Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great Memorial Day Weekend. I had a great time in San Diego, walking around the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, drinking at Stone Brewery, and visiting the USS Midway. Over the weekend, I also started planning my Eurotrip around southeastern Europe. I made a really silly / stupid award booking mistake, and I want to share it with my readers so you can learn from my mistake and not make the same mistake.
After doing some award searching, I found this award ticket on Air Canada for 37,500 Air Canada Aeroplan miles. The price was higher than the 30,000 United Airlines miles, but I am trying to save my Chase Ultimate Reward Points and I had a stash of Air Canada Aeroplan miles that I wanted to redeem.
On this page, it says that the award costs 37,500 Air Canada Aeroplan miles plus $279.40 CAD. Underneath the taxes, there was a radial button that said “Pay all with miles” which I assumed meant that if I paid 46,566 Air Canada Aeroplan miles, I would owe $0 in taxes/fees. I was actually a few thousand Air Canada Aeroplan miles short, so I transferred 5,000 American Express Membership Rewards Points to my Air Canada account, so that I would have more than 46,566 Air Canada Aeroplan miles in my account. Strangely, the “Pay all with miles” radial button was still grayed out. I thought it might have been a cache issue since I had just transferred the American Express Membership Rewards Points into my account, so I signed out and signed back in, tried different browsers, but was not able to select that option.
I decided to call Aeroplan and see if I could book the award over the phone. The rep found the same flights I was looking at and I told her that I wanted to pay for the award ticket and all taxes/fees with Air Canada Aeroplan miles. Unfortunately, she gave me some very bad news. The 46,566 Air Canada Aeroplan miles would only cover the taxes/fees ($279.40 CAD). She said that it would cost more Air Canada Aeroplan miles to pay for the taxes/fees than it would cost to book the award ticket! Oh boy, that would be a terrible deal. $279.40 CAD = $214.63 USD / 46,566 Air Canada Aeroplan miles = 0.46 cents per mile (CPM).
I told the rep that I would just pay the taxes and fees with my credit card. I then completed the award booking on my computer and paid 37,500 Air Canada Aeroplan miles + $214.63. I now have 9,311 Air Canada Aeroplan miles in my account that I don’t have any use for. :(
I hope this post saves someone from making the same mistake I did. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
Don’t forget about the discounted short-haul awards on AC! There are definitely some good values to be had if you fly to a smaller airport – at only 7,500 miles each way. All flights from Oregon and Washington to any airport in BC and AB are short-haul.
That is a great tip, I’ve been meaning to make it up to Canada soon and maybe these Air Canada Aeroplan miles will come in handy for that trip. Thanks for reading and have a great day.
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Thank you Chris!