RBC has made a small but significant enhancement to the Air Travel Redemption Schedule (Reward chart) for their Avion cards. That enhancement sees the addition of one way reward flight redemptions at 50% of the cost of round trip reward flights.
The new one way rewards
When you go to the RBC Rewards Travel page you now have the option to see how many point it take for round trip or one way flights. Simply click on the One way button to see these new options.
Once you click that you’ll presented with the amount of points required for those one way flights for flights within Canada or North America and for flights departing from Canada/U.S. to sun destinations, Alaska, and the rest of the World.
You’ll notice right away the points required and the maximum ticket price for each region is exactly half of the requirement for round trip flights.
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| Points requirements and max. ticket prices for one way flights |
Maximizing value out of these one way rewards
The one way reward flights work in the exact same manner as the round trip flights RBC Avioners have been accustomed to for well over a decade. If you want to fly one way between Toronto and Montreal it will cost 7,500 points regardless if the base ticket price is $100 or $175. So if you are a points maximizer and like to extract the most value from your points you’d want to redeem for a ticket that is at or near that $175 price level. And the same goes for all the other regions on the chart. If you want to learn more about maximizing value from the RBC Avion chart please read our article How to maximize value out of the RBC Avion Airline Award Chart (which will now have to be updated to add in the one way rewards)
Remember those maximum ticket amounts shown in the screenshot above do not include taxes and fees. The points only cover the base fare up to that maximum. You can however redeem additional RBC Rewards points at a rate of 100 points to $1 for those taxes and fees.
Current card offers
These one way rewards couldn’t come at a better time as RBC is currently offering their highest ever welcome bonus offers on their trio of Avion consumer cards. The bonus is up to 55,000 RBC Rewards points on the following cards:
The bonus is awarded as 35,000 points upon approval of the card which cover 5 of the 6 regions alone for the one way awards and then you can earn 20,000 points if you spend $5,000 on your card in the first six month of having it. After that spend you’ll have at least 60,000 points which covers all possible one way flights on the chart. Now the international flights of late have been difficult to extra value from as they are mostly made up of surcharges, fees and taxes that the points won’t cover but there is a lot of potential value in these welcome bonuses for flights within Canada and North America as you could redeem for up to 8 one way flights.
Wrapping it up
This new one way award option from RBC is a great addition to the program. If you are an Avion cardholder or become one you now have more flexibility in your flight reward options The popularity of one way flights has exploded over the past few years for both revenue and reward tickets so this was a logical move on RBC’s part. Whether it is for positioning flights for points and miles enthusiasts getting ready to embark on a first class journey out of another city, a student going to off to college on the other end of the country who don’t know when they’ll come back home or perhaps someone looking to make a multiple leg journey that may involve different cities (multi city and/or open jaw), having one way flight options is key.
I feel the driving factor in this change are the Aeroplan and AIR MILES programs as they both offer one way flight options plus you have the other credit card programs that allow you to simply redeem points against travel charges including any and all one way flights. Perhaps with this change from RBC we’ll see American Express do the same with their Fixed Points for Travel charts!