With all the focus on using points for longhaul luxury travel, it can leave some people wondering what options are available for them when travelling in economy. Rising ticket prices can leave your wallet feeling lightweight, particularly if you have a large family or lack the luxury of being able to be flexible on dates/destinations to hunt deals.
In this article we will review the process of "base casing", then dive into all the different ways travel rewards can save you money on economy flights.
Consider Your Base Case
This advice applies whether looking for economy shorthaul, longhaul business, or anywhere in-between. It is critical to understand what you would do if you didn't have any points as it will help you quantify how much and what type of benefit points are getting you. This in turn will let you consider if you are meeting a reasonable benchmark for your points. Point bookings are typically analogous to economy standard, but if you would have flown economy basic, then you aren't "saving" the price of a standard fare, you're "saving" the price of a basic fare and "gaining" the benefit of a better fare class (which you may not value!).
Which airline would you have flown with? If you would have flown with the cheapest airline (eg. Flair), then an AC flight on points isn't saving you the price of the AC ticket persay.
The same applies to departure time - if the point price is the same for every time of day, allowing you to pick your favourite time, what is the value gained? Would you have booked the favourite time regardless or would you have picked the cheapest time? Or conversely if the only point flight is at a time you wouldn't have normally picked, is it saving you enough money to offset that inconvenience? You also need to consider why you are going on this trip. Is it something inflexible like a wedding, family get together, etc? Or is it a leisure trip that could shift in date/destination as needed? If you wanted to go to London but found an amazing deal to Dublin, is that irrelevant or are you now changing your destination happily?
Maybe your base case is that you wont go - without a good point deal the cost of the ticket is just too high. In this scenario points aren't saving you money but giving you an experience you'd otherwise miss out on. There are so many questions like this, and I don't expect you to formally consider them all, but you can imagine that it could be very difficult to articulate how much you are saving when you are comparing a direct flight on WJ leaving at 10pm in economy basic vs a connecting flight on AC leaving at 5pm on economy standard. Finally I want to emphasize that if your base case is a very cheap flight, there's a greater chance that you might be better off saving your points for another time.
Consider Your Options
Now that you know what you'd do without rewards - take stock of your options. What rewards do you have? Do you have any companion passes? Do you have points that are fixed value, variable value, or a hybrid of both? Are they transferrable to airline miles?
If you're looking for the highest outsized value, and you have avion or amex points (or any airline miles) you may want to jump ahead to the airline miles section, but I've arranged the options in a hierarchy that creates a logical flow for all card types.
Companion Passes
If you hold a premium Aeroplan, personal Westjet, or Porter card, you may have a companion pass. These are useful in the circumstances where the base fare of the ticket is quite high and you're travelling with someone else (although Westjet is introducing the ability to use a companion pass solo for a 30% discount). Because these have annual expiration dates, it is wise to consider this option early in your optimization. Do you have any other travel between now and when the pass expires? if not you should be more willing to accept any savings from it, versus saving it for strategic use.
Check out our article on maximizing companion passes for more details.
Fixed Value
The vast majority of commonly collected travel points in Canada can be used for a fixed value, but some of them only have this ability - such as TD travel points and Scene+ points.
Note: some companies refer to this as "variable points" because the amount of points required for a booking varies with price, but the value of the points is fixed, so I prefer fixed value.
If you have a pure fixed value point, then you can stop with this step and use the points you have accumulated to offset the cost of the flight. These points are cash equivalent but earn no interest, so while it might feel nice to save them for a special trip, you should probably use them now before they lose value to inflation. This simplicity can be really appealing so if you're looking for a straight forward option with a good sign up bonus check out the TD First Class Travel which is currently available with a waived annual fee and an all time high sign up bonus.
If you instead have a hybrid point (Avion, Aventura, Amex) then you should consider their fixed value option as guaranteed floor value when you assess their other uses like flight charts. Do not accept lower than the fixed value for your points.
