Bob Clark
May 7th, 2007
4:11 pm

Should have planned ahead to use these air miles rewards; not to be used for spurr of the moment decisions unless you want to unload your account. Years of accumulation(still a meagre 155,000 rbc pts) gone in a breath. Short haul flight from Halifax to either Montreal or Ottawa is 132.00 on Tuesday but on the Thursday I want to travel the return flight(economy) ends up costing over $1650. for the wife and I. So the anticipated free flight wipes out the points and additionally sets me back another $100. bucks. Since when do you have to travel through Toronto to get to Halifax ….and pay for it? I am a fool!!!

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Mandy
July 27th, 2007
10:38 pm

Not only is there no such thing as a free ticket, Aeroplan is a big headache. Their lack of customer service and lack of availability is reason to reconsider why I’ve been loyal to them for so long.

I just got off the phone with a “supervisor” who simply said to me that she had explained the situation to me over 10 times (she only said it twice before she got flustered) and then hung up on ME! After being on the phone with Aeroplan for the last two hours (this is frequently the case when dealing with agents), and having them be insolent to their own customers, I am thinking of dropping them. My family and I have been loyal to AirCanada and Aeroplan for the last 10+ years and I think it’s about time that we switch to another rewards plan such as Adventura.

Going to do a little venting…Aeroplan does not show all available flights and routes on their website, which therefore leads you to call and speak with an agent (cost= $30 if you book) to ensure that what you see online is the best available. So I did, as I always do and the agent told me to book online since she could not offer me anything different. The problem here is that I was booking an executive class ticket (although not confirmed, you have the chance of being upgraded), so we proceeded online. Unbeknownst to us, the flight does NOT have executive service AT ALL…so we basically paid 40,000 extra points for the shortest leg of the itinerary (1 hour) with no chance of an upgrade for the international portion….

So I called Aeroplan, requesting that they either downgrade the ticket and refund the 40,000 extra points (they said that would cost $135/tix) or waive a $55 change fee to a more direct flight with the executive service even though the itinerary could not be confirmed for executive. I even offered to pay an agent fee of $30, but they refused to acknowledge any miscommunication or the fact that THEIR agent was infact the one to tell me to book online!

More importantly, the thing that pisses me off about Aeroplan is that it all depends on the agent you speak with and the fact that I got one BI@#* of a supervisor who must have been having a pissy day has blocked any other supervisor from allowing some leaniency since the previous one said the issue was closed.

So, CUSTOMER SERVICE? There is very little and it really depends on who you get. Booking flights? We booked well in advance and illogically, there are better options closer to the date of departure than there were then…CUSTOMER SERVICE? How is that a way to serve your customers?

Bottomline? There is no such thing as a free flight. In fact, it takes a few years off your life to deal with the likes of a reward program such as Aeroplan.

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john mikkelsen
August 28th, 2007
6:54 pm

I have been an aeroplan member since 1991 and I am happy to say I have never had a bad experience with air canada, and I have flown a great deal and used my aeroplan points to send my mother to Halifax, and europe twice. Last year her and I travelled together in executive first class to Denmark,it was a wonderful trip and she was very impressed.
The cost $ 255.00 for each of us for TAXES, not an amount going to air canada. In total our trip was 80,000
points each and I booked 9 months in advance which I don’t think was necessary.

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