REALLY Worth?

What Is An

Mile

Table of Contents

The Quick Answer 03

A simple way of determining the value of a mile 04

Typical value of an Aeroplan mile 05

High-end value of an Aeroplan mile 05

Low-end value of an Aeroplan mile 07

The golden rule: ALWAYS redeem for flights 08

25,000 Aeroplan miles are worth $625 08

A few notes about the calculations 09

What Is An Aeroplan Mile REALLY Worth?

With the news breaking that Aeroplan will be replaced as Air Canada's loyalty program in 2020 – its future has become increasingly uncertain.

We know the program will continue on after 2020, your miles are 100% safe, and it will be a specifically Air Canada loyalty program. That is what has been promised.

What we don't know is how the reward choices, flight redemption options, and reward value will change after 2020...

Ultimately, what everyone wants to know is "what are my miles worth today?", "what will they be worth after 2020?", and "is Aeroplan still worth it?".

Here you'll find a concrete answer to the first question, my predictions on the second, and a discussion about the third.

So – what are Aeroplan miles worth today?

The quick answer: 2.5 Cents

I used to value Aeroplan miles around 3 cents per mile (CPM) each, but in recent years the price of flights has dropped significantly.

There are still plenty of ways to get a 3 cent value or higher, but they're mostly reserved for Business class and higher. It's no longer a realistic value for a long-haul Economy class flight.

The average value for long-haul North American flights across all the flights we surveyed was 2.5 CPM – this includes:

Market Fare flights in Economy class, Fixed Mileage flights in Economy class, and Fixed Mileage flights in Business/First class.

If you were to include the values for the less-valuable redemptions, like to Europe for example, the average CPM comes to 2.31 cents.

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- 04 -

A simple way to determine the value of an Aeroplan mile

There are all kinds of calculations you could do to determine the value of a single Aeroplan mile. And each one of them would produce a different answer.

Why?

Each flight has a different value. The miles needed to fly within a specific region is fixed when redeeming for Fixed Mileage flights, but the price of all the flights in that region is NOT.

And if you opt for the Market Fare option, the amount of points you need changes each time too.

Consider the Canada & USA region as an example. A round-trip Fixed Miles reward flight there in economy class costs 25,000 miles.

Those flights cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars for fairly short flights to major cities, to roughly $700 for coast to coast flights, all the way up to $2,000+ for flights to extremely remote areas or during peak flying times, like Christmas.

Additionally, it makes a big difference if you calculate your value against the cheapest possible flight with any airline, during a huge seat sale, at the cheapest time of year, on the cheapest day of the week, booked at the perfect time.

If you do that, value plummets. Or, you can reverse all those scenarios and value skyrock-ets.

Let's avoid all that complexity...

And look at it from 3 different angles: typical value an ordinary person can expect to get, maximum value if you optimize for the most expensive flights, and low-end value if booking the worst possible reward flights.

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Ottawa (YOW) to Edmonton (YEG):

2) High-end value of an Aeroplan mile: 3.4 to 8 cents

There are plenty of ways to increase the value of your Aeroplan miles including booking:

International Business Class flights

Toronto (YYZ) to Hong Kong (HKG) in business class.

This is a pretty common business class fare, but it goes to show you how much business class can increase the value of your miles. If you throw a few smaller airports and further destinations into the mix, your value should easily surpass 4 cents per mile.

Halifax (YHZ) to Vancouver (YVR):

That said, I consider a typical reward ticket to be either: coast to coast in Canada (Halifax to Vancouver) or from Ottawa to Edmonton in economy class.

1) Typical value of an Aeroplan mile: 1.7 to 2.6 cents

Saving your miles for flights that maximize your reward value is something I encourage...but the truth is that people want what they want, even if it doesn't give them the best value.

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$474.92

25,000 miles

1.73 CPM

Taxes & fees

$122.99

$166.52

Savings:

Total cost

$597.91

$166.52

$431.39

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$652.10

25,000 miles

2.56 CPM

Taxes & fees

$154.64

$166.19

Savings:

Total cost

$806.74

$166.19

$640.55

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Extremely popular routes

Calgary (YYC) to Sydney, Australia (SYD) in business class.

Flights to Australia are among the most popular reward flights out there, and you can see why with a total cost of nearly $8,000 per person in business class.

