February 17 Update: Double Status Miles & HON Circle Miles on Lufthansa Group flights, Swoop announces big U.S. expansion & Lynx adds more Canadian routes

Here's your Rewards Canada Daily update! Your nøear daily dose of loyalty program, credit card and travel news, bonuses, deals and more. This update is brought to you by the HSBC World Elite Mastercard which is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 100,000 bonus points worth $500, has no foreign transaction fees and no annual fee in the first year! 

 If you are planning on flying any of the Lufthansa Group airlines out of Canada to Europe and beyond or any of their flights for that matter be sure you include your Miles & More number on the reservation. The reason why is they are now offering Double Miles & More Status and HON Circle miles on all flights until Jun 30, 22 (and it is retroactive to January 1) Click here for more details. No registration is required, simply make sure your Miles & More number is on your reservation.

Miles & More Mileage Bargains - Big mileage discounts of 50% or more on flights to Europe from Montreal & Toronto

 
The latest set of Miles & More Mileage Bargains (Meilenschnaeppchen) discounted mileage awards are here for this month. It does appear they are back for good as this is the fifth month in a row we have seen Canada on the list. The list is a little smaller this time however there are still Economy, Premium Economy and Business Class to choose from!

Save up to 15% with LOT Polish Airlines Black Friday sale from Canada (Looks to be a good deal for flights to Delhi)

 
We have been posting quite a few of Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers here on the Rewards Canada blog, on our 2021 Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday deals page and many more over on our global site Frequent Flyer Bonuses. Most of the offers we just post what the deal is as there are not enough hours in the day to explore each one to see how good they really are. There was one I thought I would give a try as it is from an airline we don't give too much coverage here and that airline is LOT Polish Airlines. The airline is offering up to 15% off their flights out of Toronto.

Aeroplan Availability Alert: Using miles on LOT Polish Airlines' new flights between San Francisco and Warsaw

Air Canada's Star Alliance partner LOT is well know for having decent availability on their flights for Aeroplan award tickets and are also known for have lower carrier surcharges, taxes and fees than many of Aeroplan's airline partners.

Last week they announced a new route between San Francisco and Warsaw that will be launching in August 2020. The flight will operate twice weekly with a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.

This new route seems ideal as an option for those in Western Canada as another way to get to Eastern Europe.

We checked availability for next August on the route and Aeroplan does show it available:

So why would you want to pick this routing? As we mentioned it all comes down to the fees and taxes that are tacked onto the flights. As you can see above the San Francisco-Warsaw flights has $264.10 in taxes and compare this to Vancouver to Warsaw with Air Canada operating the Transatlantic portion of the flight (in business class both ways, the economy portion is the Frankfurt-Warsaw leg):

The fees are nearly $1,000 more! You could easily buy flights to/and from SFO for a lot less than that! Most days are showing at least 2 business class seats available for this flight.

Just some food for thought if you are thinking of heading to Poland or beyond from Western Canada from next summer on! Remember as well LOT does fly from Toronto to Warsaw as well so that is always another option! However for more of August 2020 we couldn't find business class availability on the return portion.

You can check availability and/or book these flights online at aeroplan.com. You can also check availability using services like ExpertFlyer.com

One of the easiest ways to earn enough Aeroplan Miles for redemptions like those listed above is to grab a co-branded Aeroplan credit card. At the time of posting this article the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Card offers up to a 40,000 Aeroplan Mile welcome bonus with no annual fee in the first year. You could look at the American Express Gold Rewards card - it offers a 25,000 Membership Rewards points welcome bonus which can then be converted to Aeroplan almost instantaneously at a 1:1 rate. Also with the Gold Rewards card you don't have to wait until the end of your billing period to receive your welcome bonus after you've met the minimum spend. There are numerous other card options to earn Aeroplan Miles which you can find listed on our Aeroplan Bonus Miles page.

Images via LOT & Aeroplan
Source of route news: Routesonline

Save 50% on Economy Class award tickets between Toronto and Eastern Europe - only 30,000 miles roundtrip!

As we do each month we bring you the latest set Miles & More "Meilenschnaeppchen" or Mileage Bargain discounted mileage awards. This month all offers are on LOT for departures from Toronto in Economy Class. Simply book by October 21 for travel between November 6  and December 12.

You can redeem Miles & More miles for round trip economy class tickets on LOT from Toronto to Poland, Ukraine, Hungary and other Eastern European cities for only 30,000 miles. This is a 50% discount off the normal Economy Class award ticket price of 60,000 miles and LOT does not charge a lot for additional taxes and fees so this is an ideal redemption to look at!

Short on Miles & More miles? Your best bet is to convert Marriott Rewards points to Miles & More on a 3:1 basis plus you'll earn 5,000 bonus miles when you convert 60,000 points at a time. That means 75,000 points is all it would take to get one of these tickets if you don't have any Miles & More miles to your name.

