Aeroplan Teams up with Porter Airlines

I was interviewed by Global News today about the Aeroplan and Porter Airlines team up (Use points or keep saving? What Canadians should know about the Aeroplan-Porter deal).

In addition to this announcement, Aimia (owner of Aeroplan) has rejected the offer by the Air Canada, TD, CIBC and Visa Canada consortium to purchase the Aeroplan program.

My understanding is that Aeroplan will maintain its valuable proposed changes and add Porter Airlines as the primary airline partner. This is just a reminder of the valuable proposed changes to Aeroplan:

• Have the ability to transfer points to around 20 frequent flyer programs. What is missing is the transfer ratios and the names of the airline partners.
• Have the option of redeeming cash and miles reward flights.
• Have the ability to purchase airlines tickets directly with Aeroplan and earn miles on that booking.
• Have the ability to redeem reward flight with any airline, any seat, any time, anywhere. In other words, we should not be seeing blackout dates.

The partnership goes into effect in July 2020. If this does in fact go through, I would be extremely happy, because it puts Porter Airlines loyalty program value at a much higher level. Furthermore, this means that Air Canada still needs to create their own loyalty program, which puts more competition into the market. This can only be good news to consumers.

In the meantime, I think that there is still more work to be done by all airline companies in Canada as they all try to re-adjust their programs in time to compete in 2020. This is an exciting time for Canadians. I am very happy by this announcement and look forward to hearing more details!