60,000 Membership Rewards sign up bonus from a referral link (previously 75,000)
$7,000 minimum spend requirement in first 3 months for the sign-up bonus (previously $5,000)
Is the Business Platinum still worth it?
Yes. In addition to the benefits that come with an AMEX Platinum level card, earning 60,000 bonus points for an annual fee of $499 is like purchasing points at a cost of $0.0083 per point or 0.83 CPM. This is not the best points acquisition rate from credit card signups but it is still below a cost of $0.01 per point which is the threshold we don’t want to exceed.
How do I reach $7,000 minimum spend?
Spending $7,000 in 3 months ($2,333.33 per month) can be a challenge for those who primarily use the card for personal expenses but is still possible with smart planning.
You’d want to apply for the card a couple weeks before large payments such as electronics, jewelry, home renovations, annual car insurance payments, or property tax payments. Other large payments you may be able to use third-party processing services like PayTM and Plastiq for a fee. But if it means achieving minimum spend for a 60,000 bonus, a 2.5% fee on $2,000-$4,000 is a small price to pay.
If you’re not sure what you will be purchasing, getting the new card before birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and trips are not bad ideas. And if you are still running short on the minimum spend, you can always pick up a $500 prepaid VISA/Mastercard from the grocery store to use later at your pace.
Analyzing the Playing Field for AMEX Membership Rewards Bonuses
Calculating the cost of bonus per AMEX card
Amongst the four AMEX Membership Rewards Select cards, the Gold Business Card is still the overwhelming favourite with 40,000 bonus points at no cost. See chart above.
Between the Gold Business and Platinum Business, the marginal difference in points is now only 20,000 bonus points and the difference in the First Year Annual Fee is $499. Without valuing the Business Platinum benefits (hotel status, lounge access, etc), the marginal cost for the 20,000 points difference is $0.025 (2.5 CPM). Unless you need the Platinum benefits or the extra 20,000 points for an award, the Gold Business is the way to go.
Is the Business Platinum still the best bonus?
No, not the best bonus anymore. At 60,000, the Business Platinum bonus is now on par with the Platinum Personal bonus and the Platinum Personal card has a much lower minimum spend requirement of $3,000. Also, the Platinum Personal bonus points are obtained at a much lower cost if we factor in the travel credits offered during the first cardholder year.
Will the 75,000 Bonus Come Back?
My guess is no for the next 12 months, but I sure as heck hope I am wrong. Scaling back the bonus to 60,000 puts the Platinum Business back in line with the bonus on the Platinum Personal card. Remember, the Platinum Personal also offered a 75,000 bonus back in March 2016 but was quickly dropped back to 60,000 within four months. We have not seen that 60,000 bonus budge for the last 18 months.
Conclusion
For the last two years, AMEX has blessed us Canadians with a significant sign-up bonus close to what our neighbours down south would expect from a premium travel card. Today sadly marks the end of the 75,000 sign-up bonus period.
The 60,000 sign up bonus is still very attractive for $499 but only if you have exhausted the other AMEX options like the Business Gold or Personal Platinum. Although 60,000 point bonus no longer covers a roundtrip ticket to Asia on Aeroplan like the previous bonus did, it still covers a roundtrip to Europe. Today definitely sucks with the news but the points game must go on!
My name is Brian and I’ve been a long time reader and fan of PointsNerd. When I saw the call for writers a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would throw my hat in the ring in hopes that I might be able to help some fellow Canadians with their Travel Hacking goals.
I’ll admit that I’m probably not a sophisticated as Jayce and Chao when it comes to finding how to squeeze every last penny out of a point, but I do know the WestJet program pretty well and I personally think that it’s an overlooked program that more people should know more about.
WestJet Rewards Program
The WestJet Rewards Program is WestJet’s loyalty program and it was designed with simplicity in mind. I’ll briefly talk about the status tiers and then move onto understanding WestJet Dollars (WSD) in Part 1. In Part 2, I’ll talk about using WSD and the benefits it provides and then touch on WestJet’s new offering, Member Exclusive Fares. In Part 3, I’ll talk about the WestJet World Elite MasterCard and how you can leverage it as a spend multiplier for WestJet flights so that you can quickly earn WSD.
