In researching the Aeroplan award availability for Austrian business class I saw a routing of YUL-ZRH-VIE come up when conducting searches for Vienna, so naturally I needed to check the YUL-ZRH route and we have another alert! There are quite a few days for the upcoming fall and winter season that are showing up to 8 or even more than 8 award seats open on SWISS’ direct flights between the two cities. As this route is shorter than YUL-VIE it actually comes in under the 4,000 miles distance band for partner award flights which means it is only 60,000 points one way in business class compared to the 70,000 to get to Vienna.
SWISS’ Montreal to Zurich flights
SWISS flights out of Montreal are operated with their Airbus A330-300 aircraft on a daily basis. The planes feature 45 lie flat business class seats in a staggered configuration of 1-2-1 and 2-2-1. The single “throne” seats are ideal if you are travelling solo.
Availability + Points required for SWISS Business Class
Based on searches conducted on PointsYeah there is quite a bit availability of 8 or more business class seats for each flight showing up November 2024 and January through to March 2025.
For this partner airline route, Aeroplan requires 60,000 points each way for business class awards plus fees/taxes and the $39 partner award booking fee.
Availability Example:
Here is a round trip in November between Montreal and Zurich, where each direction had 8 or more seats available in business class (these are the same dates as our alert about Austrian airlines as I saw a routing of YUL-ZRH-VIE come up when doing those searches so naturally needed to check the YUL-ZRH route!)
Redemption value
If you are someone who likes to check the value they are receiving for their points redemptions, this is an excellent one! The cash price for the same round trip flight above was $8,000.31 per person (both AC and SWISS charging the same as of August 25). Subtract the $175.31 in fees and you are redeeming 120,000 points for $7825.00 of the ticket value. That works out to 6.5 cents per point. That is over four times the minimum 1.5 cents valuation we place on Aeroplan points!
Seeing that super high price for business class I did want to check out some other business class fares for this route, and the best came in around $3,400. That routing included one connection in Paris on the outbound and the same non-stop on the inbound. If we take $3,400 and subtract $175.31 from that you get $3,224.69 in value or an equivalent 2.69 cents per point.
It’s not exactly comparing apples to apples since it isn’t the same flight on the outbound (not to mention you have Euro Business class for the Paris to Zurich flight) but when ticket prices get as high as they are for the direct flight it’s always a good idea to see the alternatives to give a more grounded look at what the true savings may be.
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 over a 30% return on your spending if we take $8000 value of the ticket!
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 70,000 Membership Rewards Points (which equals 70,000 Aeroplan Points, more than enough for a one way business class ticket) by spending $10,000 on it in the first three months (With an additional 30,000 bonus points on offer in year 2 of having the card)
Or you can go for the American Express Aeroplan Reserve Card which provides 60,000 Aeroplan points when you spend $7,500 on the card in the first three months (plus 25,000 more points in month 13). That 60K will cover a one way business class award on this route.
If you have the means to spend $7,500 or $10,000 quicker than the three month requirement for either card, the sooner you’ll get the points to redeem for an award like this.
Wrapping it up
Just like the Austrian Airlines alert we had yesterday, typically it isn’t too hard to find one or two business class seats on SWISS’ Montreal to Zurich route via Aeroplan but here we have six to eight seats per flight in the fall and winter! So if you need to book a trip to Europe for the family or a larger group and save 10,000 points each way per person compared to the Vienna route, this is the way to go!
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