Aeroplan and Carrot Rewards have announced an extension of their partnership. To celebrate the expanded partnership from July 13, 2018 to July 31, 2018, where the first 10,000 new members will earn 2x the Aeroplan miles for downloading and registering…
With the recent changes to the MBNA Alaska Airlines co-branded cards, as well as changes to certain partnership, I thought it was time to update this Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan post.
Expiry Policy
Alaska Mileage Plan miles do not expire as long as you earn or redeem at least one mile every 24 months. As a Canadian, there are several options that you can take advantage of to keep your account active.
Feels like I am writing about MBNA almost every day lately. Anyway, the glitch seems to have lasted less than 48 hours. Seems like we have a conclusion now. MBNA has decided to offer two versions of their credit cards.
Below are the highlights of the two cards, also highlighted the major differences between the two cards.
There seems to be so much uncertainty surrounding the MBNA Alaska Airlines World Elite MasterCard. A few day ago, there was an increase in the sign up bonus from 25,000 to 30,000 bonus miles. A few issues have surfaced since then:
The MBNA website no longer lists this credit card on their website.
GreatCanadianRebates also de-listed the credit card for their website.
Any existing application links are broken.
Looks like MBNA has increased its sign up bonus to its highly valuable MBNA Alaska Airlines World Elite MasterCard Credit Card, going from 25,000 to 30,000. There does not appear to be any expiry date on the offer either. Note that MBNA is owned by TD Canada Trust.
I am extremely impressed with this move, especially at a time when I had a feeling that they might shut this credit card down instead.
According to a few news reports (CBC, Huffington Post), RBC and WestJet have teamed up to offer a new loyalty program called Ampli. They say they have teamed up, but they are already teamed up as RBC is the only credit card company to offer a co-branded WestJet Rewards card.
Anyway, seems like WestJet is looking to revamp its frequent flyer program to compete more directly with Aeroplan, as they are being phased out of Air Canada.
On April 26, 2018, Aeroplan released a statement outlining its commitment to redefine its travel rewards and a preview of what to expect beyond June 2020. Today, I am interviewing Chris Willoughby, General Manager of Marketing of Aeroplan to get more insights about this announcement.
Please tell us about yourself. What is your role with Aeroplan?
Let’s face it, after a slew of bad news for Aeroplan, they could use some good news. Aeroplan announced the renewal of a multi-year agreement with Rocketmiles. Rocketmiles is a third party hotel booking that allows you to earn miles for bookings. This partnership means that Aeroplan members can continue to earn a minimum of 1,000 miles and up to 10,000 miles per night. Note that Rocketmiles has more than 400,000 hotels in their portfolio to choose from.
As Air Canada continues to phase out Aeroplan, they are putting more emphasis on creating their own loyalty program. Air Canada already has an elite qualifying program called Altitude. Some changes were made to their earning options in their Economy fare pricing. Some of the highlights are as follows:
It has been over a year since this post was lasted updated. With some changes to their airline partners and an upgrade to the co-branded RBC credit card, this post is due for an update.
Expiry Policy
First of all, one change that I was hoping for has yet to occur. The expiry policy for Asia Miles continues to be 36 months after your miles are deposited. This means that you need to redeem your miles within 36 months of being deposited unless the member pays $40 USD for every 2,000 miles to renew for another 3 years. That means, you will be paying 2 cents for every mile that you want to renew. Not worth it to me.