R.I.P. Aeroplan

Good morning and welcome back to Daily Drop, the Taylor Swift of newsletters — we’re reinventing ourselves every day and unapologetically taking over your screen (sorry, not sorry).

Here are today’s hits:

• 🪦 Aeroplan tanks its award chart

• 🎒 How to save on travel gear

• 🌎 Sponsored by Nomadic Matt

• 📊 Some airport lounge stats

🪦 Aeroplan tanks its award chart

Remember like two days ago when I told you about Cathay devaluing their award program and made the joke that “at least it wasn’t Aeroplan?”

Welp.

Effective today, Aeroplan’s new dynamic award pricing is officially in place. Don’t worry - this isn’t an across-the-board devaluation.

But it’s still not fun. So let’s talk about it.

Generally speaking, Aeroplan uses a distance-based award chart.

This means that you can predict how much a flight will cost by simply using a tool like Great Circle Mapper to measure the flying distance.

The exception to this has always been Air Canada, Emirates, and FlyDubai, which use dynamic pricing.

However… As of today, dynamic pricing also applies to flights on United, Etihad, and a series of local Canadian carriers like PAL, Canadian North, and Calm Air.

Here is what that new hybrid award chart looks like (you can read it in more detail here):

In other words, the most popular Aeroplan partners (Etihad, United, and Emirates) now have no cap on how much their award flights can cost.

The only silver lining, if we can really call it that, is that there is much more Etihad business-class availability (which has been scarce with Aeroplan for some time).

But as I said, there is no cap on award rates, so it still looks pretty grim. This flight from Abu Dhabi (AUH) to Paris (CDG) costs 117,000 Aeroplan points in business class or 62,000 in economy.

While it’s VERY cool to see six open seats in Etihad’s business class through Aeroplan, this route with any other Aeroplan partner would only cost 25,000 points in economy or 45,000 in business class…

Now, let’s move on to United…

In the past, Aeroplan has been a great program for booking regional flights on United.

Previously, a flight from Newark (EWR) to Dallas (DFW), for example, only would’ve run you a flat 10,000 Aeroplan points.

Now, however, it will cost a minimum of 10,000 points in economy but can run much more. And business class has gone up quite significantly, too:

As you can see, the price of this flight has increased by 50%, which is certainly not a worthwhile deal.

Anyway, it’s sad to see Aeroplan devaluing its program so drastically for some of its most exciting partners.

But it’s just another example of why it’s important to earn and burn your points.

So when you rack up points from a big credit card welcome offer, don’t wait to put them to use - you never know when the most valuable programs will make your points less valuable.

🎒 How to save on travel gear

Here at Daily Drop, we looooooooooove us some points and miles… But you know what else we love? Travel gear.

I’m serious — we’re all pretty nerdy about the things we bring with us around the world.

So, we decided to start keeping track of some of our favorite gear on a new page on our website. 👇

Oh, and right now is actually a great time to pick up some travel gear of your own because Amazon just launched its Big Spring Sale with tons of travel gear on sale through March 31st.

Anyway, we’ll be adding to our travel gear list over time, so make sure to keep an eye on it!

📊 Some airport lounge stats

A couple of days ago, I asked you guys about your preferences regarding airport lounges. Specifically, I wanted to know whether you deliberately show up at the airport early just to use them.

So, without further ado, here you go:

I was happy to see that many of you are crazy like me and get to the airport early just to use the lounge.

Personally, I think airport lounges are a great place to work, relax, and get some food and drink before a flight.

Having a comfy place like this to go also means taking the stress out of showing up at the last minute and risking missing a flight.

And for those of you who fly through Miami, I also have some fun news:

I flew down to Miami International Airport last week to get a sneak peak at its newest lounge. So check out this article where I show you some photos and tell you everything you need to know about how to access it:

That’s all for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this content about award charts, travel gear, and airport lounges.

So take care, have a nice day, and I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. ❤️

19.4326° N, 99.1332° W

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