One of the most compelling aspects of an airline loyalty program is when you’re able to book a round-the-world trip using points. In some cases, you can get incredible value, as long as you’re daring enough to learn the ins-and-outs of the program and how to maximize it.
Some examples of this include a Star Alliance option with ANA Mileage Club and Oneworld multi-carrier award charts in British Airways Avios and Cathay Pacific Asia Miles.
Today, we’ll hop over to the SkyTeam alliance for a close-up look at the intriguing Aeromexico Club Premier round-the-world award.
Earning Points with Aeromexico Club Premier
Before looking at redeeming Aeromexico points for a round-the-world trip, we first must consider the best ways to earn Club Premier points.
There are essentially four ways to accumulate points within the Aeromexico program: Marriott Bonvoy, Amex US, Capital One Venture Miles, or Citi ThankYou Points.
Marriott Bonvoy points can be transferred to Aeromexico at the usual optimal ratio of 60,000 Bonvoy points = 25,000 Aeromexico Club Premier points. This can be a reasonable way of earning if you have a large stash of Bonvoy points (and a high-value Aeromexico round-the-world award within your sights), but the reality is that your Bonvoy points can often be redeemed at better value for hotel stays.
Instead, it’s better to consider transferring Amex US MR points, Capital One Venture Miles, Citi ThankYou Points to Aeromexico Club Premier. Amex US MR points transfer over at a ratio of 1:1.6, while Capital One Venture Miles and Citi ThankYou Points transfer over at a ratio of 1:1.
If you’re a Canadian with access to Amex US, remember that as long as you have a single Amex US MR credit card (like the Amex US Gold Card, the Amex US EveryDay Card, or the Amex US Business Platinum Card), you may transfer your Canadian Amex MR points over to the US at the prevailing exchange rate once every year.
For Canadians, this would probably be the most feasible way to rack up points with Aeromexico: transferring Canadian MR points over to the US, and then transferring those points into Aeromexico at a 1:1.6 ratio.
The Rules
This redemption opportunity within the Aeromexico Club Premier program is formally known as a “SkyTeam Go Round the World Pass”, and you can find the limited official information that exists on the Aeromexico Club Premier website at this page.
What’s very interesting about the Aeromexico round-the-world award, compared to other similar sweet spots we’ve studied in the past, is that the rules are exceedingly simple.
There’s no distance-based award chart at all; instead, any SkyTeam Go Round the World ticket will cost you either 224,000 Club Premier points in economy class or 352,000 Club Premier points in business class, no matter which airlines you fly, which destinations you visit, or how convoluted your itinerary is.
While those may seem like sky-high redemption price points, when you consider the generous 1:1.6 transfer ratio from Amex US MR, it boils down to a more reasonable 140,000 or 220,000 US MR points, respectively. Then consider the fact that Amex US often puts on 25% transfer bonuses to Aeromexico, and the math works out even more in your favour.
So what will 220,000 Amex US MR points get you? Well, here are the rest of the rules:
As you can see, travel must take place on SkyTeam airlines, you must start and finish within the same country, and you must travel entirely in an eastbound or westbound direction. This will be mostly governed by a “no-backtracking” rule among the three IATA zones, although a few data points indicate that slight backtracking to a SkyTeam hub is acceptable.
What makes this award redemption extremely attractive, though, is the fact that you can have a maximum of 15 stopovers on the ticket (with at most five per continent). That’s right, imagine the possibilities that come from putting 16 segments on the same ticket, especially since you aren’t simply restricted to two or three stops, but rather, every city can be a stopover!
And furthermore, remember that you’ll pay the same price whether your SkyTeam round-the-world award has three stopovers or 15 stopovers. It’s definitely in your best interest to maximize the amount of time you get to spend in each city and stretch the value of your 224,000 Aeromexico miles (in economy class) or 352,000 Aeromexico miles (in business class) as far as they’ll go.
Note that while the rules don’t make any mention of open-jaws, besides the fact that your starting and ending points may be different as long as they’re in the same country, other data points have confirmed that open-jaws are allowed but will count as two stopovers.
There are also a few rules that are more restrictive: the entire trip must take place within one year of the ticket issuance date, and also, all flights on the itinerary must be in the same class of service, and mixed-cabin awards are not permitted.
As always, economy class awards should be relatively straightforward to find, but if you choose to book a business class ticket, you’ll need to work very hard to find availability in business class on every single segment of your journey, all while ensuring that the whole trip is completed within one year’s time.
Nevertheless, those are basically all the rules, and you’ll notice there are no restrictions on the total distance flown. That leaves us a fair bit of room to play with…
A Few Examples
Let’s take a look at a few illustrated examples to see what you can do with an Aeromexico round-the-world award. Remember that all itineraries cost 224,000 miles in economy or 352,000 miles in business – equivalent to 140,000 or 220,000 US MR points, respectively.