Currently, WestJet has 3 tiers of loyalty; Teal, Silver, and Gold. Status is determined by spend on WestJet marketed flights meaning that flights on partner airlines (Delta, American, KLM, Air France, and Qantas) that are not designed as a WestJet flight (eg. WS3772), do not count for status qualification purposes.
So what do you get for qualifying for the different status levels? With Teal, you don’t receive anything except the ability to earn WestJet Dollars (at a rate of 1% on the base fare). When you reach Silver and Gold, you start to see some real benefits.
As a WestJet Silver Member, you earn WSD at a rate of 3% on the base fare of all your WestJet flights. Additionally, you receive the following flight benefits.
The First Checked Bag benefit is a good one if you travel with bags. I personally do not but I’m sure there are plenty of people that still do. If you do check a lot of bags, you can get around the cost of baggage by having the RBC WestJet MasterCard and I’ll talk more about that in Part 3.
With the Airport Lounge Vouchers, you are able to use them at WestJet Lounges. WestJet currently uses lounges managed by 3rd party providers and to be honest, they can be either very good (Plaza Premium Lounges) or a bit on the mediocre side. For a full list of the lounges available, visit https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/book-trip/business-travel/airport-lounges. While lounge access is a nice perk, you can access these same lounges with either the American Express Platinum Personal or the Platinum Business card through the Priority Pass benefit.
There have been some strong rumblings that WestJet will launch their own flagship lounges in various Canadian cities and if I were a betting man, I would guess it would coincide with the launch of the new 787s. I would expect that once these lounges are launched, Priority Pass will not get you in, much like the Maple Leaf Lounges with Air Canada.
The Advanced Seat Selection Vouchers are a decent benefit but may not move the needle for some. I definitely used up my certificates as a Gold Member but once I use them up, it’s not devastating not to have them.
As a WestJet Gold Member, probably the best benefit is earning WSD at a rate of 5% on the base fare on all your WestJet marketed flights. This is the benefit that I leverage the most with my WestJet Gold Status and when combined with the WestJet World Elite MasterCard, really helps to accelerate your earning potential with the program.
As far as flight rewards go, you receive 2 checked bags for free, 10 Lounge Vouchers, and the same 4 advanced seat selection vouchers that you see at the Silver Level.
Some additional benefits include Zone 1 Boarding (WestJet has 3 zones), Priority Screening at some airports, a Priority Support Phone Number to avoid waiting on hold, and front-of-the-line service at some airports.
There are two additional benefits that I didn’t mention above and that’s because they deserve a bit of special attention. The first is a life-saver for me – No Fees for Same Day Changes. This is really important to me because I travel for business a lot and when I finish a meeting a bit early, I know that I can easily catch an earlier flight if I can make it to the airport on time. The added flexibility at no cost is something that I cherish because WestJet has great flight schedules that work very well with my travel patterns.
The next benefit was a bit of a puzzle to me until it was explained to me by a WestJetter – Early Access to Plus. This benefit is actually pretty great because it saves me a ton of money and gives me access to Plus seats. For those that don’t know, WestJet Plus is a quasi-premium economy where it’s your standard WestJet 3-3 configuration but the middle seat is blocked out, meaning you have a lot more room. This is true of WestJet’s 737 fleet but on the 767’s, there is a true 2-2 Premium Economy setup. The other benefit of Plus is that you have access to unlimited food and drink while on board. While you might feel weird asking for food over and over again, you won’t get denied additional food by the Flight Attendants.
Plus seats at the time of booking can be fairly expensive. Take for example a one-way ticket from Winnipeg (my hometown – LET’S GO JETS!!!) to Toronto. In the Econo fare (regular economy), you would be paying $455,83 and in Plus, you would pay $594.83, a $139.00 difference for a 2:20 flight.
Typically my company isn’t willing to pay that difference but I like sitting up front as much as the next guy. To get around this, as a Gold Member, I have access to Plus 48 hours ahead of departure. During this time, WestJet knows that it is unlikely to sell a full-fare Plus seat, so they open up availability of those seats to Gold Member 48 hours before so they can obtain a Last Minute Upgrade (LMU) for a fraction of the cost of paying for it ahead of time. The upgrade cost depends on the length of the flight but upgrades to Plus can start for as little as $20.
Everyone flying with WestJet is offered this option at check-in 24 hours before departure but Gold’s get an extra window of an additional 24 hours to snap up these seats. I have been told that this is an experiment that will last until May 31, 2018, but I’m expecting that it will be a popular benefit amongst Gold Members so I’m predicting it will stay.
