I’ve gone to Australia and Peru on my BF’s points. This summer I flew my sister, her husband and two kids across the country so they could come visit me.

There are seats available but you do have to plan ahead. I booked in February for June travel.

If you can’t pay your credit card balance in full each month or can’t plan ahead then this might not be for you. It’s worked great for me and I look forward to my next trip.

Basically I collected for YEARS.. now have enough to fly my family to South America and back (3 of us) Executive Class..

Well I book the flights, but they only have Aeroplan Executive Class seats available on the way back.. fine so be it… BUT… they charge you the FULL EXECUTIVE RATE…. So I’m paying (in points) for a full executive trip, but only getting half.

The only advice from the CSR Drones: “Cancel and go econonmy”… buh by Aeroplan…

I am flying Montreal to Melbourne, Australia and their website was showing nothing available across many days I was checking. Tio # 1 - call on a weekend afternoon, early morning - 9:00AM+, or late late evening. When I spoke to them ( tip #2 - do the “voice print” thing - and just keep saying “book a flight” or some other gibberish. It will pass you through to an agent quicker ) the phone agent was easily able to find an itinerary. Could care less about the $30 “phone agent fee”. Ridiculous, but efficient. Flight was 75,000 miles. I upgraded part of the trip to Business class for a 100,000 mile cost, and got business class MTL - LA.

Here’s the biggest surprise. I called to see if I could modify the 15 hour to Melbourne and they found me an alternate route - ALL business class, and didn’t charge me any more miles?? Love it! Not sure how that could happen because if you search on business class flights, it should bost a half millions miles to go business class ( seriously ).

Another tip - although I paid a $90 “change itineray” fee, I came out even because I was NOT flying AC to LA, but rather United. You see, AC still charges a much fuel surcharge ( robbery ) that they simple pocket. United charges way less. I was refunded on the “service fees etc”. So the tip is to use other Star Alliance airlines and avoid AC routes.

Final tip - just keep calling them. You never know what will open up, and every agent is different. Some try harder than others, but most are very pleasant to talk to. Costs nothing to keep calling if you have the time.

Believe me, I was ready to tear up my card and go for ANY other one. Now I have a return flight to Australia in business class that cost me about a little over 2 years worth of credit card purchases, and lots of gas I buy only at Esso.!!

Good luck!

Their accountants that are nickling and diming us are going to shut down Aeroplan one of these days. I fly Air Canada alot and may just keep the aeroplan for that and cancel my aeroplan credit cards.