AIR MILES sent out an email listing a bunch of offers and deals that are available and there was one in there that caught my eye. It is an offer to use fewer Dream Miles for travel on Air Transat between Toronto or Montreal and the United Kingdom.
Right when I saw this in the email the red flags started a wavin’! Flights to the UK (and Europe in general) are notorious for being comprised of low base fares and a sh*t ton of surcharges.
And AIR MILES is a program where you cannot use miles towards extra charges or fees passed onto them by the airlines, so I had to dig deeper into this as I knew this couldn’t be pretty. Just how good of deal can be had on these Air Transat flights to the U.K.? A bloody amazing deal I’ll tell you! (Said sarcastically in a British accent)
I picked random days in June to fly between Toronto and London Gatwick and here’s the result I came up with via AIR MILES Travel:
You can choose to pay $941.56 in cash or if you want to redeem Dream Miles…. drum roll please……. you can redeem 20 Dream Miles and pay approximately $940 in cash! I have to ask the question: what was the redemption amount before this “fewer Dream Miles” offer? 22 Dream Miles and $940? My apologies to everyone and to AIR MILES – I have such a heyday when things like this come along! Plus, I’m a grumpy old man now so I like to grump about things.
Now let’s look at why you can only redeem 20 miles. This is taken from Transat’s site for the same flight:
The base fare is $2. Yes, only $2 and Transat is collecting an additional $660 as other ATC. What an absolute joke. This sucks for AIR MILES and sucks for AIR MILES collectors as that $660 fee is passed along to the customer. This also sucks for RBC Avion Rewards cardholders, CIBC Aventura cardholders, and American Express cardmembers looking to use the fixed price for travel option as they would be seeing something similar.
(You’ll probably also notice it is cheaper just to buy the ticket via Transat to save 83 cents and the 20 Dream Miles.)
But this is nothing new and it is why it immediately set off the warning bells in my head. Certain loyalty programs just suck at being a good money saving option for travel to the U.K. and Europe. This comes down to how airlines structure their tickets for Transtlantic travel and it’s also why we at RWRDS Canada have an entire Loyalty Lesson dedicated to it: Why credit card reward charts rarely provide good value for economy class flights to Europe (I probably should add AIR MILES to this Loyalty Lesson as well as they fall into the same boat)
I figured why not throw in another example before I close this article out. This one is slightly better – if you can call it that:
This high season ticket in July is $1,190 and you can use 2,500 Dream Miles to cover $250 of base fare and then you have to pay that same ~$940 in taxes and fees. 2,500 miles for $250 in fare works out to 10 cents per mile which has pretty much been the going rate for redeeming miles for flights.
In the end though I am not seeing any signs of using “fewer Dream Miles” especially as the offer states it is only available when you use 100% Dream Miles. That would imply there should be some additional discount? Unless AIR MILES is simply referring to Transat having some sort of seat sale which will translate to using fewer miles but then you shouldn’t need to use 100% miles? I don’t know, I’m a bit confused by it. No matter what the case is though, to me, this does not seem like an offer that should be promoted in an email.
Wrapping it up
As mentioned above, my apologies to AIR MILES for taking a shot at you here. Honestly it’s not your fault the airlines price their tickets this way but that could be alleviated by allowing collectors to use miles for Other ATC. Until that happens do you really think an offer like this should be promoted in an email? I guess if Air Transat is paying you for it, but even so, it may not be the best look for you. You will have collectors “who aren’t in the know” click that link in your email thinking they are going to get some amazing deal and are presented with an option to redeem 20 miles and still having to pay $940? That will leave a lot of people scratching their heads and I’m pretty sure there will be some WTFs mixed in as well.
Images via AIR MILES & Air Transat