With a new Aeroplan program coming that explicitly prohibits backtracking, I made one final odd but strategic redemption. This redemption demonstrates why I love Aeroplan (despite our troubles) and why I am officially crazy.
My Beautifully Convoluted Final Aeroplan Redemption
Last Friday Aeroplan shut down for the weekend. When it re-opens, hopefully sometime today, a new program will launch. While the new program has many exciting new perks (check out my full analysis here), it also incorporates distance-based pricing into its new award charts. That doesn’t bode well for people like me who would never fly nonstop when they could make four stops instead.
Live and Let’s Fly is a travel blog that focuses on airline news and tracks developments in the world of miles and points. But at the heart of this blog is trip reports. Over the years I’ve visited nearly 140 countries and I intend to visit them all at some point. Writing about my flights and hotels when I travel provides a foundation of credibility for me to opine on new products and compare carrier offerings. In short, I view actually experiencing airline products as essential to reviewing them.
With that in mind, I set out to book a “review” trip for the second half of 2021. In the era of coronavirus, my travel has been severely limited since March. With many international borders closed, travel has been difficult. Furthermore, many carriers have dramatically scaled back soft product offerings. If this is only done on a temporary basis, such reviews would have a very limited shelf-life.
How I Booked
To book my review trips, I usually start with one flight or product. In this case, it was ANA’s new 777-300ER business class, dubbed “The Room.” That configuration reliably operates between Tokyo and both Frankfurt and London.
Everything was built around that flight. I simply wanted to try that product and try as many other new products with it as a I could.
So I set to work.
Aeroplan used a maximum permitted mileage (MPM) system to validate routings. Backtracking and transversing multiple regions was permitted as long as the sum total of your flights was under the MPM.
MPMs from the East Coast to South Asia tend to be the most generous, so I started with that.
It has been years since I traveled on EgyptAir, which has since introduced a new business class seat aboard its Boeing 787-9. I figured that would be a suitable transatlantic flight and it would be fun to transit Cairo (CAI) again. The 787-9 operates out of Washington (IAD), New York (JFK), and Toronto (YYZ). Award space was plentiful on EgyptAir, and I was quickly able to find an IAD-CAI-FRA-HND routing that worked.
The trouble with that, however, was that the MPM from Washington (IAD) to Tokyo (HND) was greatly exceeded by routing via Cairo and Frankfurt. So to make it work, I had to add more flights. First, I added a connection from Tokyo to Jakarta (CGK), since the MPM for Indonesia is so much higher than for Japan.
That still left me just about 100 miles over the MPM limit.
I ended up adding a flight from Orlando (MCO) to Washington. Adding that extra segment brought me just under the limit. How close? The Aeroplan MPM from MCO-CGK is (was) 17,872 miles. My routing ended up being 17,832 miles.
Here it is:
- Orlando to Washington – United Airlines A320
- Washington to Cairo – EgyptAir 787-9
- Cairo to Frankfurt – EgyptAir 737-800
- Frankfurt to Tokyo – ANA 777-300ER
- Tokyo to Jakarta – ANA 787-9
Price: 77,500 miles in business class and about $100 in taxes/fees.
I baked in “mini-stopovers” (long layovers, but less than 24 hours) into each city, not so much to see the cities as much to prepare for inventible schedule changes over the next year.
By next autumn, I hope the Park Hyatt Jakarta will finally open. I also want to fly Garuda Indonesia (again) on my departure.
CONCLUSION
While I have no idea what 2021 will look like, news of a successful vaccine trial earlier today has buoyed my hopes that I will actually be able to take this trip. These are the sorts of trips I prefer not to travel solo on, but several of the flights had only one award seat in business class. In any case, stay tuned…eventually…for what I hope will be a monumental review trip.
image: Great Circle Mapper / Karl Swartz
A Grand Bargain well done
Meh…you still could have optimized more and traveled an additional 40 miles. Kidding aside, this is an amazing (and crazy) redemption. No way my significant other would join me on an itinerary like this.
Looks like a great redemption. I hope it actually pans out.
I’ve flown MS on FRA-CAI in J before and that was all of that airline I needed to know it’s one I prefer to avoid. Though I suspect the flagship JFK route will be a little better.
A Cairo layover… That sure does sound fun. I miss those days.
This will be IAD instead of JFK, but hopefully just as good…
I flew JFK-CAI-JNB on MS last December — not too impressive but perfectly adequate. The food was do&co ex JFK, a little underwhelming for do&co but still pretty good, but ex CAI the food was pretty bad – overcooked steak covered in mystery sauce. Service was universally apathetic. However, the hard product on the 787 is excellent and I slept fine on the a330 even though it was angle flat (admittedly, I was exhausted). Also, there were three award seats on the week before Christmas, which was excellent value. Overall, it’s an award I’d book again absent a good revenue fare or availability on UA/LX/TK, but I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to fly MS in the future.
This is awesome!
Your chances of actually flying this itinerary depends greatly upon exactly when your flights are booked for.
“The second half of 2021” covers a long stretch of time, and honestly, the earlier part of that seem unrealistic to me. If your flights are booked for July 2021, I think you have zero chance of pulling this off (Egypt and Indonesia might be OK, but good luck with Japan) . If you are looking at December 2021, then I think there’s a fair chance you will be able to do it. Let’s all hope things continue to go well with vaccine developments and roll-outs.
This is all speculation, of course. Personally, I am hoping to be able to start flying again in September 2021 — that is about as early as it seems realistic. Much earlier than that seems highly unlikely to me.
I hope all your bookings are 100% refundable…
The trip takes places next summer. If Japan has not re-opened and I am allowed to transit, I am willing to remain in the airport. The other places I am not worried about…I hope Indonesia will re-open by that time.
…”and it would be fun to transit Cairo (CAI) again” – LOL I’ll keep you in my prayers!!!