more united mistake fares; cibc aeroplan 30k bonus

another united mistake fare
a few weeks ago, i posted a link to united's mistake fares. in this particular instance, domestic base fares were set to $0, and the traveler was just responsible for the $5 taxes. round trip prices would end up being $5. the following day, united announced that they would honor all of those mistake fares. a few days ago (sept 26), hack my trip reported new $1 base fare mistake fares to europe. you would just be responsible for the taxes and fees. he noted that from seattle to milan, for example, would price out at just $631 a person. that was a great price.

a few hours later on the same day, i tried to do the same thing, booking a trip from seattle to milan, and it came out to roughly $890 for the weekend that i wanted to go. seattle isn't a really big deal for me; it's an easy drive from vancouver. so in the time it took for me to read the post and try a booking myself, the base fares had gone up by roughly $130 each direction. still a great deal if you were going there anyway. initially, i scoffed at the idea of paying $130 base fare to milan, until i realized that $890 all in to go to the other side of the planet is a good deal indeed. i had the perfect time to go in early december, until i realized that winter in italy is probably not the best time to go. booking this trip would have also meant giving up my portland mattress run: eight wonderful stays towards platinum status.

but it raises an interesting question: what price would they have to offer you to go on an overseas economy flight on a whim?

cibc aeroplan 30k bonus
taken from this thread on flyertalk, cibc is offering their visa aventura product with a 30k sign up bonus. there is a $120 annual fee, however. in general, the aventura products are stronger than the aerogold products from cibc as often times, there are transfer bonuses available with aeroplan. sometimes, there are bonuses for transferring your aventura points into aeroplan points, but not with the aerogold card products (because you earn aeroplan points directly). the link is here.