This coming weekend, I am attending The Travel Summit in Toronto, Canada. After our Ireland trip was canceled, I found out about this convention from a friend and decided I would try and attend if I could find reasonable award tickets.

For my outbound flight, I found a SkyMiles award ticket for 13,500 miles from Atlanta to Toronto with a connection at LaGuardia. I couldn’t have imagined taking a voluntary connection at LaGuardia a few years ago, but the new Delta terminal and SkyClub there are beautiful and worth saving the miles over the nonstop ATL-YYZ flight.

In Toronto, I was able to use two expiring Category 1-4 free night certificates at the Hyatt Regency. I had planned to use these in Ireland and they expire early in 2023. I had no other trips planned where we could use them.

For my return on Sunday evening, I found a nonstop business class award on Air Canada for 19,000 Aeroplan points plus $70 in taxes. Compared to a nonstop economy fare of $200+ on either Air Canada or Delta, I felt like this was a decent deal. Air Canada uses a CRJ900, which ordinarily isn’t great, but Business class is configured 1-2 so I grabbed a solo seat. Air Canada actually also serves a hot meal on this flight up front unlike Delta. I had about 5,000 Aeroplan points sitting in my account already so I transferred the rest over from Capital One.

Even as someone who knows a lot about points and miles, I realize there are significant gaps in my knowledge. I look forward to filling those gaps with the information at the Travel Summit. I hope to be able to share some of this newly gained knowledge here over the coming weeks.

If you enjoyed this post (or have questions), let me know in the comments or send me an email at emptynestermiles@gmail.com. If you are thinking about opening a new credit card, please use one of my links.