Spencer at Straight to the Points sent out another alert about business class tickets for up to 4 or more people being available on Austrian Airlines out of Montreal. As the airline is a Star Alliance member you can use your Aeroplan points to redeem for these flights.
Austrian’s Montreal to Vienna flights
Austrian’s flights out of Montreal are operated with their Boeing 767-300 aircraft which feature 24 lie flat business class seats. The flights operate every day of the week except on Tuesday.
Availability + Points required for Austrian Airlines Business Class
There is varying availability showing from November 2023 through to March 2024 for flights to Vienna and beyond. Many days have multiple seats available in business class. For example we found eight seats open on the December 4th flight from Montreal to Vienna and six on the return two weeks later.
Aeroplan requires 70,000 points each way for partner award flights in business class plus fees/taxes and the $39 partner award booking fee.
Availability Example:
Here is a round trip in December between Montreal and Vienna for some Christmas Market action!
Vienna to Montreal had 6 seats available
Redemption value
If you are someone who likes to check the value they are receiving for their points redemptions, this is another good one! The cash price for the same round trip flight above was $4716.75 (both AC and Austrian charging the same). Subtract the $165.75 in fees and you are redeeming 140,000 points for $4551.00 of the ticket value. That works out to just over 3.25 cents per point. This is well above the minimum 1.5 cents valuation we place on Aeroplan points!
Need more Aeroplan points?
If you don’t have enough points in your Aeroplan account your best option is to transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards. The points transfer almost instantly on a 1:1 basis and if you happen to have earned those as 5x points from the American Express Cobalt Card you are looking at nearly a 17% return on your spending!
Another option to consider if you don’t have enough Aeroplan points is to get a credit card with a large Aeroplan or Aeroplan equivalent welcome bonus. Ideally, you want to obtain a card that can provide enough Aeroplan points quickly so that you would have enough points to cover at least a one way business class flight to Vienna. One such card is the The Platinum Card® from American Express. Right now when you apply for the card you can earn 80,000 Membership Rewards Points (which equals 80,000 Aeroplan Points) by spending $7,500 on it in the first three months.
Or you can you go for the Business Platinum Card® from American Express which provides 90,000 Membership Rewards points (90,000 Aeroplan points) when you spend $10,000 on the card in the first three months.
If you have the means to spend $7,500 or $10,000 quicker than three months, the points should post sooner than that. Amex is usually quite good at posting the welcome bonus within a couple of days of hitting the spend requirement.
Wrapping it up
Typically it isn’t too hard to find one or two business class seats on Austrian’s Montreal to Vienna route via Aeroplan but to be able to find six or eight per flight is more of rarity! So if you need to book a trip to Europe for the family or a larger group for late fall or winter be sure to check this out!
Visit AirCanada.com to book your flights
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Images via Austrian Airlines (Patrick Huber) & Air Canada