Credit card reward maximization requires attention to detail at every step along the way. Maybe you're already a pro at collecting points, you know when to get which SUBs, how to work referrals, and how to squeeze every point per dollar you can from your purchases. But how good are you at maximizing redemptions? How would you even know if you were getting good value? Good redemptions make the difference between blowing all your points on an enjoyable economy flight to your dream destination vs an incredible business class flight to the same location with points to spare. Plus good technique, and helpful tools, can pay for themselves with time saving and better redemptions.
For the sake of this article we will be talking about the Aeroplan program but much of it can be abstracted to others. Referrals and disclaimers at the bottom.
Dynamic Pricing is not a Friend
Some might think "they always say a point is worth 2 cents so what do they mean good value?", but unfortunately while both ticket cash prices and point prices vary with destination and demand, they do not vary in equal amounts and as a result the realized value of your points can range widely.
Lets say you wanted to go to Rome with your spouse and child, so you needed 3 tickets and you had 500k APP that you've saved up, you want to leave on a Saturday so you can maximize your trip without missing too much work, and you figured you'd book in April for nice weather, so you search up on air canada and find the cheapest business class option with 3 seats.
Ok so 75.3k, not too bad, we can do this, but wait TIP: be cautious of mixed cabins, when you hover over the button you see this:
Oh shoot, only the YYZ to ORD leg is in business, this is basically just an economy flight. So you keep scrolling to more and more expensive flights to try to find one where the transatlantic portion is business that has 3 tickets available. The cheapest you find is this:
You feel annoyed that you bothered to collect all those points and it can only cover 2 of you one way, and you'll have to pay cash for the rest. Might as well check what the cash cost is of that flight now. You switch over to cash and you can't find this flight, and all the flights you can cost $8k per ticket. You end up deciding to go with that YYZ-ORD-FCO but in economy for about 90k and $435 in fees for the three of you. Given a one way to rome is typically around $1k, you got $3k-$435= $2565 in value for your 90k points or about 2.85 cents per point, not too bad you think.
What you didn't know was that a different day of that same week had this redemption
for less than half of your points and a bit over $400 you could have flown your whole family there in business class!
Know the Floor
Your first step to getting the most from your redemption is knowing the floor price for each redemption type. Air Canada publishes a chart of prices based on region and distance flown.
You can put the airport codes of your origin and destination city into a website like cowtool to get the mileage and you'll see that YYZ-FCO is 4397, which in the table gives Air canada operated flights a cost of 70-180k with partner flights at 70k. You may recall from the example above that the Air Canada flight (which was 93% business) was over 230k, well above this price range... it is at best a "suggested price". Meanwhile the Swiss air redemption was right on the 70k Partner Airline rate. Tip: Keep an eye out for partner redemptions as they are consistent and typically lower in cost
You might also realize that our distance of 4397 is only just barely into the 4001-6000 mile band which bumped the price up 10k points from the shorter band.
TIP: If your destination is close to a lower distance band, consider if it is worth it to fly to a slightly closer airport, or from a different airport than your home one.
In this case you could consider if a holiday in Portugal, Spain, or France, where you could potentially find partner airline redemptions for 10k less per ticket per way. Or you could consider if you want to travel further since the price would stay the same further west another ~1500 miles.
Knowing is (less than) Half the Battle
Knowing the floor price only gets you so far. In the above example it would have told us that we didn't find the best we could, but it wouldn't have shown us where to find that better redemption.
This is where good search strategy comes into play.
Be flexible in your timeline, partner airlines often release their seats in limited amounts either well in advance (almost a year) or last minute (next two weeks) but these can be snapped up quickly. Tip: Focus on >350d and <14d out if you want a great redemption to a popular destination
Be flexible in your routing, sometimes you can't find anything good from your home airport say Toronto (YYZ), but there is an amazing redemption from Montreal (YUL). It's possible that even adding in the time/cost of getting to Montreal it might be worth it if you can't find what you need at YYZ or if it costs far too much. Same goes with the destination, for your Italy trip consider if Milan, Venice, or Rome have better options. In the EU especially the availability of cheap flights and trains makes it less critical to land exactly where you want to be.