1. A Classic RTW
Starting in Toronto, fly south to Atlanta and take a Delta One flight to Paris. Stop in Paris for a few days then catch a Korean Air flight to Seoul. Continue onto Shanghai in China Eastern, followed by a China Airlines journey to New York (JFK) via Taipei.
Finally, return to Toronto on a Delta flight. Keep in mind that your starting and ending points can be different, so you could also choose to end up in, say, Montreal instead.
Assuming you have a stopover for longer than 24 hours in every one of these cities, you’ll have used just six stopovers out of your total allotment of 15.
2. Six Continents à la Aeromexico
Fly Delta One south to São Paulo before catching an Air France flight to Paris. Then fly Kenya Airways to Nairobi, before stopping in Saudi Arabia then continuing to Istanbul with Saudia and then Amsterdam on KLM. Continue on to visit Japan before flying Korean Air to Sydney and taking another Delta flight to LAX. Finish the trip with Delta flights back to Toronto via Seattle and Minneapolis.
You may choose any of these cities to stopover for an extended length, or simply to make it a layover and continue the journey. Such is the immense power of the Aeromexico round-the-world award.
3. An Oddball Airline Adventure
If you’re someone who would enjoy a round-the-world trip on some of the world’s more obscure airlines, then the Aeromexico round-the-world is right up your alley, since the SkyTeam alliance happens to have a lot of these lesser-known airlines for you to try.
Starting from Vancouver, fly to Xiamen and then Kunming on XiamenAir, followed by a hop down to Jakarta via Ho Chi Minh City on China Eastern and Vietnam Airlines. Continue to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the award-winning Garuda Indonesia, and then connect onto a Saudia flight to Beirut, Lebanon.
Then, take Middle East Airlines to Frankfurt, and see if you can convince the Aeromexico phone agent to allow you some backtracking leeway here as you head to Bucharest and then Madrid on TAROM, the Romanian national airline, and then catch an Air Europa flight back to New York.
After all this, your Aeromexico flights back to Vancouver – via Buenos Aires and Mexico City on Aerolíneas Argentinas and Aeromexico – should seem positively pedestrian!
Since there are no mileage/distance requirements and all awards are fixed price, the sky is the limit in terms of booking any of these awards. There’s no need to worry about how many miles you’re flying – if the route is flown by SkyTeam, you can book it (provided you’re not backtracking too much, of course).
Taxes & Fees
The taxes and fees are a major unknown here. If fuel surcharges are indeed passed on to the passenger on all segments, then a quick look on ITA Matrix tells us that the above itineraries would come with at least $500–1,000 in surcharges.
It could definitely be worthwhile to start the entire round-the-world journey from a jurisdiction that imposes regulations on fuel surcharges, like Brazil or Hong Kong.
This may require additional positioning flights from Canada, but then again, if you have the flexibility to be booking an Aeromexico round-the-world award with 15 stopovers in the first place, that likely isn’t going to be a problem for you!
How to Search and Book
When searching for SkyTeam award space, the best airline search engines to use are going to be the websites of Delta, Air France/KLM, or Korean Air. Keep in mind that these search engines will show additional award space for their own flights (for example, searching for Delta One seats on the Delta website may give you additional space that isn’t actually bookable on Aeromexico’s side), so it’s best to cross-reference between at least two different search engines.
Delta’s website can be particularly useful as a starting point thanks to its 30-day calendar view:
In addition, ExpertFlyer’s coverage of SkyTeam airlines is quite strong, showing award space on many SkyTeam members (unlike Oneworld, where it has major gaps in terms of the airlines it covers). It’d be best to use ExpertFlyer if you have a subscription, and then use the individual airline websites to cross-reference your findings.
The Aeromexico round-the-world award cannot be booked online, and must be booked over the phone with the Aeromexico call centre. Wait times may be longer than average, and many agents are not completely fluent in English, so a great deal of patience will likely be required.
If there were one type of award redemption for which your patience would be very much justified, though, a round-the-world trip with 15 stops of extended duration – particularly in business class, if you can pull it off – is probably it.
Conclusion
Aeromexico Club Premier offers easily the most powerful round-the-world award redemption that we’ve examined thus far, purely in terms of the 15 places you get to visit as part of a single ticket. For a fixed price of 140,000 or 220,000 US MR points in economy or business, respectively (25% transfer bonuses notwithstanding), there is insane value to be unlocked in such a redemption by those of us with aspirations of extensive round-the-world travel.
On the downside, like the ANA Mileage Club round-the-world award, it’s not exactly straightforward to earn Aeromexico miles, and you need to be playing the US credit card game at least a little bit in order to earn the miles required.
There seem to be preciously few data points available when it comes to booking the Aeromexico round-the-world award, so if you do give it a try, be sure to share your experience with us in the comments.