Peak times and holidays

Halifax (YHZ) to Vancouver (YVR) at Christmas and in Business Class.

2 years ago when I looked for flights at Christmas they were almost double the normal prices. This time around they are only a couple hundred dollars more expensive and there's no Fixed Mileage Economy class inventory available.

The price of airfare at Christmas fluctuates heavily but ticket prices seem to be trending down overall.

It's worth noting that very few seats were available at these rates – most of them were nearly double the cost.

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$5,867.72

150,000 miles

3.70 CPM

Taxes & fees

$113.33

$433.06

Savings:

Total cost

$5,981.05

$433.06

$5,547.99

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$7,471.02

160,000 miles

4.35 CPM

Taxes & fees

$173.26

$679.51

Savings:

Total cost

$7,644.28

$679.51

$6,964.77

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$1,606.00

50,000 miles

3.49 CPM

Taxes & fees

$310.49

$170.71

Savings:

Total cost

$1,916.49

$170.71

$1,745.78

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Remote Locations

Moncton (YQM) to Iqaluit (YFB).

This route gave me the best value of all flights I measured by far.

3) Low-end value of an Aeroplan mile: 0.5 to 0.9 cents

Now, it's also possible to book some pretty cheap flights with Aeroplan and in doing so, greatly reduce the value of your miles. Here are two examples:

Montreal (YUL) to Toronto (YYZ)

Ottawa (YOW) to Toronto (YYZ)

Proximity is a big factor here that makes these flights uber cheap. For this option, you're not even leaving the province and don't even break $100 in savings.

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$1,945.87

25,000

7.98 CPM

Taxes & fees

$300.29

$250.00

Savings:

Total cost

$2,246.16

$250.00

$1,996.16

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$188.00

15,000 miles

0.8 CPM

Taxes & fees

$107.28

$176.00

Savings:

Total cost

$295.28

$176.00

$119.28

Site

AirCanada.com

Aeroplan.com

Value of 1 mile:

Flight cost

$152.00

15,000 miles

0.51 CPM

Taxes & fees

$90.10

$165.00

Savings:

Total cost

$242.10

$165.00

$77.10

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The golden rule: ALWAYS redeem for flights

The golden rule of maximizing the value you receive from your Aeroplan miles is to ALWAYS redeem them for flights.

Sure, there are people who redeem for other things out of their rewards catalog, most frequently gift cards, and that's fine. Just know that if you choose to do this it will complete-ly destroy the value of your miles.

Your other redemption options

Compared to the 2.5 CPM average you get with flights, every other redemption option is pretty underwhelming. On average, each option gives you the following value:

Vacation packages: 0.83 CPM Merchandise: 0.83 CPM Hotels: 0.73 CPM Gift cards: 0.71 CPM Car rentals: 0.64

It's best to only go for these options if you have no use for reward flights whatsoever or you're in serious need of some extra cash.

25,000 Aeroplan miles are worth $625

Given our 2.5 cent per mile valuation, 25,000 miles equates to $625 worth of free flights.

25,000 is a bit of a magic number when it comes to Aeroplan because that's the exact number of miles required to fly from any airport in Canada to any other airport in Canada & USA.

It's also the number of bonus miles that are frequently given as a sign up bonus for Aero-plan credit cards. $625 for signing up for a credit card that will sometimes give you the first year free is pretty amazing.

Take a look at the Hot Credit Card Deals This Month section below as there's usually a good Aeroplan deal listed there.

Finally, $25,000 is also a pretty reasonable amount for a middle class family with two working adults to be able to spend on a credit card in the run of a year. That means if you earn 1 mile per dollar spent on your credit card, you'll rake in about $625 worth of rewards per year.

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A Few Notes About The Calculations

Flight prices were calculated using AirCanada.com, seeing as Aeroplan tickets are only valid on Air Canada and their partners. All flights checked were round trip tickets of an approximately 1 week duration usually departing and arriving on the weekend. The cheapest available seat in either economy or business class was chosen, ignoring flexible tickets because Aeroplan reward tickets aren't flexible either. Prices were spot checked about 4 months before the date of departure. Regular flight prices were used in the calculations, not big seat sales. Taxes, fees, and surcharges aren't part of the reward so they were deducted from the value calculations.

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