WestJet Dollars (WSD)
I’ll be honest. WestJet Dollars don’t offer the potential to redeem for the same extreme value as something like Aeroplan’s Mini-Round-the-World award but on the positive side, you definitely don’t face the same headaches as you see in other programs.
Ultimately which program you choose will depend on how much you value your time. I have redeemed for mini-RTWs before and I can attest to spending countless hours trying to line everything up so that the all the flight worked. I remember many frustrating phone calls to Aeroplan after spending 10+ hours getting everything perfect only to find out that the itinerary wasn’t valid because I didn’t know about a minor rule associated with the program. I’m sure many of you have faced the same issue and to be frank, I’ve lost patience for it.
I’m a HUGE fan of WestJet Dollars because for better or for worse, you know exactly what you are getting for your redemptions. 1 WSD is equal to $1 off your base fare on ANY AVAILABLE FLIGHT! This means that if you can find a fare online with WestJet, you can use your WSD towards that flight.
Usage
WestJet Dollars
Aeroplan
Redeem for Any Available Seat
Partial Redemption Available
Ability to Use Points Towards Taxes and Fees
Possible but Very Poor Redemption Value
Better International Redemption Possibilities
Ease of Use
You really don’t need to worry about rules, routing, segments or any of that other nonsense with WestJet Rewards. If the flight shows up on WestJet.com, you are able to use your WSD towards redemption, though you do need to redeem at least 15 WSD.
While Aeroplan definitely has more international destinations available for redemptions, when you consider the fact that it’s not exactly easy to find award seats and that Aeroplan will charge HUGE YQ Surcharges on a lot of partners, it all kind of evens out. Let’s not forget that WestJet will be taking on ten 787s in 2019 with an option to lease a further 10 from Boeing, meaning that WestJet will soon become a full-fledged national carrier with international destinations. Westjet has already filed a request to fly into China and Japan, with lots of talk about other destinations in Central America and Oceana (Australia and New Zealand).
With WestJet expanding internationally, I would not be surprised if they continue to bring on additional airline partners to supplement their already established relationships with Delta, Air France, KLM, and Qantas, which means more international destinations available for redemptions.
Conclusion
For some, the WestJet Rewards program isn’t as “sexy” as the Aeroplan program but take it from someone that has vast experience in both. The ease of the WestJet program and the ability redeem for any available seat trumps a lot of the “benefits” of the Aeroplan program.
Want to take a flight to Cancun tomorrow? With WestJet, all you have to do is look on the website for availability. With Aeroplan, you have to break out your slide rule, Excel spreadsheet, 3 extra-large coffees and a new wireless mouse because you probably shattered your last one when you tried to book your last Aeroplan redemption.
When you consider that the Aeroplan Program will be defunct in 2020, now might be a very opportune time invest your efforts into the WestJet Rewards program.
As most of you know, Aeroplan generously allows up to two stopovers in addition to the destination on a roundtrip ticket between two continents. What makes Aeroplan’s stopover policy even more rewarding is that the stopover cities and destination can be in different regions as long as you stay within the Maximum Permitted Mileage (MPM).
On a single Aeroplan ticket you could fly Vancouver-Tokyo-Istanbul-Tel Aviv-Frankfurt-Vancouver and select your stopovers in Tokyo (Asia) and Frankfurt (Europe) with your destination in Tel Aviv (Middle East).
With these liberal routing rules the points community has uncovered the mini-RTW ticket sweet spot which Jayce has written an extensive four part series on.
The Struggle is Real
A lot of people ask me how many mini-RTW trips I have flown and my answer is surprisingly zero. With a limited number of vacation days per year, my wife and I prefer to take 3-4 intercontinental trips staggered throughout the year than to take 1-2 mini-RTW trips. We also have immediate family around the world to visit and sometimes it is difficult to even break away with one stopover on a trip.
The negligence towards free stopovers has caused me to wake up in cold sweats… until I discovered the…
Home Stopover [hohm stop-oh-ver]
Noun. A stopover at your home airport; a stopover strategically placed to save miles on award tickets and unlock free one-way flights. Term made up by Chao, probably.
Here is what you’ll need to set up a simple home stopover.
