Award value comparator
The same ten trips, priced in points by four programmes: Aeroplan, United MileagePlus, Flying Blue and Etihad Guest. Divide what the ticket would cost in cash by the points asked, after taxes, and you get the value of a point in cents. Two programmes publish charts; two price every flight dynamically.
Prices as of 28 Sep 2026A snapshot of public prices: published award charts, cached award searches and cash fares, all read on one day. It uses no airline's internal data, and values move every day, so read it as an illustration of one moment, not a forecast.
Cents per point, trip by trip
One-way, US cents, after taxes and feesThe numbers behind the chart
Points + taxes, and the resulting valueMy trip
Value a redemption you're looking atPoints needed against distance
Chart-based vs dynamic pricingA chart prices by distance band, so its points climb in steps and every date costs the same. Dynamic programmes price each flight: the grey whiskers show the range of lowest daily prices seen over two months, for the same trip.
How it works
The formula
cents per point = (cash fare − taxes and fees on the award) ÷ points × 100The cash fare is what you would otherwise pay for the same trip. The award's own taxes and fees come off it, because you pay them either way. Each programme's median is the median over the trips it can price, for the cabin shown. Everything is one-way and in US cents; Canadian-dollar taxes are converted at the Bank of Canada rate of 1.4168 CAD per USD (28 Sep 2026).
Which price counts as "the" price
- Aeroplan (chart). Air Canada and its "select partners" (United, Etihad) are priced dynamically above a published "starting at" floor, and the chart also publishes the median members actually paid on routes to or from North America. Typical uses that median; Lowest uses the floor. Paris–Abu Dhabi has no published median, so both use the floor. Partner flights add the CAD 39 partner booking fee.
- Etihad Guest (chart). On Etihad-operated flights, the "Value" (Saver) price from Etihad's miles calculator, which is fixed per route. On Air Canada flights, the partner award chart by distance.
- MileagePlus and Flying Blue (dynamic). For every travel date between 29 Sep and 27 Nov 2026, the lowest cached price for that date; Typical is the median of those daily lowest prices and Lowest the minimum. Nonstop flights are used when they were seen on at least three dates, otherwise one-stop itineraries (flagged ¹ in the table).
- Cash fares. The cheapest nonstop one-way fare on Google Flights for travel on Tuesday 10 November 2026, taxes included, in the cabin shown, whichever airline sells it.
Sources
- Air Canada, Aeroplan Flight Reward Chart 2026-08 (PDF, last modified 19 Aug 2026), read 28 Sep 2026.
- Etihad, Etihad Guest miles calculator ("Spend" tab, base tier) and partner award chart, read 28 Sep 2026.
- seats.aero cached award search results for MileagePlus, Flying Blue, and award taxes for all four programmes. Data courtesy of seats.aero; prices were last seen between 3 and 28 Sep 2026 and cover travel from 29 Sep to 27 Nov 2026. Per-series summary: award-value-series.csv.
- Google Flights cash fares for 10 Nov 2026, read 28 Sep 2026 (each search is linked in the dataset).
- Bank of Canada, daily exchange rates, USD/CAD for 28 Sep 2026.
- Distances are great-circle miles from OurAirports coordinates.
Limitations
- A snapshot. Dynamic prices, cached award space and cash fares all change daily; the chart programmes change their charts too (Aeroplan's partner chart last changed on 1 June 2026).
- Cash fares are for one date and cheapest nonstop, which can be a low-cost carrier (Flair on Toronto–Vancouver) or a different airline from the one the award flies. One-way long-haul business fares are often priced well above half a return, which flatters the value of business awards.
- A cache is not a live search. seats.aero shows what it last saw, and some trips or cabins had no award seats in the window: those cells are blank rather than guessed. Etihad Guest partner prices on Air Canada come from the chart, and seats were not always seen.
- No status, card or promotion discounts: MileagePlus cardholders, Aeroplan elites and cardholders, and Flying Blue Promo Rewards can all pay fewer points. Flying Blue prices are the cheapest fare type found; since 8 Sep 2026 its cheapest "Light" awards exclude a checked bag.
- Taxes come from the cached results; where a cabin had no observation the economy taxes are used as a proxy (noted in the dataset). The cents-per-point value ignores the points you would have earned on a cash ticket.
This is a personal project and isn't affiliated with any airline. For why programmes price rewards the way they do, read Loyalty 101: Burning.