Updated on June 16, 2020 – Minor housekeeping to the current card offers
Updated on July 8, 2019 – Minor housekeeping to the current card offers
Updated on November 21 2018 -A bunch of new card offers have been added!
Updated on September 19, 2016 – The BMO no fee AIR MILES 800 mile sign up offer is back!
Updated on May 2, 2016 – The BMO no fee AIR MILES 800 mile sign up offer has been removed.
This is the second ‘Travel Hacking’ specific post here on Rewards Canada, the first Travel Hacking 101 looks at how you can earn tens of thousands of Aeroplan Miles or Avios for free. While much of what we do helps you with your loyalty programs on a daily basis and could be considered travel hacking in many ways, these Travel Hacking posts really delve into the topic.
Many people seem to shove AIR MILES aside and don’t bother with the program, especially frequent travellers, however we wanted to show you that even this program can be ‘hacked’ to save you several hundred dollars if not even up to a thousand dollars on travel. True it isn’t the potential thousands of dollars with hacking Aeroplan or Avios but still this one more method for Canadians to save money on their travels.
* I state free in the title as I assume you would be spending this
money anyways on these credit cards so you might as well be rewarded for
it with free AIR MILES!
BMO AIR MILES World Elite Mastercard
With a
welcome
offer of up to 2,000 AIR MILES Bonus Miles and an annual fee waiver this is the AIR MILES card to get right
now and then you can think about adding others into the mix! This card also provides a 15% discount on AIR MILES flight rewards within North America. You can apply for the card here.
BMO AIR MILES Mastercard
Also a card which
carries no annual fees the BMO AIR MILES MasterCard is currently
offering an up to 800 AIR MILES Rewards Miles welcome bonus. You can apply for the card here.
Over time you can also add in 3 more cards to add to your list for an extra 2,400 Free Air Miles:
– BMO Shell Air Miles Mastercard; Up to 800 AM, no annual fee. Apply for the card here.
– BMO Sobeys Air Miles Mastercard; Up to 800 AM, no annual fee. Apply for the card here.
–
BMO IGA Air Miles Mastercard; Up to 800 AM, no annual fee. Apply for the card here.
With the two main cards above you will have earned 2,800 AIR MILES Reward Miles for virtually nothing. You just have move some of your regular spending to cover the spending required to get the bonuses. We typically value AIR MILES Reward Miles between 11 and 15 cents a piece which means those 3,800 AIR MILES are worth anywhere from $308 to $420 depending on your redemption. But if you continue on reading you can see that can be pushed even higher! If you add in all the other cards you are looking at over 5,000 AIR MILES however BMO may have issues with you grabbing 5 of their AIR MILES cards at once! However the option exists to get the two main cards with 2,800 AIR MILES.
What can those 2,800 AIR MILES get you? Here are just some flight examples we found searching where you might need to earn a few more miles but are easily achievable:
Toronto – Vancouver for 3,600 Miles but at the time of searching there was a Gold member discount of 15% that brought it down to 3,060 miles + $134.28 in taxes and fees. This is the same 15% discount you would get with the BMO AIR MILES World Elite Mastercard.
and the same flights on Air Canada:
With this example the 3,060 AIR MILES Reward Miles are worth $487.03 providing a $0.159 value per mile.
Here is shorter flight example, Calgary to Yellowknife with a 15% Gold Member discount:
and the same flights on Air Canada:
With this example the 1120 AIR MILES Reward Miles are worth $215.25 providing a $0.234 value per mile! If you redeemed all your miles at this level from the 2,800 you received from just two credit cards you are looking at $655.20 in value.
If you look at the AIR MILES flights options, all of Eastern Canada and the Eastern U.S. including Florida are available for 3,000 miles or less in the low season from Ontario. Out west it is Western and central U.S.. See the following as examples:
Other good travel redemption options via AIR MILES can also provide good value. We’ve seen car rentals offer over 30 cents per mile but on average you are in the high teens:
Here 900 AIR MILES Rewards Miles covers $162.88 of the car rental for a value of 18 cents per mile!
As with most frequent flyer programs, AIR MILES has taxes and fees that you have to pay when you redeem for a flight. The great news is that you can use a card that allows you redeem points against travel charges to cover those fees. So with those examples above you could easily cover the taxes and fees with a card like the American Express Gold Rewards Card and hence you have truly hacked your travel as it is 100% free.
Here are some FREE AIR MILES offers that can also boost your balance:
- 25 Free AIR MILES Reward Miles for subscribing to emails from Sobeys. Full details.
Have you ‘hacked’ the AIR MILES program? Or now will you take a closer look at doing so seeing that you can actually pull out some value from the program? We’d love to hear your stories of successfully using AIR MILES fee free cards for your travel rewards!