Aeroplan is a bit of a special case in that it doesn't have true fixed value, but you can approximate it via Aeroplan gift cards, with some limitations and frustrations of giftcards (ie. limited number of concurrent payment options, impacts to insurability etc)
Capped Variable Value - Flight Charts
Flight charts are a relatively common form of variable value point use with a capped upside. Avion, Aventura, and Amex MR can all be used this way with maximum point values of 1.5-2.3cpp depending on which route and point type.
Note: some companies refer to this as "fixed points" because the amount of points required is fixed, but the value of the points varies with ticket cost, so I prefer this variable value.
These are generally most useful with expensive tickets such as booking last minute, on-peak, selecting a more favourable departure time or route, or selecting better ticket terms (eg. econ flex instead of econ basic). The nice thing about flight charts is that their value shows up at a time when cash is most painful and they still allow high flexibility of airlines, dates, routes etc. For the most flexible and highest value flight chart, check out Avion points with the Avion VI carrying an elevated sub as of writing.
Check out our article on maximizing flight charts for more details. With Aventura points there are no further options (unless you have been holding the card since the early 2010s abd are grandfathered in to the ability to transfer your points to Aeroplan points) so you can stop at this step and decide if the variable value you got was good enough for you to go ahead - do not accept lower value from the flight chart than you could get with fixed value, and use the higher of the two as the benchmark for your transferrable points/miles.
Uncapped Variable Value - Airline Miles
Most airline miles, with the notable exception of Westjet have an uncapped variable value, Aeroplan being the most widely collected in Canada. If you hold an Aeroplan card, use shopping portals like the Aeroplan eStore or pay for cash tickets, you would have this type of point and using them for flights is typically their best value. Other airline miles can be collected and used similarly including more niche options such as the Cathay mastercard.
If you instead have a so called "transferable point" such as Avion or Amex MR, your points can be transfered to various alternative programs. This may allow you to obtain higher value than their flight charts, but introduces more variables to consider. First, you should be aware of the transfer partners you have access to and make accounts with them to facilitate easy transfers.
More than just knowing which programs, its helpful to understand the types of flights they can book, and how to search for good deals with airline points. A common misconception is that if you want to fly with airline X you should/must use airline X's own miles. In fact, these points often find their best value when booking flights from their partners. With that in mind, consider the flight alliances as the major source of these partnerships. Star Alliance - Aeroplan
SkyTeam - Delta Skymiles, Flying Blue
OneWorld - American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay
Independent/Special - Etihad
This means if you want to book a flight with Westjet, a SkyTeam partner, and you have Amex MR, you should be checking Delta and Flying Blue for deals. It also means that even if you want a Delta flight, you may be better off booking with Flying Blue.
This categorization also shows why, all else equal, I prefer Amex points as they're the only Canadian way to potentially get high upside value with all three flight alliances.
From an implementation perspective, if your travel plans are very inflexible, you can manually check on the relevant airlines' websites to see the cost of paying with points. You can then compare this to the cash cost to determine the value you're getting for your points. However, if you have more flexibility or need alerts then I recommend using a tool like Roame or Pointsyeah to more rapidly check your options.
Putting It All Together
Let's look at a case study to demonstrate this overall approach and the kind of value you could obtain.
Imagine you have a last minute flight you need to make from your home airport in Edmonton to Fort McMurry due to a family emergency. You can't be flexible on date or route, it has to be this weekend, so you get your base case pricing from google flights and uhoh...
Yikes that's expensive! So let's consider our options
Are you flying with a companion?
If yes, do you have a companion pass (ideally Westjet, but potentially AC)? is it expiring soon with no other use? if so this could save you a thousand dollars!
What kind of points do you have?
