I adore Aeroplan more and more this year. It was a big tool on my path to victory in the 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge, but I also find it a lot of fun to daydream about Aeroplan awards because of their great partnerships and cool award chart for those looking to piece together unique itineraries. One of the questions I got from people at the Chicago seminar was how I put together my award. People want to know how difficult it is and how long it takes. Thanks to Aeroplan's good search tool, it isn't very difficult, but it takes some time. Aeroplan awards can be a lot of fun if you enjoy puzzles and game. I show you how I would put together an epic trip if I were to take a trip with my family during the summer school break.
I think AirCanada.com's search tool includes all of their flights. You can only search one date at a time, but if you check the Aeroplan points box it will return award flight results quickly.
I wanted to take a look at what it would be like if I were to book a trip for my family in August of 2023. I chose a time of year when many kids would be out of school because it would give me a chance to show how I would search. It's difficult to wrap your mind around parts of the story on the first read, but hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to plot out your own awards searches.
The first step in thinking about these types of awards is to do a simple search and pay close attention to what comes up in the results.
I would like to go to Rome next summer. I have never looked for data on this, but I believe that there are more flights to Europe from New York than anywhere else in the US. Sometimes it's necessary to search for international routes out of New York after Newark was removed from the "NYC" airport code.
I started looking for awards from New York to Rome on August 3rd, 2023. Even though I need 4 total seats for my family, I always start by looking for one passenger. I will tell you why in a minute. Look at the results.
There are itineraries in business class on Egyptair. There is a mixed cabin in the Air Serbia result. Air Canada codes mixed-cabin results by color, red means less than 50% is in business class and black means more than 50%. Since the Belgrade to Rome segment is only in business class, I ignore that result.
Unfortunately there were only two seats on the Egyptair itineraries and only one seat on the Brussels itineraries. The entire itinerary is covered by the designation of "1 seat left" or "2 seats left". The search tool only shows the number of seats available on the entire itinerary, so it is possible that one segment has more seats available. I would expect the tool to show only 2 seats for the entire itinerary if one leg has 4 seats available and the other has only 2 seats.
It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 My next step is to search from New York to Cairo to find out how many seats are left on the long-haul flight. There are five seats in business class on the long haul flight.
My family of four can fly across the Atlantic in business class. Since there weren't four seats available on the connecting flight from Cairo to Rome, I only searched for one passenger to start.
The New York to Brussels flight had two seats. It won't work.
Imagine for a moment that I was happy enough to fly Egyptair, in reality I would be more hesitant about this route, but just play along with the idea that I was happy with the plane. The flight leaves on August 3rd and arrives on August 4th. International award tickets have a connection time of up to 24 hours, so I could continue on from Cairo until 9:45am on August 5th.
There is a difference between a stop and a stay. When you stop in a connecting city for more than a day, it's called a stopover. Aconnection of less than 24 hours is a layover. One stop on a one-way award is allowed by Air Canada. layovers between segments can be up to 24 hours and a total of up to 6 segments on a one way award.
I would search business class from Cairo to Rome on August 4th if I wanted to get to Rome. I like to look at flights that leave after 9:45am on August 4th or before 9:45am on August 5th.
There were no options for seats in the business class. I was able to find results through a number of places.
I wondered if it was the first or second leg that was limiting the search results to two seats on those itineraries. I thought I might be able to find a connecting flight from Cairo to one of those cities and then another flight to Rome. All of the nonstops had only 2 seats available when I searched from Cairo to Abu Dhabi and Cairo to Bahrain.
There were several connecting itineraries that had 4 seats in business class but only two seats on the nonstop options.
One of the itineraries includes a leg on Egyptair to Saudi Arabia and then on to Gulf Air. I forgot to sort the results by departure time, so all of them leave Cairo before I go to Egypt. At the end of the day, I don't want to go to Abu Dhabi since I want to go to Rome.
I had to leave Cairo without paying for a stop on August 4th, so I searched for flights from Cairo to Rome before I got there. The options were listed here.
