Aeroplan used to be marvelous for booking European travel - Lovely first class flights on Lufthansa and Turkish Air, etc. Then they changed their award chart, added hefty fuel fees, and seemingly stopped offering non-stops on many routes from NYC. I have 600,000 miles pretty much stranded. We mostly travel to Europe and within USA. Any good values to be had from these miles?
Booking flights much further out might be one way to use them without huge points penalties. The surcharges are there for ever it seems. Another way is to book Asian flights also further out. The fees are much less to those destinations
Quit kvetching over everything! Think of a J reward to Europe as a $6,000 ticket for a little over $1,000 and a bunch of points that you never paid for.
Actually, I do pay for my points, I use credit cards to purchase stuff, and if I'm earning points, I am not earning 2% or 2.2% cash back. I love points and use them all the time for all my flights and some hotels - I'm delighted that I have them, since I wouldn't pay $6,000 for a flight but feel okay with the effective $3K or so. But even with all that, I find that whenever I scope out a trip, there's better points pickings with Lufthansa, or with United, AA, or whatever. Aeroplan quite suddenly went from my favorite points to the bottom of the barrel. I thought there might be some special exception (like distance based US flights with BA Avios points) that improved the use case for Aeroplan. Perhaps I was wrong. You are right, it's not the end of the world, but it's frustrating, and frankly those 2% cash back awards have not devalued over the last few years as the Aeroplan points have.
Look at this post http://boardingarea.com/canadiankilometers/2013/04/29/fuel-surcharges-on-aeroplan-award-tickets/ There are still carriers that they do not charge fuel surcharges, and ones that the taxes are lower than others.
I'm in YYZ, so similar East Coast I'd say Best usages - obviously avoiding YQ carriers Mini-RTW (trip to Asia 1 with destionations + 2 stopovers) Business class to Europe 90K RT 45K/80K to Hawaii in Y/J or just 75K everywhere in Y e.g. EVA Air JFK-TPE RT is 75K in Y, or 125K (150K starting 2014) in Royal Laurel biz class
get the miles converted to paper shred them and throw them around AC headquarters. perhaps that the only use for them.
Short-haul flights in Western Canada, where the equivalent cents/mile can be very, very, very pleasant value indeed! Well, that and the occasional pod flight from Northwestern Canada to New England, whenever I grow weary of tundra and mountains and instead I want to see fall foliage from a commuter-train window. ^_^ Again, good value, even with the regrettable increase in requisite points. Still have around about a 100Kpts to blow, haven't yet figured out just what for. Increased availability at the SE level is a rather nice perk, indeed.
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