Collecting frequent-flier miles is easy. Redeeming them for free flights is the hard part - and this is especially true for basic members of airline programs, who don't qualify for the unlimited reward seats available to the privileged few in the top tier.
The challenge is even greater if you want a free seat to the other side of the world - Sydney or Singapore, for example - in first or business class. Those long-distance, front-of-the-plane rewards provide tremendous value for the miles spent. They also ensure you'll travel in comfort and style. So, not surprisingly, there's going to be plenty of competition.
But Brenda Sandulak is proof that it can be done. All it takes, says the St. Catharines, Ont., lawyer, is time, patience, persistence and some careful planning.
That means knowing when the seats you want will become available - often nearly a year in advance - and doing everything possible to be first on the phone that day to claim them.
"Most people, I suspect, are not willing to be quite as anal as I have been in order to do that," she says. "As an example, for the last Toronto-Honolulu flight in business class we booked, three years ago, we had three phones going at the same time at 6:59 a.m. to get the flights the morning they came into the system."
She and her husband collect miles through Air Canada's Aeroplan program, Delta Air Lines' SkyMiles and, before the airline disappeared, Canadian Airlines' Canadian Plus. But they earn their miles mainly by using credit cards affiliated with those programs, so they have none of the booking breaks available to the programs' most frequent fliers.
With Aeroplan, for example, the couple must compete for the small number of reward seats allocated to any destination at the Classic, or basic, rate. Once those are gone, they have to pay the ClassicPlus rate, often requiring four times the number of miles to fly on a particular day. Super Elite members, by contrast, are allowed to book any unsold seats at the Classic rate.
Still, Sandulak says, she books two or three leisure trips a year, usually flying in business class and always paying with miles. Holiday destinations have included Australia and Fiji twice, Hawaii at least eight times, French Polynesia, Las Vegas and, on countless occasions, the Caribbean.
"I don't think we've paid for a flight for about 13 or 14 years," she says.
"I'm not saying the flights are easy to get. What I am saying is that with a fair amount of planning and effort they can be attained."
But many basic members of airline programs aren't willing to make the effort. Instead, they complain - either directly to the airlines or in online frequent-flier forums such as FlyerTalk - that reward seats are never available.
That explains why plans now offer a wide variety of merchandise and lifestyle rewards as alternatives to flights. It also explains why Aeroplan introduced ClassicPlus rewards. And it explains why some credit-card companies are revising their rewards programs to simplify the booking process.
"Consumers are expressing increasing dissatisfaction at not being able to use the points they've accumulated," says Jim Sallas, senior vice-president of lending and credit cards at TD Canada Trust. "When they go to claim a reward, they can't get what they think they've earned."
TD responded this spring by launching three new Visa cards that give holders the freedom to redeem miles for any travel product and through any travel seller without worrying about blackout periods. That makes it as simple as using cash, Sallas says.
In fairness to airline programs, booking economy-class seats is still relatively easy - providing your travel plans are flexible and you don't want to travel at the last minute. Aeroplan - Canada's most popular airline program, with more than four million members - makes 8 per cent of its seats, averaged per route and per month, available at the Classic reward level. Last year, Aeroplan handed out more than 1½ million round-trip reward flights. And a high percentage of them were made online, avoiding the $30 fee for telephone bookings.
(Members also have access to reward seats with its Star Alliance airline partners, including Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand. Some partners offer first-class seating, something not available on Air Canada planes.)
But if free business- or first-class travel is your goal, think carefully about which programs you join. Air Miles, a frequent-buyer program affiliated with WestJet, offers a vast array of merchandise and leisure rewards. But reward flights are available only in economy class. And a number of credit-card programs also limit their reward flying to the back of the plane.
If you want to claim reward seats without hassles, by all means go for the credit-card programs that let you book what and where you want. But keep in mind that business-class rewards with those programs may require considerably more miles than an airline program.