The last itinerary had four seats. Just in time for me to stay under 24 hours in Cairo, it leaves at 9:40am on August 5th. It is a mixed cabin. More than half of it is available in business class. Half of the flights from Cairo to Istanbul and Istanbul to Rome are in business class. Business class is where the flight from Istanbul to Rome would be going. Turkish's business class was reported to be really good. Since you need to pay the award price of the highest cabin on your itinerary, I would be paying for business class even if one or more segments are in economy class.
The first itinerary from Cairo to Istanbul to Athens to Rome only has one seat left in business class, but I don't know if that's the limiting factor. I tried to find Cairo to Istanbul.
There are three seats in this picture. It's so close. It would have been perfect if I only needed three seats. I would arrive in Cairo at 9:45am on August 4th, have plenty of time to see the pyramids, and return to the airport around midnight for my flight to Istanbul. I could spend all day in Istanbul and fly to Rome the next day.
The flight from Cairo to Istanbul only had three seats. There were itineraries with 4 seats in business class that connected in Kuwait City or a couple of cities in Saudi Arabia, but I didn't want to do that for this example.
On August 4th, I would arrive in Cairo at 9:45 am. I wanted to see if I could fly from Cairo to Istanbul on August 4th. The nonstop on Turkish Airlines on August 4th only had three seats.
That isn't enough seats. I had more searches to do once again after I found a number of connecting options. There was an option from Cairo to Istanbul with two seats.
I was less interested in the idea of flying from Cairo to Budapest to Istanbul than I was in the idea of going to Hungary for a night on the road to Rome. There were only two seats on the nonstop from Cairo to Hungary. There were four seats on Turkish connecting in Istanbul.
The departure time from Cairo is the same as it was a moment ago. Even though it only has 3 seats in business class, there is space for my family of four in Hungary.
If you want to book that flight, you have to be specific with the Air Canada phone rep as to how they look for it. They will only see 3 seats on the Cairo-to-Istanbul leg if they only search for it. They should see the four seats if they look at Cairo to Hungary. I had similar experiences where Turkish showed availability on the flights to Istanbul only when combined with a flight out of Istanbul and I was told there was no room from Cairo to Istanbul.
The itinerary leaves enough time to see the pyramids in Cairo, but the layover is from midnight to 12pm. Factoring in time from the airport to the city and back to the airport doesn't appeal since you wouldn't have enough time for a breakfast in Istanbul.
I stumbled on this itinerary through Istanbul and Vienna, where I was able to find 4 seats on the 1:45am flight from Cairo to Istanbul if I continued on to Vienna and Budapest.
There are 4 seats available in business class on a connecting itinerary where one leg of the trip only had 3 seats available. Four seats were found on the same flight from Cairo to Athens.
I had to look at the bigger picture again. I didn't like any of the options. I made a decision to reverse engineer. I wanted to go to Rome but there weren't any seats on the nonstop flights from Cairo to Rome. I wanted to figure out which Air Canada partners flew to Rome so I could search from Cairo to the hubs of those partners and potentially build in a stop in Rome.
I went to FlightConnections.com to find Star Alliance routes. The paid subscription for this excellent tool is only $36 a year and it is well worth it. The free version of the site allows you to search one airline at a time, but for my purposes it would have been difficult. Air Dolomiti and Air Serbia are Air Canada partners that fly to Rome, but this would give me a starting point of cities I could sandwich between Cairo and Rome.
There are a few routes from that map. I didn't know that Ethiopia has 5th freedom flights from Milan to Rome on some days.
If that was what it took to get to Rome from Cairo, I would take a cheap flight from Cairo to Rome. I searched from Cairo toBrussels to see if there was a chance of getting that far. I was able to find four seats on the Egyptair flight from Cairo to Paris and then onward to Belgium.
It looks like Paris in the summer. Maybe it sounds better than Rome. If I can get to the city of love and a cheaper Disneyland in one trip, then I don't need Rome.
In a recent post, I explained how I am very destination- open when booking trips. I wouldn't be disappointed with Paris if I went to Rome instead. You need to have that kind of flexibility if you want to find seats for a family during peak school break dates.