Tip: Consider nearby airports on each end of your trip and if youre willing to make "positioning" trips to/from them to increase the chance of finding a good redemption
Even with this refined search strategy you can imagine how tedious this could be. Searching for flights from YYZ, YUL, ORD, EWR, JFK, to MXP, FCO, and VCE (15 combinations) across multiple dates is going to be super time consuming with no guarantee of finding what you want. Enter tools like Pointsyeah, Roame and seats.aero which let you search award availability by program with flexible inputs and filters. The pro versions of each are around $10 USD a month (consider using your no forex card if you plan on staying subscribed), and given all the reasons outlined in my reviews plus my discount code I would recommend Roame's paid tool or Pointsyeah's free version. I've personally paid for and used a half dozen tools so you can always reach out to me to discuss which one might be best for your specific use case.
For less competitive routes, these tools lets you be more picky about your dates (if you can be flexible on route) or more picky about your route (if you can be flexible with your date).
For example if we use our original search, but broaden the dates, filtering to just the aeroplan program for this example:
We would find that in the +/- 7d of our original search there were 7 possible dates at the floor rate:
Now you'll still have to check these dates to make sure they tickets are still available, that the timing makes sense, what the fees are etc. But in this example we already cut the dates to search in half, and for more competitive routes this could allow you to check entire months at a time instead of slowly reloading and scrolling through aeroplan searches.
Conversely if you were set on the exact date you could expand the origin and destination airports and potentially find a good redemption:
For really challenging routes you'll be rewarded by combining the two for maximum options.
Squeezing out Extra Value
Stopovers are a great way to squeeze more value out of a single redemption provided you have the time and interest. Aeroplan allows you to add a stopover of up to 45 days at a connecting airport provided it is not in North America and to a limit of one per one way direction for 5k points per person. That means that for this example we could add several days in Zurich for 15k points total for the family of 3. Doing this with conventional flight booking can be very challenging and this is a very affordable way to turn one trip into two. Select the multi-city/stopover option and click Book with points, enter the same origin and destination city, and add a stopover at the connecting city we already identified.
And just like that you scored a floor price business redemption for 3 people with a stopover for 225k points and $501, leaving you 275k to sort out the return flight.
Conclusion
Good search strategies and flexibility are key when it comes to getting the most out of your redemptions. While you can debate about the true value of a redemption I think we can all agree that that initial 8 hour flight will be much more restful in business class. Strongly consider adding a tool like Pointsyeah, Roame and seats.aero to your arsenal to help you get the most out your hard earned points. Interested in learning even more? Sign up for our free intro to redemptions course or for one of our advanced small group redemptions support courses. In these classes we cover all kinds of advanced tricks like split itineraries, manipulating stopovers, fixed-dynamic pricing anomalies and more.
Advanced Reading
While this article focused on the Aeroplan point system, this same approach and tools can be used for others. If you are collecting Amex MR for example, instead of converting them to AP you could convert them to British Airway or Delta at 1:1, or Flying Blue, Asia Miles, or Etihad at 1:0.75. Not all of these programs are easily searched with every tool out there, so there can be a lot to consider when comparing all options. If you're relatively baked into the AP ecosystem its a reasonable place to start... but if you're struggling to find what you need, or wanting to try flying a different airline, consider an alternative and if you have enough to transfer. For the example above you could have instead gone with Flying blue Air France via Paris, or KLM via Amsterdam for 60k Flying blue (80k Amex MR) and $260 USD in fees per person. Beyond conversions you'll also have to consider is the relative quality of each airline and your desire to stopover in each location. But Flying Blue gives some additional benefits like having more seats available, premium economy seats at decent pricing, and youth ticket discounts.
Referral Links
Looking for help? Reach out for a consult
Pointsyeah, Roame and Seats.aero are great tools for searching for award flight availability if you're having trouble finding that ideal redemption for all these points youve earned.
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.
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
Great analysis!