You may know that last year (2015) I played in Earn Your Wings and won over 500,000 Aeroplan points – you can read about it here.
This year Air Canada has decided to run the same contest but instead of giving 500,000 points to top 20, they broke it into two tiers. The Top 10 each win 1,000,000 points and Top 11-30 each win 500,000.
How do you play?
- You can book your flights between May 16 and June 30, 2016
- In addition, you can fly up until July 31 (one month after booking window closes)
- Wings are the currency of points in the contest
- The goal is get as many wings as possible – every airport that you take off or land at earns between 100 and 400 wings
- There are globetrotter badges that are each worth 2000 wings. For example the Scenic Drive badge is earned every time you take off or land at any 2 of the 5 following airports to earn this badge: Victoria (YYJ), Winnipeg (YWG), Halifax (YHZ), Ottawa (YOW), Thunder Bay (YQT).
- There are many more other badges like this which you can read about here: https://earnyourwings.aircanada.com/en/how-to-play
So, I have to travel from Vancouver to Toronto every week for work. Instead of flying direct I found itinerary that goes like YVR-YEG-YYC-YXE-YWG-YYZ and then on the way home YYZ-YWG-YXE-YYC-YEG-YVR-YYJ-YVR.
There’s “Wing Calculator” that has been published online here.
When I enter this route I get the following result:
YVR-YEG-YYC-YXE-YWG-YYZ-YWG-YXE-YYC-YEG-YVR-YYJ-YVR
4 x YYC | points: 400
4 x YVR | points: 400
4 x YXE | points: 800
4 x YWG | points: 800
4 x YEG | points: 800
2 x YYZ | points: 200
2 x YYJ | points: 400
2 x Scenic Drive | points: 4000
4 x Prairie | points: 8000
--------------------------------------
1 x Altitude | points: 500
1 x Shooting Star | points: 2000
--------------------------------------
Total: 18300
I basically did this every other week plus a number of other crazy itineraries over the promotion period.
I ended up with 162,750 wings, which was just enough to keep me in 10th place! Here’s a look at the final leaderboard.
What did it cost me?
- The total cost of all of the tickets was about $12,000. I was able to reimburse $7000 as they were related to work travel and ended up paying $5000 out of pocket.
What was the benefit?
- The top 10 prize of 1,000,000 points, plus the wings convert to Aeroplan points as well, plus all the points for flying earns about 1,200,000 points total
- For example, I can use those points to redeam for Lufthansa First Class ticket at 125,000 points which is valued about about $9000! (7.2 cents per mile)
- If I say on average I can redeem flights at 5.0 cents per mile (which is realistic for international first / business class flights) then the total value of the points is $60,000
Bottom Line:
- Pay $5000 for flights now! Get $60,000 in flights later!
- There was a lot of risk involved because after the booking window closed in June, I didn’t know if I would hold top 10 until end of July – but I did pull it off!
- If the contest was run exactly like this again, I would just go for Top 30 because the payoff of 500,000 points could be done just with work trips and lot less effort.
canadian travel oracle 