Welcome to my next trip report series, which will include business class reviews on Austrian Airlines, Gulf Air, Singapore Airlines, Bamboo Airways, and Air Canada, as well as several airport lounge and hotel reviews.
Continue reading: Introduction: A Whirlwind Aeroplan Adventure
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Looking forward to reading the reviews. Thanks for taking us along for the ride with you!
Looking forward to all these reviews!
I just discovered Aeroplan and am already in love! The number of options are staggering and it opens up so much more availability when you can mix and match routings.
One question - do you ever have any issues when you're on an itinerary involving multiple Aeroplan partners but the different airlines aren't partners with each other? For example, I'm connecting soon from OS to EY on the same ticket, and I'm curious if I'll have any issues getting boarding passes or checking baggage since these two carriers aren't partners with each other.
Still find it wild that that crazy routing with those range of airlines can be booked with just one airline loyalty program. If only Aeroplan miles didn't expire...
Nine segments, eight different cabin products (not even counting Air Canada's 777 and 787 as two separate products)...what a brontosaurus of a review trip!
@ Ryan -- Checking bags shouldn't be an issue. However, odds are that a non-partner won't be able to issue a boarding pass for your connecting segment on another carrier. However, you should be able to get your boarding pass at a transit desk, at the gate, or via online check-in. Enjoy your trip!
I miss those days(quite some time ago) aeroplan 120k miles round trip to Asia 1 in F. No fuel charges as long as you avoid AC.
The routing rules allowed 10 segments TPAC ant TATL with a stopover in each direction.
@Lucky: a word of caution regarding LOT: the last 3 times we flew with them on business class (in the past 6 months), 1-2 days before check in our seats were taken away from us and we got reassigned to completely different seats even though we had one record locator for both of us. On all 3 occasion it was because certain seats had issues with them. Neither LOT's central reservation, nor the gate agents could do anything about it. We had to ask people on board to switch with us.
The service was good, and the dessert/cheese cart at the end of the meal was great.
@ Mike -- THOSE WERE THE DAYS! Never mind that SWISS and Lufthansa first was wide open in advance...
@ DaBluBoi -- Indeed, there's no other program that gives you this much flexibility in terms of mixing and matching airlines. I'm curious, what's your beef with Aeroplan's points expiration policy? Points expiring after 18 months of inactivity (with any activity resetting that clock) seems pretty fair to me.
Would transferring in a nominal number of miles, say 1,000 from a cc count as activity?
Looking forward to all of the detailed reviews, but most curious about the conversation(s) had with the Aeroplan call center to book these. Hoping there's a lot of detail in this regard. I'm guessing the agent wanted to book you more direct routing.
Thank You for the tease. I’m sure you had an amazing trip(s). Hope to read your posts soon.
Can't wait for the how-to. Trying to return from KRK on June 3rd to the states and I'm unable to reproduce your routing for decent miles. I'm from south FL so I find your blog so helpful!
thank you.
@ Bruno -- Whoops, good catch, thanks. Updated the post now to reflect that. I did indeed spend a night at the Sheraton Frankfurt Airport.
Really looking to see how you booked this as sometimes just a single sector with Aeroplan can cost as much if not more lol
"My outbound journey covered a total of 12,948 miles across six segments. I booked the following in business class for 115,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points plus $112.82 in taxes & fees:
1/05 OS66 Chicago to Vienna departing 4:20PM arriving 8:20AM (+1 day)
1/07 OS501 Vienna to Rome departing 7:55AM arriving 9:30AM
1/07 GF26 Rome to Bahrain departing 11:10AM arriving 6:35PM
1/07 GF165 Bahrain to Singapore departing 11:50PM arriving 12:25PM (+1 day)
1/08 SQ186 Singapore to Ho Chi Minh City departing 5:30PM arriving 6:40PM
1/08 QH256 Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi departing 10:10PM arriving 12:20AM (+1 day)"
I’m glad that Aeroplan worked for you. My own experience with them was a nightmare. Flying AC and AC, connecting in Montreal I missed my connection. At the AC counter, the agent and her supervisor both insisted they couldn’t rebook me and I needed to call Aeroplan (which acknowledged on the web site a 2 hour hold time). No work around with DM on Twitter. I couldn’t even find a chair to sit in. So I rebooked myself for the next morning and got a hotel room.
Once home I waited patiently to talk with Aeroplan who told me the agents shouldn’t have done that. Gee, ya think? Aeroplan refunded me a whopping 7000 miles (so out most of my second ticket) and AC told me the short connection was somebody else’s fault so they wouldn’t cover the hotel room.
In short, I couldn’t even cross Canada on Aeroplan, flying Air Canada. Hearing about your trip flying all over the world with this program just makes me cringe.
Gosh, I'm really looking forward to reading these reviews! How did you get SEN lounge access in VIE considering your onward flight was in business class? Do you have *G? (I assume not, since your LH FRA review is of the C lounge...)
Now the cat is out of the bag and you will be covering this soon.