Fixed value only - might as well use them
Hybrid with flight chart - this ticket is sure to max the flight chart
Airline miles or transferable points (amex or avion) - need to consider who flies this route
Westjet (SkyTeam) flies it direct - check Delta and Air France/KLM's Flying Blue
these miles are available from Amex
AC flies it with a connection - check Aeroplan if this is acceptable
Avion only has transfer partners to OneWorld which wont be helpful here, so your best bet would be a different option above
Let's say you have Amex and Avion points because you love the Cobalt plus Avion card combo, and you use a business platinum with Chexy. You can use your points at 1c each, but know can get max value with the flight chart - Amex on this route can get 1.5cpp (20k points for $300) and Avion can get 2.33cpp (15k for $350 off). But this ticket is so expensive that leaves a massive residual (about $1000!), and you want better. Your preferred routing is direct with WestJet so you turn to the SkyTeam partners and find:
Note that Canadian Amex MR convert at a rate of 1:0.75 to Delta and Flying Blue. Therefore 35k Delta takes ~46.6k Amex MR giving ~2.7cpp in that case. Meanwhile to get 10k Flying blue it would take ~13.3k MR giving ~9.5cpp!! WOW!
While I would suggest you check both Delta and Flying Blue for domestic flights on Westjet, as a general rule Flying blue will be cheaper for short distances and Delta will be cheaper for longer distances.
For completeness, here is what you would find with Aeroplan (which you can access via Amex)
This gives a cpp of ~2.2 versus the WJ ticket in cash but adds a connection, so this is a bit of a misrepresentation, unless your base case included a connection (flight timing, or preference for AC). If you only had Aeroplan miles or had an excess and were saving your Amex for something else, this would be a reasonable choice.
There are no OneWorld flights to YMM, so no need to check them. If your route is covered by a OneWorld partner, the process can be a bit more involved than the above. That's because in addition to having direct access to British and Cathay (plus American if you have Avion points), British Avios can be transfered to other partners like Finnair which have different pricing schemes. The full approach to optimizing OneWorld is outside the scope of this article, but as a general rule of thumb I would suggest looking into Finnair for longer haul direct flights as their pricing is region based not distance based so they would charge the same for an AA YYZ-ORD as YVR-CLT, or a JAL flight JFK-Tokyo vs YVR-Tokyo. Conversely you may find better value on the shorter routes with BA or Qatar. I would typically recommend against Iberia given their punitive cancellation rules, and Aer Lingus has no current ability to book partners.
As an aside, while Aer Lingus is not good for booking partners, their point pricing for yyz-dub or sea-dub in economy is perhaps the cheapest way across the atlantic as a Canadian. Just a caution that as of writing, online transfer from BA to Aer Lingus is down and you may have to call in or book through BA which should preserve the amazing deal
There are so many additional advanced tricks to consider to get more out of your variable value points, but these are a bit too complex and situational to describe in depth here - eg. skiplagging, split itineraries, stopover manipulation, and more. This degree of effort is seldom indicated for economy travel.
That said, one last tip I will give is that while we do not have easy access to an alternative Star Alliance reward program to get alternative pricing on AC, Etihad is able to book some AC flights as a special partner. The pricing can be particularly favourable for short distance flights, or just on circumstances where dynamic pricing has gone into overdrive. Just make sure to educate yourself on Etihad's policies regarding point expiration, cancellation etc as they are not the most favourable and you may not have as easy of a time using the points later if you do cancel (compared to Aeroplan). With this in mind I would primarily consider them if they were significantly cheaper than Aeroplan.
Conclusion
Depending on the kinds of points and passes you have, optimizing for economy travel can be as easy or as hard as you'd like. The effort you put into this process should be a function of how expensive the tickets are - but just like business class tickets, the more expensive they are the more you can save by knowing how and where to look. Amex has the potential for the highest upside across the most carriers, but Avion puts up a strong fight for my overall pick for economy travel with its industry leading flight chart leading to reliable value with any carrier.
Referral links
With its best in market 5x multiplier Amex Cobalt is a powerful point earner that can get you on flying for free 5 times faster than much of the competition - sign up here.
To see the access the best offers for different Amex card such as the Business Gold, or Platinum click here. Or to compare all the cards I can refer to, check out my card comparison tool.
You're going to need somewhere to stay after all of these free flights. The Amex Bonvoy or the Business Bonvoy card will earn you free hotel stays and can be combined with the Aeroplan eStore for some incredible double dipped rewards.
If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible.
Check out my Keeper Cards series to see other cards worth exploring
Disclaimer
This should not be taken as financial advice and details are subject to change. I have made good intentioned efforts to be accurate but ultimately consult card terms and conditions
