In their latest schedule update American Airlines is adding new summer seasonal service between Vancouver and Charlotte and is bringing back the ever popular Halifax to New York LGA route.
Vancouver to Charlotte
This route will be operated once daily from June 5 to September 3, 2024 with an Airbus A321Neo and operates as a red eye out of Vancouver. Based on the scheduling this route definitely seems to targeted to Americans looking to board Alaska bound cruise ships out of Vancouver but no matter what it is always good to have more options to travel out of Vancouver as well!
Here are the flight times (per Aeroroutes)
AA2525 CLT1825 – 2115YVR 32Q D
AA2526 YVR2210 – 0627+1CLT 32Q D
Halifax to New York LGA
Haligonians rejoice! You will have more flights to NYC as American Airlines (well, their regional carrier Republic) are bringing back once daily service to La Guardia starting on June 5, 2024. This route used to be a popular British Airways Executive Club redemption back in the day when you only had to redeem 4,500 Avios one way (which worked out to even less Avion Rewards points and Membership Rewards points thanks to transfer bonuses)! Lot’s of the RWRDS Canada community would use this flight as a positioning flight for other bookings out of New York area airports as it is prime territory for finding excellent premium cabin rewards!
Here are the flight times (per Aeroroutes)
AA4459 LGA1200 – 1500YHZ E75 D
AA4459 YHZ1545 – 1705LGA E75 D
Booking these flights with points & miles
Nowadays the 4,500 Avios option is long gone but British Airways Executive Club is still one of the best options for the route as they only require 7,500 Avios one way in economy class. Here’s the first day on June 5th just in case you want to take the inaugural flight out of YHZ (I have no clue if there will be any festivities, hopefully there will be though!)
At least seven seats are available in both economy and business class and if you take the current 30% transfer bonus from RBC to BA it will only run 5,770 Avion Rewards points. Now you do have to transfer a minimum 10,000 Avion Rewards points to get the bonus and there is a good likelihood you may need to fly back from NYC to YHZ so you could transfer 12,000 Avion Rewards points to get 15,600 Avios which would cover you in both directions.
And to put how good this redemption is, let’s compare this to Aeroplan on the same day:
But if you don’t want to connect and really compare apples to apples with the BA redemption on the AA flights, here’s AC’s direct flight on the same day:
I think I speak freely for points and miles enthusiasts in Nova Scotia that it is great to have AA back on this route with the excellent BAEC Avios redemption option that can be used for it. It makes for a very worthy redemption especially when transferring from RBC Avion Rewards or American Express Membership Rewards (think about it – that 7,500 Avios flight can be earned with as little as $1,500 in spending on the Cobalt Card not taking into account any transfer bonuses!)
The new Vancouver to Charlotte flight was not showing any availability on British Airway’s site and I believe that is due to AA not releasing any saver flights as AA themselves are asking between 25,500 and 34,000 AAdvantage miles one way on the direct flight, whereas connecting flights via Seattle are only 12,500 AAdvantage miles.
However, it is bookable with AIR MILES and here is the inaugural flight on June 5:
You can redeem 2,950 miles for the one way flight but as was officially announced last week you can now redeem part miles part cash so you can use as little as 1,475 miles towards this flight.
Wrapping it up
After several years of cutting flights to Canada, American Airlines is now increasing service with the scheduled resumption of Halifax to New York flights and the introduction of Vancouver to Charlotte flights. For the RWRDS Canada community I think it is the return of the Halifax flights that will generate the most excitement as it is an inexpensive redemption option that can be used in conjunction with the plethora of amazing redemption possibilities out of the Big Apple including Singapore Airlines’ 5th freedom route from New York to Frankfurt.