If you don't have any Marriott Rewards Points you can get close to amount required to redeem for the tickets by grabbing some credit cards! How so? As we always mention in this post you can boost your Miles & More account with the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express to top off your account. Currently the card comes with a 50,000 point sign up bonus when you spend $1,500 on the card and then you could also grab The Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card from American Express as it also has 50,000 point sign up bonus and then you would ultimately be able to have 100,000 points not including what is earned on spending. Of course timing of getting the card(s) now, spending and getting the points will likely not happen for this month but it sets you up for future offers.  Need to grab two tickets for an itinerary? You could choose to get one SPG card for yourself and one for your partner or spouse.

Click here Full details on this Miles & More offer 

Save up to 50% on Economy and Business Class award tickets from Toronto to Austria & Poland

As we do each month we bring you the latest set Miles & More "Meilenschnaeppchen" discounted mileage awards!  This month we see the continuation of economy class offers on LOT and something we haven't seen in awhile, business class offers on Austrian!!

These are good for travel on LOT until April 1 with bookings allowed until March 31 while Austrian is good for travel until March 31 and must be booked by Feb 28

You can redeem Miles & More miles for round trip economy class tickets on LOT from Toronto to Poland for only 30,000 miles. This is a 50% discount off the normal Economy Class award ticket price of 60,000 miles and LOT does not charge a lot for additional taxes and fees so this is an ideal redemption to look at!

And for business class this month the options between Toronto and Austria on Austrian, the discount is a bit below 50% as you need to redeem 55,000 miles for round trip flights that normally cost 105,000 miles.

 As we mention every time they have the 50% off economy offer is that you could in theory get close to amount required to redeem for the tickets with grabbing a single credit card that has a $120 annual fee! How so? As we usually mention in this post you can boost your Miles & More account with the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. Currently the card comes with a 20,000 Starpoints sign up bonus and when you convert those 20,000 Starpoints to Miles & More SPG will award you an additional 5,000 miles. Which gives you 25,000 miles. Of course if you spend $5,000 on the card that will easily boost you to the 30,000 miles required. That's enough miles to redeem for one of the economy class tickets in this offer. Of course timing of getting the card now, spending and getting the points will likely not happen for Austrian but could easily be done for the LOT flights.  Need to grab two tickets? You could choose to get one SPG card for yourself and you for your partner or spouse. If that's not your situation and want two tickets for yourself you could also grab The Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card from American Express as it also has 20,000 point sign up bonus and then you would ultimately be able to have 50,000 Miles & More miles not including spending for two tickets on LOT or one business class ticket on Austrian.

Full details on this Miles & More offer can be found here

Miles & More Award Ticket Sale - Save 50% on Economy Class award tickets between Toronto & Poland!

As we do each month we bring you the latest set Miles & More "Meilenschnaeppchen" discounted mileage awards!  This month it is the exact same offer as in November with the economy class offers on LOT to Poland. That being said it is a great offer and we even show you how to get these for free outside of the award ticket taxes/fees/

These offers are good for travel until Dec 31, 16

You can redeem Miles & More miles for round trip tickets on LOT from Toronto to Poland for only 30,000 miles. This is a 50% discount off the normal Economy Class award ticket price of 60,000 miles. As to LOT, it is well known they have low taxes and fees so this makes it a great deal!!

Here are the offers:

The crazy thing is that you could in theory get the round trip economy class tickets when you grab a couple of credit cards and a $120 annual fee! - there aren't many cards that will get you a round trip flight to Europe for that amount of spend! How so? As we usually mention in this post you can boost your Miles & More account with the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express. Currently the card comes with a 20,000 Starpoints sign up bonus. When you convert those 20,000 Starpoints to Miles & More SPG will award you an additional 5,000 miles. Which gives you 25,000 miles. Yes but I need 30,000 points for the ticket right? Right then you get yourself the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Visa card with the 30,000 or 50,000 point sign up bonus. You can then convert those to SPG at a rate of 3:1 so you have now added 10,000 to 16,000+ more Starpoints to you account. So now you would convert 25,000 Starpoints to Miles & More as they'll give the 5,000 extra for that 30,000 miles and still have 5,000 to 11,000 Starpoints left over. Now less than a month  to book these offers you won't get all the points from these credit cards in time but you can grab them now to see what offers will come out next month or beyond

Simply book the offers seen here by December 31st
Full details on this offer can be found here

Earn Double Miles & More Miles when you fly LOT Polish Airlines between Toronto and Warsaw

It has been sometime since we've seen a bonus for flying on LOT and this is a pretty decent one. The offer of double Miles & More is good on 15 significant overseas and European routes including Toronto!

Offer Details:
Double Miles & More Miles when you fly on LOT between Warsaw and Toronto, New York, Chicago, Beijing, London, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich, Madrid, Paris, Moskow, Sofia, Geneva, Amsterdam or Prague. Valid in fare classes B, E, G, H, K, M, Q, R, S, T, V, W, Y. Bonus can be earned up to 8 times. Register online (Registration is required) Until Mar 31, 16