Two trips; first one intracontinental (within the continent), second one intercontinental (between two continents)
A home airport with at least two routes that you can fly in and out of
Basic geography; your general direction from N. America is west to Asia and east to Europe, limit “backtracking” on your route (traveling in a backwards direction)
Example
I am planning two trips. My first trip is from Vancouver to Toronto (intracontinental). My second trip is from Vancouver to Taipei (intercontinental). During my trips I do not have time nor interest to visit any other cities.
In Scenario 2, Ticket 1 is a one-way to Toronto instead of a roundtrip. Ticket 2 originates in Toronto instead of Vancouver, has two home stopovers in Vancouver, and has an extra one-way ticket from Vancouver to Toronto to end where the ticket began.
Free One-Way Ticket Options
Don’t use the ticket
Use the ticket – fly to Toronto
Use the ticket – fly to another city that connects to Toronto and throw away the last flight to Toronto
Say instead of visiting Toronto again, I take option 3 and choose to visit Montreal. I would book the free Vancouver to Toronto one-way ticket with a connection in Montreal so I can leave and finish my trip in Montreal.
Benefits of Home Stopovers
Booking Scenario 1 & 2 present the same itinerary to Toronto and Taipei but Scenario 2 with the home stopovers charges 12,500 miles less for Economy and 25,000 miles less for Business. Scenario 2 also presents the option of an extra one-way ticket which if you plan on flying it, you would be saving another 12,500/25,000 miles.
By simply merging your trip within North America and trip to Asia, your savings can easily total 25,000/50,000 miles.
Your Home Stopover
The example above was from my hometown of Vancouver but the value is the same from any West Coast city (Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, etc). You will fly to an East Coast city on Ticket 1 and then you will start your journey to a city in Asia on Ticket 2.
Now if you are based in the East Coast, the value of home stopovers can captured if you flip the directions of the tickets and your intercontinental trip is to Europe instead of Asia.
Lastly, if you are based in the central provinces, you should be able to take advantage of home stopovers when travelling to both regions mentioned above. Just make sure you are routing west to Asia and east to Europe!
Funding Your Travel
To earn a sizable sum of Aeroplan quickly, AMEX Membership Rewards is the way to go. You can sign up for the cards below (all links go to PointsNerd’s review of the cards):
The next time you find yourself with one or two stopovers to spare from an Aeroplan ticket, you should consider leveraging the “home stopover” tip. Putting free stopovers at your home airport can save you up to 25,000 Aeroplan in economy and 50,000 in business. For a family of four, the savings from the free flights will can easily add up to six figures in miles!
Stay tuned for a follow up post where I cover Aeroplan pointers including how to extend the length of stopovers. Let me know if you have used “home stopovers” before!
As part of my Aeroplan “mini-Round-The-World” trip this February/March, I wanted to check off a big item off my bucket list – I’d never flown business class on the iconic Airbus 380! I took the opportunity to take the long way home from Hong Kong and flew Seoul to Frankfurt with Asiana.
I’ve found that Asiana is often one of the easiest options to find when booking award flights using Aeroplan or any Star Alliance partner, particularly on their routes to and from New York (JFK), Chicago (ORD), and especially their morning and late-night services from Los Angeles (LAX).
Asiana Business Class Lounge
For a major hub, Seoul’s Incheon Airport doesn’t have much to talk about in the way of lounges. I made a quick stop through Asiana’s Business Class Lounge. Pretty standard stuff, unfortunately. Pre-packaged sandwiches, a couple of hot trays of noodle dishes, and a self-serve bar of mid-range alcohol. It just doesn’t compare to a Singapore or Cathay lounge, where I have to choose between the excellent food in the lounge and the excellent food on the plane.
The one touch that really stuck out for me was the arrangement of seats, amphitheatre-style, around a grand piano. This wasn’t in use at 9 AM on a weekday, but it looked like a really unique situation that might be absolutely brilliant on a rainy evening.
Boarding
I reached the gate as boarding started, so I only had a chance for one or two shots of this big, beautiful aircraft. You really can’t comprehend just how incredibly big this plane is, until you’re standing in front of it!
It might sound silly, but I was kind of bummed to board by a walkway leading directly to the upper deck – I was looking forward to the rare experience of climbing a staircase to my seat!
