Air Canada
Air Canada’s latest points sale has just launched. Buy points by 25 September to receive a tiered bonus, with purchases of at least 80,000 points earning a 100% bonus — effectively half price. After the bonus, the cost works out at 1.35c or 1p per point.
Air Canada’s Aeroplan is a very valuable mileage programme. Although there was a round of changes in April this year, the impact was relatively limited. Some highlights include:
- Europe, short-haul, economy: 7,500 points
- Europe, short-haul, business: 12,500 points
- Asia, short-haul, economy: 8,000 points
- Europe – Middle East, business: 40,000 points
- Europe – Asia, business: 92,500 points
There’s also a very generous stopover policy. With a large number of partners, award availability is generally pretty good. There is a booking fee, but it’s relatively modest, and Aeroplan doesn’t charge fuel surcharges.
Cathay Pacific
Ping An‘s promotion is back, this time for Cathay Pacific:
- Promotion period: 11 September to 10 October
- The first 0–20,000 miles transferred earn a 10% bonus
- The next 20,001–100,000 miles earn a 30% bonus
- There’s a total bonus pool of 10 million miles
The structure of this promotion is a little complicated, and there’s quite a big difference between the two bonus tiers. So you really need to transfer a fairly large number of miles for it to make sense. The ideal scenario is to transfer the full 100,000 miles, which would earn 2,000 + 24,000 = 26,000 bonus miles.
At the moment, a 500,000-point Ping An voucher on Taobao costs around RMB 960, while the normal transfer ratio to Cathay is 60:1 before the bonus. Based on transferring the full amount, the cost works out at around 1p per mile. Not too bad.
I don’t normally accumulate many Cathay miles. I tend to pick up a small amount whenever they run one of those bonus promotions. Bit by bit, I’ve ended up with nearly 20,000 miles in my account.
They’re still very handy when you need them. Short-haul Economy awards start at just 7,000 miles, and I’ll actually need some next year for my trip back to China.
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