Maybe can you also share how long it took you to plan this routing including phone hold times and actual ticketing?
I'm sure returning at 10,608, or 392 miles short is not a coincidence, would love to hear all about this too.
Looking forward to your adventures.
As much as this is indeed a great journey, most normal people would want to get to Hanoi with one or two stops max, and that’s when it gets hard. Finding availability on dozen of flights isn’t hard
@ alpha -- I have Star Alliance Gold status through Singapore KrisFlyer. I reviewed lounges in Vienna and Frankfurt based on which I've reviewed in the past. I've reviewed the Austrian Business Lounge Vienna and Lufthansa Senator Lounge Frankfurt, so this time decided to visit the Austrian Senator Lounge Vienna and Lufthansa Business Lounge Frankfurt.
Good lord, booking that outbound must have been quite the phone call. There's no way you could have booked that online right? Hopefully Air Canada had good phone support. Pretty cool that you could get a free day in Vienna without going over the 24hr threshold for a stopover though.
@Lucky - When did you start using bots in the comment section of your blog. Really hope this is only test and not the new norm. Have a hard time believing multiple users with different usernames posted the *exact* same comment:
Santos (Guest)
January 16, 2023, 10:02 am
This is why OMAAT is in a class by itself among miles/points blogs. Amazing.
dedektör modelleri (Guest)
January 16, 2023, 5:30 pm
This is why OMAAT is in a class by itself among miles/points blogs. Amazing.
Ryan,
Don't get too exited. While the program looks shiny and fantastic on the surface, it's plagued with a host of problems. Sure, they have 892734 airline partners and market that at every opportunity, but finding availability for said partners? Good luck. You'll find availability on the route, but it'll be AC for an inflated 280K points in Y.
As always, flexibility is key for reward programs, and if there is ever a program that truly tests that claim, it's Aeroplan. And even then...you better beg, pray, and do whatever it is you can to find any decent availability.
Oddly enough, the program was much better 3-5+ years ago, even with its fewer airline partner options.
If only availability wasn't near impossible to find--that would be more appropriate.
Looking forward to how you booked this marathon! Would contemplate a less ambitious routing using my stash of Aeroplan miles, for which I share your enthusiasm!
I love these kinds of trips that demonstrate the power of an airline program. And like a lot of others here, I have a love-hate relationship with Aeroplan. I just booked my family of 5 (two infants though) a trip to India and back on Etihad business class round trip. We are leaving in 45 days and I was astonished to find 7+ seats on Etihad in each direction for our dates. We also have a stop over in Abu Dhabi on the outbound and will get to sample the hard product on both B787 and A350. And the funny part - despite leaving from and returning to Toronto, we aren’t stepping foot on AC metal (United, Etihad, Vistara, Air India, all in one trip). The infants cost 2.5k + C$30 per person each way - simply Amazing! The part I hate is that each ticket costs 110k miles, so there goes my family’s two years worth of mileage accruals.
If you come armed with flight numbers and airport codes in my experience they just punch it all into the system and you’re good.
Question. I transferred 180K Bonvoy points to Aeroplan on 12/25 and not yet posted on my AC account as of today. Any past experiences with this issue? And customer service phone line is nonexistent.
Just returned from 2 months Asia trip via a similar itinerary, JFK HND SIN KUL BKK outbound and BKK DBX ZRH EWR MIA inbound. All in J, Etihad, Swiss, ANA, Gulf. Took a few days to piece together an outbound in November, January return took about 30 min to book; booked it on the beach in Pattaya 3 days prior to departure. Feels like I have a doctorate in Aeroplan, hope they don’t mess with it.
@Lucky - When did you start using bots in the comment section of your blog. Really hope this is only test and not the new norm. Have a hard time believing multiple users with different usernames posted the *exact* same comment:
Santos (Guest)
January 16, 2023, 10:02 am
This is why OMAAT is in a class by itself among miles/points blogs. Amazing.
dedektör modelleri (Guest)
January 16, 2023, 5:30 pm
This is why OMAAT is in a class by itself among miles/points blogs. Amazing.
What makes you think that Ben is running the bots? Many bots are run by third parties and blog owners consider them as much of an annoyance as readers do.
OK, Maybe I'm slow but I have no idea on the actual physical aspect of getting the flights. Do you do a 1 way to say BKK then check the stopovers? Then, how do you go from BKK to say London? Do you look at the BKK to London flight, check stopovers or what? What is the physical method used to get the tickets. I know you have to call in to book multi stopovers, but how do you physically figure your route?
Huge warning to anyone booking “interesting” aeroplan adventures. Even though I was on a single ticket, bamboo airways denied boarding due to me not having a Vietnam visa. According to them they do not have an interline agreement with other airlines (despite the website saying otherwise). So bamboo to ANA via Hanoi was a no go. Trying to get this solved with aeroplan was a nightmare due to the limited operating hours and long hold times and general lack of award availability. But aeroplan did make good in the end but it was very stressful.