The Seat
The seat itself was a real highlight. I’m a bit of a minority opinion for preferring an open-concept business class seat to a “pod-style” setup. I’m a big guy, at 6’1” and over 200 pounds, so generally a walled-in seat like Air Canada’s Dream Pods, or EVA’s Royal Laurel means a pretty cramped experience when trying to wedge my feet into a tiny foot well. That said, Asiana’s pod was a great halfway point between the two concepts with enough room for me to sleep comfortably while still providing a decent feeling of privacy.
The table folds out of the wall, with room to move it into a couple of useful positions, and while the seat itself is a bit lacking in terms of storage pockets, the sheer size of the A380 means there were a pair of wall-mounted storage bins to take a jacket, briefcase or backpack with ease.
We left an hour late, apparently due to “traffic restrictions in the Beijing airspace”, which led to a pretty sizeable commotion from the irritated gentleman sitting a row in front of me. This was enough of a ruckus that the cabin crew went to fetch the pilot to talk the gentleman into a calmer mindset. Once we lifted off, we took a sizeable detour out around North Korean airspace, heading northwest past Beijing and Ulan Bataar, then started the marathon across Russia.
Amenity Kit
The amenity kit is exactly what you’d expect for a 12-hour flight; socks, eyeshade and earplugs, a bit of hand cream and a toothbrush and toothpaste. I’m never really sure why airlines give out a comb, this really seems like the kind of thing you’d bring if you needed it. The kit itself is a nylon bag branded by French makeup brand L’Occitane En Provence, but to me, it lacked the distinctive style that Swiss and EVA have put into their pouches from Victorinox and Rimowa, respectively.
The Food
Food service was thoroughly attentive and again featured a choice of Western or Korean menus. I chose the latter, mainly as the Western menu looked pretty boring. I was rewarded with an interesting and flavourful meal of Pork Bulgogi Ssambap that was a fascinating departure to the same old airline food.
I like to test out an airline’s wine menu by starting with a glass of champagne, then one of each of the reds. This generally makes a nice companion to dinner, and leaves me a bit sleepy but not too wobbly. Asiana’s wine list left an overall impression of “good but not great”, with a selection of red wines that tasted flat in a pressurized aircraft cabin.
Fifteen photos of food, and we’re only two hours into the flight!
This flight leaves Seoul at 11 AM, flies west for 12 hours, and lands in Frankfurt just before 3 PM, so it’s basically lunchtime the whole way. Like most long-haul business-class flights, the cabin crew shut all the windows and darkened the cabin as soon as the meal service was done, which is always kind of a drag for those of us who like to watch the world scrolling by six miles below.
Somewhere over Russia, I asked for the “Ramen Noodles”, expecting the same microwaved Cup Noodle many airlines serve mid-flight. Imagine my surprise when this gourmet presentation showed up, along with a porcelain dish of excellent kimchi:
About two hours before landing in Frankfurt, a meal-sized “snack” is served, again with your choice of Western or Korean options. I went for the Korean porridge and really enjoyed it. Sort of a different take on congee that is usually my breakfast of choice on long-haul flights with Asian airlines.
In-Flight Entertainment (IFE)
The in-flight entertainment was well presented on a modern touchscreen with remote control handset. Disappointingly, the placement of the handset pretty much guarantees you’ll be bumping the pause button throughout the flight.
The selection of movies and TV was honestly a real let-down, particularly for an airline with so many routes of 10-14 hours. I don’t think any major airline *isn’t* showing “Justice League” and “The Shape Of Water” this month, which is great, but even if all you’re doing is flying Los Angeles to Seoul and back a week or two later, there simply isn’t enough content to satisfy any one person’s movie preferences. I’ve also really never understood the practice of having only Season Four of a TV series on an airline’s in-flight entertainment, but I imagine it’s a cheap and easy way to provide hours of content.
Since we’d taken off at noon, I couldn’t manage more than a two-hour nap, and since I’d seen most of the in-flight movies, I spent a few hours working away on my laptop. I watched as the little plane icon march across the map and wished the camera in the plane’s nose hadn’t frosted over minutes after takeoff. Despite the darkened cabin, one of my favourite forms of in-flight entertainment is still the simplest:
Conclusion
All in all, solid but not exceptional marks for Asiana on this flight. They certainly won’t be posing a threat to Cathay or Singapore anytime soon but absolutely a solid and enjoyable option that I’d be happy to recommend for long-haul flights to Asia.
