In April I'll be going to Las Vegas for a friend's wedding (at the Planet Hollywood). I've been looking around for flight and hotel rates via a few common online sites as well as the site for my Aeroplan (frequent flyer/airmiles type of thing from Air Canada) and Scotiabank Travel Rewards.

So far, the best package I have obtained has been through expedia.ca of $1200 and change for 5 nights at the Planet Hollywood. Arriving in Vegas at 9:55am (1 connection) on April 10th and leaving vegas at 11:28pm on April 15th (redeye direct).

That price includes all taxes and fees. It is cheaper than the money I would have to pay even after using 85000 airline points with Aeroplan. Air Canada is somewhat ridiculous and I don't know if I'll ever be able to use these points for anything (you always have to pay tax when using the points, and the tax amounts always seem higher than when the amounts from other sources).

Using Travelocity.ca I was shown only US dollar prices and the site made choosing different flight times very difficult, if not impossible in some circumstances. It was impossible to choose the exact same flights as I did with Expedia. Pricing was a bit higher.

With Orbitz I was also shown US pricing and it seemed at least 100-200 more expensive even before making my optimal flight time changes (which on Expedia increased the cost a few dollars above the default times).

I haven't yet looked into flying out of Buffalo. Am I missing anything else? Can anyone recommend some additional sites or steps to take to try and get an even better deal?

Flying out of Buffalo is usually cheaper. Try kayak.com as another option for the flights. Sometimes the package deals aren't any cheaper than buying seperate.

Wow, kayak is comprehensive. By far the most detailed output of any site I've ever seen for flights. Again, wow.

I'm still processing the results...


Another question, based on the flights I was already looking at. The flight out has a connection in Chicago with a 45 minute window. Both flights are United. Is this realistic or is it a missed flight waiting to happen?

O'Hare is huge, but well laid out. 45 minutes should be enough.

Is this on a US passport or a Canadian one? There's no way I could transfer from an international flight to a US domestic flight in 45 minutes even if they were the only two gates in the airport.

Peter

It's one of those oddities that I can't explain, but many canadian airports have us customs in the airport, so you clear customs before you get on the plane and the plane lands at a domestic gate.

Matthew

Thanks for the information guys. It will be on a Canadian passport. Generally I haven't had a problem flying within the US our out of the US with a Canadian passport. I haven't noticed any difference when compared to colleagues with US passports. When flying out of Toronto we have US customs at the Toronto airport, so there's no customs on arrival (we come in like a domestic flight).

Expedia turns out to be the cheapest once factoring in US dollar exchange rates. That's because Expedia.ca charges in Canadian dollars and has a better rate (which they don't mention) than my bank or credit card company. If I paid in US, the rate would just negate the small savings in base price.

However, I'm glad I did check out the other sites, especially Kayak. It makes searching other places a breeze because of its superior UI and seemingly thorough digging. Using it and checking Orbitz site also lead me to find out that United doesn't serve any food for free nor do they allow any checked baggage for free. That's something I appreciate knowing in advance.

So long as the flight into O'Hare is not Air Canada, then UA will probably arrange for not too much rushing from flight to flight.

However, I frequently end up having to move briskly from terminal B (inbound from Ottawa on UA) down and through the tunnel over to terminal C for the outbound flight. There's time, but not a huge amount, especially if you have to find your way for the first time.

Cheers

Mark, from what I've read, you seem to fly quite a bit, so maybe you're the perfect person to ask... I can't for the life of me plan out any trip I'd want to take where using Aeroplan points saves much money.

I've seen people in the past post in their blogs that they've calculated points equalling about 1.5 to 1.6 cents each when compared to the money saved on a flight. Everything I'm looking at is coming up from .5 to .7 cents per point. A flight to London, UK for instance. Such a flight is practically 50% made up of taxes and fees (about $766 departing from Toronto and landing at Heathrow). It costs 120000 points. Double what I've read it cost just 2 years ago.

There seems to be more value in cashing out points for merchandise like iPods.

To further add to this oddity, Dublin and Shannon airports have US immigration checks. It really speeds up arrival times in Boston.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_border_preclearance

Bruno,

Another site to check out is flyertalk.com. The forums there are filled with people just chatting up the various airline frequent flyer programs.

Here's a direct link to the Aeroplan forum:

Flyertalk - Air Canada Aeroplan

International taxes are expensive and there just isn't anyway to get around them. As an airline employee I travel for basically free, but when traveling internationally the taxes are still due and they are quite costly, not to mention a major pain to calculate correctly.

When was the last time you had an airline flight that arrived on time?

tanstaafl.

Me neither. Except for front-cabin flights.

So my aeroplan points have mostly been used for first-class travel (for two of us) to New Zealand, Australia (different year), England/France, and Italy (so far). On the long journeys, it really helps to have a bed, excellent service, nice lounges with free food, drinks, reading materials, showers, and no airport line-ups to speak of.

The trick for those, is to know that most flights have a MAXIMUM of two front-cabin seats available (at minimum points). And if one wants *both* of those seats, then book no later than 340 days in advance. For a single seat, it's a bit easier.

Another cool thing is, booking a "Star Alliance" trip costs fewer points usually than an "Air Canada only" trip. Gotta love those inconsistencies.

And for short-haul (within the same continent), forget it.

Cheers

Note that Air Canada has only two classes of service on any given flight. Within North America (including Hawaii), that means cattle and biz. Ditto for most airlines within Europe, too.

But across oceans, Air Canada has cattle++ and something that is close to first for the front cabin. Quite acceptable. But even in cattle++ the drinks are free and the crews are generally a BIG step up from what we experience domestically.

Cheers

I think I am with Mark that the real value to miles is to book something that wouldn't even be under consideration otherwise. I got to Vietnam for a few weeks over New Years. A first class ticket that *said* it would cost something like $9,000 (and which I could never afford), but which I managed, with 3-4 sessions on the phone with United, to book as a 120,000-mile "saver".

And I did use some miles in November for an East Coast funeral when United wanted $800 for a last-minute ticket. So there's that. But it sounds like your taxes on these turn the whole thing upside down. I think I paid $35 in taxes on the Vietnam ticket.

I don't know if I'm getting scammed by the airline or expedia or both.

Today I rechecked the itinerary and the price was verified. So I started the check-out process. After filling in all details it comes back with a warning that the price has changed. It got bumped by a total of around $20.

So I confirm and proceed. It comes back with the warning again. This time the price jumped to over $1900 from $1250. WTF?

Well, because of the pricing BS, Expedia lost my business for this trip. Instead I booked with Orbitz (linked through Kayak) for a total of US$1125. This will come out up to $1475 depending on the rate when it posts to my CC and how badly the rate gets bumped by the card issuer.

For this greater that CAD$200 increase in price I get the following benefits:

Direct flights out and back (back flight is the same as previous itinerary).
Outbound flight leaves at 8:30am instead of 6am, but only arrives 25 minutes later (no connection = more sleep for Bruno)

Now the only oddity I see is that Orbitz order details state the departure date as Thursday April 9th and not April 10th which I requested. The Hotel reservation says the same dates. Which can't be right or the price would be a lot higher for the extra night's stay. Weird. The same April 9 to April 15 through Expedia rings up at CAD$1777

Looking into this now.

Daily flights re-use the same flight numbers each day.. better find out what happened there!

I think I'm going to leave well-enough alone for now. I have punched up (with some difficulty) the same flight for the 10th at Orbitz and it's coming up $100 more expensive.

That means I'm going out a day early, getting one extra night of hotel while paying less. I'm OK with that. It means the wife takes Thursday off work, no big deal (i hope)