Fiji Airways’ aircraft upgrade on their Vancouver-Nadi route is happening sooner than originally planned. As we reported back in April, Fiji Airways planned to upgrade this route from their older Airbus A330 to their newer Airbus A350-900 this October. In the latest schedule update that has now been moved up to August and there is good award availability via Alaska Airline Mileage Plan.
Fiij Airways’ Vancouver to Nadi flights
Fiji Airways operates flights twice per week between Vancouver and Nadi on Monday and Friday. As of August 18 the flight will be operated with their new A350-900 aircraft. This is significant as the new A350 features better business and economy class cabins when compared to the older Airbus A330 aircraft.
The A350 features full lie flat business class pods in a 1-2-1 configuration which is much better than the A330’s 2-2-2 lie flat configuration. And while the A350 economy class cabin is 9 seats across versus the older A330’s 8 seats the A350 seats are 18″ wide versus the A330 only being 17.3″ plus the new A350 has larger entertainment screens at each economy class seat.
The airline is also adding a 3rd weekly flight during the months of December 2023 and January 2024.
Availability + Points required for Fiji Airways
There are numerous program options that allow for Canadians to redeem for flights on Fiji Airways as the carrier is part of the oneworld alliance (as a oneworld Connect partner). The best option though is Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan as they have the most reasonable redemption rates for travel on Fiji Airways, especially for business class:
- Economy Class: 40,000 Mileage Plan Miles each way
- Business Class: 55,000 Mileage Plan Miles each way
We checked quite a few dates from August through to November and availability in Economy Class is outstanding with many dates seeing up to 4 seats or more available per flight. Business class had really good availability on many of the flights for one traveller but once that was upped to 2 travellers availability was sparser but we did find several dates where there were two or three seats available (see below)
Availability Examples:
Here are availability examples in both business and economy class departing Vancouver on August 25 and returning on September 15
Business Class for two people
These are the following dates I found two business class seats available over the next few months:
YVR-NAD: 8/25, 9/18, 9/22
NAD-YVR: 9/15, 9/18, 9/22, 9/25
I did not search past November but there may be even more availability in December and into 2024 given how far away that is.
Economy Class
Tip: If you are having trouble finding availability on some dates you can also try routing via San Francisco as Fiji Airways will also add the A350 to their SFO route as of August 24. Or you can try Los Angeles as well which already features A350 service.
Redemption value
If you are someone who likes to check the value they are receiving for their points redemptions, these work out to be pretty good to amazing value!
Economy Class
The cash price for the same round trip flight above was C$1569.56 per person. Subtract the ~C$158 in fees and you are redeeming 80,000 points for $1411.56 of the ticket value. That works out to just over 1.76 cents per mile. This actually isn’t too bad for economy class! Ideally it would be nice to have it higher than that but we do value Mileage Plan miles at a minimum of 1.5 cents so this does come out ahead and would be considered a good redemption.
Business Class
The cash price for the same round trip flight above was C$6896.56 per person. Subtract the ~C$158 in fees and you are redeeming 110,000 points for $6738.56 of the ticket value. That works out to just over 6.12 cents per mile! Anyone who tracks CPM/CPP knows that’s a huge value and an translates to an amazing redemption.
Need more Mileage Plan miles?
With the discontinuation of the MBNA Alaska Airlines co-brand credit cards there are only a few options for Canadians to earn Mileage Plan miles outside of actual travel with Alaska or their partners.
The first is if you are someone who still holds the Diners Club Club Rewards Mastercard as it has a conversion option to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. There aren’t many of us who do still have this card and since it isn’t open the public anymore we shouldn’t really count it!
Thus I would actually say the first viable option for most Canadians is converting points from Marriott Bonvoy that are earned on the Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express®* Card, Marriott Bonvoy™ Business American Express® Card or converted from American Express Membership Rewards cards to Marriott and then onto Alaska Airlines.
Points from Marriott convert to Alaska at a 3:1 basis and if you convert 60,000 points at a time Marriott will throw in the equivalent of 5,000 extra miles. So 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points will net you 25,000 Mileage Plan miles.
Out of all the Amex card options the best value will come from the American Express Cobalt® Card 5x points earning as those convert to 6 Marriott Bonvoy points which will then give you 2 to 2.5 Mileage Plan Miles per dollar spent.
The second option is to buy Mileage Plan miles. You can buy miles at anytime from them but it is best when they run one of their frequent buy miles bonuses which typically see a 50% or 60% bonus. If we look at the business class example and assume you have 0 miles you could buy 70,000 miles (+60% for 112,000 miles in total) for around C$2800-C$3000 including taxes. As you can see you could spend $3000 to purchase enough miles for a flight that costs nearly $7000.
Start planning for the future with MBNA Rewards
While you cannot convert points just yet, you can start planning for future Mileage Plan redemptions with the MBNA Rewards program. Sometime in the next year MBNA will begin to offer a 1:1 conversion option to Alaska Airlines for points earned on the MBNA Rewards World Elite® Mastercard® or the MBNA Rewards Platinum Plus® Mastercard®. This option will be open to ALL MBNA Rewards cardholders (not just those converted from the MBNA Alaska cards) as Rewards Canada did reach out to MBNA and we received confirmation this will be the case. (Read about the confirmation here)
With the World Elite card earning up to 5.5 points per dollar spent it will translate to earning up to 5.5 Mileage Plan Miles. If we take the 5.5 miles and the 6.12 cents per mile value of the above business class ticket you would be achieving an amazing 33.66% return on your spending. This will easily rival some of the best American Express Cobalt Card conversion to Aeroplan redemption values we have seen!
Wrapping it up
Fiji Airways planned Airbus A350-900 service between Vancouver and Nadi will now begin in August instead of October. With Fiji Airways being an Alaska Airlines Mileage partner this represents a great redemption option and right now there is some really good availability for redeeming your Alaska miles on these flights that feature better business and economy class cabins than before.
Click here to search availability and to book flight with Alaska Airlines.
HT Aeroroutes for the Fiji Airways route news
Image via Fiji Airways
Availability screenshots via Alaska Airlines