Air Canada’s acquisition of Air Transat has been in the works for almost 2 years. After all the hurdles that they had to go through to get to this point, only to end in a cancellation of the buyout.
The agreement required various regulatory authority approvals. It got stuck at the European Commission (“EC”). In short, the EC will not approve the acquisition for several reasons including negatively impacting customers.
Air Canada’s frequent flyer program, Aeroplan, has launched a partnership with Starbucks Canada that enables Aeroplan members to earn and redeem points on Starbucks (e.g. beverages and snacks).
Link Accounts
Members need to go to aircanada.com/starbucks to link their Aeroplan and Starbucks Rewards accounts together.
In what looks like a very long and drawn out takeover (merger, buyout), however you want to call it, the Air Canada purchase of Air Transat took another step towards reality. Our first post about this topic was back in the spring of 2019. Two years later, it looks like this is finally becoming a reality with the Federal Government approval.
The reason I am writing this post today was because I wanted to share my thoughts on takeovers that decrease the competition in Canada.
Air Canada is already a member of Star Alliance. However, on the side, they have been adding other code-share partners. Just in 2020, they launched 4 new partnerships: Etihad, Azul, Vistara, and Air Serbia.
Now in 2021, they are continuing this momentum. On January 19, 2021, they will start the year by adding Virgin Australia (VA) to the roster of partners (outside of Star Alliance). VA operates a loyalty program called Velocity. You will already see Air Canada listed as partner on VA’s website.
Effective December 14, 2020, members have been able to redeem their Aeroplan points for single use Wi-Fi pass on board all Gogo equipped aircrafts on all routes.
Passes are available starting as low as 850 points for select flights under 2 hours. Below are some of the other sample prices:
Air Canada’s Aeroplan program is offering a wide variety of Black Friday bonuses. This is a great way to rack up more points for things that you plan on purchasing anyway. In some cases, you may want to advance your purchase that you were planning to take advantage of the offers available. Furthermore, there are discounts to reward redemptions too.
The promotion period started on November 19, 2020 and runs until tomorrow, November 29, 2020. So this is the last chance to take advantage.
Below are some of the offers to look forward to:
For the time being, this will be the last of a series of Aeroplan co-branded credit cards comparison post.
For today, I will be comparing 3 the lowest tier credit cards that were introduced to the market on the exact same day (November 8, 2020). Unlike the other posts, American Express is not on the list this time. But CIBC does offer 2 options, a student and regular version. Since they have virtually the same features and benefits, they will be lumped into one category.
We continue our series on comparing Aeroplan credit cards that were introduced to the market on November 8, 2020. Today’s post focuses on all the business cards. Unlike our previous comparison posts, where we picked similar cards to look it, this post has a wider range of annual fee.
I went ahead with this post anyway as there are only 3 co-branded Aeroplan business cards to compare overall anyway. You can technically count the CIBC Business Plus card as a 4th one, but it depends on the type of business to qualify for that card, so for the purposes of this post, I will only include 3, but mention how the Plus card works too.
Time really does fly. It’s been almost 4 years since I wrote this post: AMEX vs. CIBC vs. TD Aeroplan Gold/Infinite Cards. I reference that post because those Aeroplan co-branded cards are the closest comparisons to the current new co-branded Aeroplan cards. I will be writing another post regarding the business cards and the reserve/privilege cards too. I will be starting with the more commonly accessible cards offered by the 3 companies first and go from there.
We have had plenty of hints on new changes to the Aeroplan co-branded cards. Today, American Express (AMEX) has released more details on the new co-branded Aeroplan cards it will be offering from November 8, 2020 onward.
The most notable enhancement is the 3x the Aeroplan points on Air Canada purchases. Furthermore, AMEX released its new designs too: