For the summer Air Canada is flying one of their five daily flights between Vancouver and San Francisco with an internationally configured Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. The plane will be flying the 1:30pm flight AC566 from Vancouver and the return 5:30pm flight AC571 until September 1st. If you are lucky enough to be travelling on a day that there is availability you could fly on this plane for only 12,500 miles one way in Economy or treat yourself to the amazing business class option for only 25,000 miles one way.
Here are two examples of some Aeroplan redemption opportunities for this route:
For the above business class option you could redeem 25,000 miles plus pay the $116 in fees versus an all out cost of $664. The miles would save you $548.64, for a value of about 2.2 cents per mile.
For economy class we did find some options that actually priced below the standard 12,500 mile redemption rate. The Market Fare pricing on select dates was 500 miles lower at 12,000 miles:
Now the Economy Class pricing to buy this ticket outright wasn’t very much – $205 for the lowest Economy (Standard) or $284 for Economy Flex. The 12,000 miles won’t save you very much in cash and brings your value per mile to below 2 cents but as we state in our article The True Value in Reward Redemptions, you may not be interested in pulling the full value out of your miles and redeem them so that you can have that cash in your pocket.
This could be a great way for you to experience a plane and business class like this if you know that you may not be actually flying internationally with Air Canada. Sometimes it is fun to be able to experience a business class like this, even if it is on short route like Vancouver-San Francisco.
One of the easiest ways to earn enough Aeroplan Miles for redemptions like those listed above is to grab a co-branded Aeroplan credit card. At the time of posting this article The TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card offers a 20,000 Aeroplan point welcome bonus with no annual fee in the first year, that’s enough miles for a one way business class redemption or the full round trip in economy class. Or you could look at the American Express Gold Rewards card – it offers a 25,000 Membership Rewards points welcome bonus which can then be converted to Aeroplan almost instantaneously at a 1:1 rate. Also you with the Gold Rewards card you don’t have to wait until the end of your billing period to receive your welcome bonus after you’ve met the minimum spend. There are numerous other card options to earn Aeroplan Miles which you can find listed on Aeroplan Bonus Miles page.
Images via Air Canada & Aeroplan
Source of route news: Routesonline