It has been a 4 years since I last wrote about Porter Airlines’ loyalty program ,VIPorter. As such, we are way overdue for an update, especially with all the major changes that kicked in this month.
The way these posts work is that we do a rundown of the key factors of its loyalty program to determine whether it is worthwhile to stockpile points with them.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
Things have evolved quite a bit since March 2020 when the coronavirus lockdowns hit the travel industry. As time went on, airline and hotel program made adjustments to stay afloat. They also tried to make things more generous for customers, while trying to juggle their balance sheet.
Many people would argue that airlines would get government bailouts anyway, so all they really need to do is sit back and relax. Whether true or not, today’s post focuses on extensions given to member account balances. Several of those extensions have now expired, while some programs made some more permanent changes to their expiry policies.
Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, airline and hotel loyalty programs have paused/extended expiry policies to their miles and points. Today’s post is a current snapshot of the state of these programs.
Please note that we ongoingly update our COVID-19 updates page as well for most up-to-date information.
Today we are updating the current status of all the major Canadian based airlines. I keep wondering if all of them will survive past this pandemic.
Each airline have taken their own approach on how to handle the pandemic. Several airlines have completely halted all flights. Some airlines have minimal flights.
Note that we have a COVID-19 Updates page that is continually updated.
Porter Airlines has extended all of its cancelled flights to June 28, 2020. So flights are expected to return on June 29, 2020 (instead of the original June 1, 2020). Tickets for travel beginning June 29, 2020 are available for purchase. Part of the reason is the boarder restrictions to the United States, as many of their flights are cross boarder. And it’s not like there is a lot of domestic travel at the moment anyway. So it probably makes sense to continue shutting down their flights.
I was hoping that it would be not come to this. But airline layoffs are real. Personally, I really thought that there would be more “leave without pay”, so that they can retain their employees and slowly bring them back. But maybe there is more to the story if they want to cut their ties. I guess they can always hire them back later?
Anyway, here’s the current count to date. May airlines are careful to say that these are temporary layoffs, so the door is open for people to come back.
Loyalty programs across the board have implemented temporary solutions to deal with any COVID-19 related matters. Below is a list of hyperlinks to useful information. I also included a small blurb for each company that may be more commonly relevant.
I tried to include companies more relevant to Canadians, but please let us know in the comment section below if you see any other links that we can add to the list (in alphabetical order).
It has been a while since I last wrote (over 3 years, gasp) a significant post about Porter Airlines’ loyalty program VIPorter, so I think this post was due for an update.
What triggered this post idea is the negative changes to the lounge at Billy Bishop. Basically they discontinued offering snacks and coffee. Compounding with Aeroplan no longer teaming up with Porter, that is why I delayed writing this post as I do not like writing about negatives. I also wanted to see if Porter would make any additional changes in the New Year before providing an updated rundown of the program. So here it is!
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.
This post is long overdue for an update. Last time around, I still listed Air Miles as one of the top 5. With the upcoming controversial expiry policy (which may be altered anyway by a new legislation), they will temporary be bumped out of the top 5.