The flight from Cairo to Paris takes off five minutes before my flight from New York arrives. Do you like it? It wouldn't work.
I would love to go to Paris. The 9:40am flight on August 5th only had one seat so that wouldn't work either. To the drawing board...
Would I be able to catch the flight to Paris in time? I would need to land in Cairo in the morning of the 4th or the day before to do that.
I was able to fly from New York to Cairo on August 2nd and arrive on August 3rd as there were 5 seats available.
On August 3rd, that flight will arrive at 9:45am. I could travel from Cairo to Paris on August 4th.
That's a big boom! It takes New York to Paris in 23 hours and 55 minutes, with a stop in Egypt for four people on peak summer dates.
On August 2nd, I might not be able to leave. I would like to get to Paris in time for the flight on August 4th. I would go back to Flight Connection and see what other airports Egyptair serves from other cities.
They fly to Cairo from Washington. There is plenty of time to catch the flight from Washington to Paris at 9:40am on August 4th.
Unfortunately, all of that work done to find business class for a family to Paris and I wouldn’t be paying a great price for it. That’s because whether you start in New York or Washington DC, your total travel distance from New York to Cairo to Paris will be about 7,600 or 7,800 miles. That means you would pay 90,000 miles one way for New York or DC to Cairo and on to Paris. That’s not at all a good price for business class to Europe. 
The beauty of the award chart is being able to piece together awards on different partners that stretch to the end of the chart. If you fly more than a couple hundred miles from Paris, you'll get into the top end of the distance band for the Atlantic zone, so why not stop in Paris for a few days and then fly to Mauritius on August 7th?
If you wanted to stop in Paris you would have to pay over 100K miles and 5K miles.
I don't worry about booking my return flight through the same airline program, but I know many people would like to see that a return is possible. A family of four can be flown back to South Africa after a couple of days in Mauritius.
You could go on to Abu Dhabi and back to New York after just a day in South Africa.
The return itinerary from New York to Abu Dhabi costs 115K miles and has no stop, so you have to travel from one location to the other.
In total, a trip like that would cost over 200K miles per passenger with nearly 24 hours in Egypt and a stop in Paris for a few days before continuing on to the destination of your choice. If you take advantage of the current Chase transfer bonus, you only need to transfer 177K Ultimate rewards points to book the trip.
Maybe you would like to go further. The cost of a trip between North America and the Pacific zone is less than the cost of a trip to Paris.
If you wanted to go for 5K miles more than it would cost, you could go to Cairo, Paris, and other places in Asia. North America to the Pacific zone with a stop in the Atlantic zone is a good place to go.
You can spend from 1 to 16 hours in Istanbul on August 10th if you stop in Paris first.
Maybe you don't want to go to Thailand and instead want to go to Singapore and Indonesia. If you took the 16 hour flight from Istanbul to Bangkok on August 12th, you could spend the day there with 4 seats in business class and then take a flight to Singapore and then on to the other side of the world.
You could have flown at that time.
The segments are all in business class.
During a peak school break period, how did I find all of those options? I was able to find the seats shown at the beginning of the post by searching a route with one passenger and looking at the results to see what other routes I might want to try.
I am familiar with Air Canada's partners. I usually look from hub to hub. I know that Air Canada partners with Star Alliance airlines, so I searched from Cairo to cities that I know are Star Alliance hubs. I also searched for cities in the Middle East. I always start with one passenger so that I don't miss connecting itineraries that may work for my family.
I was hoping that the post would show that it is possible to do with a family and even during a peak travel period. Would my kids like going to Istanbul for 16 hours? It's possible that maybe not. I want to show my plan of attack for finding something like that. The AirCanada.com search tool is very powerful and can be used to find dates and city pairs quickly. You can get very far on a one-way award thanks to Air Canada. It will probably take some trial and error to find the right itinerary. The thrill of the hunt is something I love. If you enjoy playing with puzzles, Air Canada has a lot to offer.
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