In the first move of what promises to be a huge week in the Canadian loyalty scene, WestJet Rewards has relaunched their Member Exclusive reward feature as of today, November 5, allowing members to book seats in any cabin on any WestJet flight at a meaningful discount compared to the regular fare.
If you’ll recall, the old WestJet Member Exclusive fares were paused in June 2020, with the promise that a “new and evolved” loyalty offering would be introduced later in 2020.
While the old program offered a limited set of inventory at fixed reward pricing levels, the new Member Exclusive fares will be opened up to a greater pool of WestJet seats (including Premium and Business cabins), although the discount on any given flight will vary based on the market, cabin, and travel date under a dynamic pricing model.
In This Post
- The Start of Something New for WestJet Rewards
- The New WestJet Member Exclusive Fares
- My First Impression of the New WestJet Member Exclusive Fares
- Improvements to the WestJet Companion Fare
- Coming Soon: Ability to Gift Gold Status
- Conclusion
The Start of Something New for WestJet Rewards
In addition to the new Member Exclusive fares launching today, WestJet is also adding the following two promotions:
- Until December 31, 2020, for travel until June 27, 2021, you’ll get up to a 35% discount on the base fare when booking a Member Exclusive fare (this will be automatically factored into the Member Exclusive pricing).
- Until November 11, 2020, holders of the WestJet companion fare from the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard may book travel for two other passengers using the companion fare, without having to travel themselves.
Furthermore, WestJet is also hinting at the following two new features, coming in 2021:
- A new qualifying spend milestone benefit for WestJet Rewards Gold and Platinum members, allowing them to earn the ability to gift one-time WestJet Gold status to another passenger travelling separately on a round-trip flight. This ability will be earned upon reaching the milestones of $6,000, $8,000, and every $2,000 thereafter in qualifying spend.
- There will soon be the ability to exchange your WestJet companion fare from the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard for lounge access (including the brand-new WestJet Elevation Lounge in Calgary), although the specifics of this exchange are yet to be disclosed.
There’s plenty of details for us to digest here, so let’s get started with the big one: the new Member Exclusive fares.
The New WestJet Member Exclusive Fares
Historically, WestJet Rewards members have had access to two primary ways to redeem their WestJet Dollars:
- Applying WestJet Dollars at a flat rate of 1 WestJet Dollar = $1 against the base fare of any WestJet flight
- Using WestJet Member Exclusive fares to access a limited set of inventory at a fixed pricing, the highlight of which was the ability to redeem 125 WestJet Dollars for any one-way journey within Canada and the US
The latter redemption option presented great value for WestJet Rewards members who were able to locate Member Exclusive availability, but it wasn’t very accessible to the majority of WestJet Rewards members due to the relative opacity and complexity of the program (i.e., there was never a published award chart or anything).
Plus, the Member Exclusive booking process was gated off from the main search and booking engine for WestJet flights, meaning that the majority of WestJet Rewards members had no idea about the value of Member Exclusive fares in the first place.
Indeed, the numbers show that about 1% of WestJet Rewards members ever booked Member Exclusive fares, with the vast majority failing to realize the value in Member Exclusives and simply applying their WestJet Dollars as partial payment towards the base fare.
With a view of improving and evolving the Member Exclusive program, WestJet put redemptions “on pause” in June of this year, and the relaunch is now complete as of today.
We’ll be able to redeem Member Exclusive fares for WestJet 787 business class
Here’s a rundown of everything you need to know:
- WestJet’s new Member Exclusive fares will be seamlessly integrated with the main search engine, providing members with a significant discount on the base fare of WestJet flights in any class of travel: Econo, Premium, and Business (i.e., WestJet 787 Dreamliner business class).
- Currently, the new Member Exclusive fares are limited to WestJet flights only. International partner redemptions on Delta, Air France, KLM, and Qantas (including in business class) are on the roadmap for the future.
- Member Exclusive fares need to be paid for in full using WestJet Dollars, with the additional taxes and fees being paid in cash.
- As long as you’re logged in as a WestJet Rewards member when searching for flights, you’ll see the Member Exclusive pricing available as a discount on the base fare compared to the corresponding regular fare:
- Member Exclusive Economy is discounted off the Econo regular fare
- Member Exclusive Premium is discounted off the Premium regular fare
- Member Exclusive Business is discounted off the Business regular fare
- Member Exclusive fares are not discounted off the following fare bundles: Basic, EconoFlex, PremiumFlex and BusinessFlex.
- Member Exclusive fare availability will be wider than it was before:
- As long as there is an Econo regular fare (i.e., not Basic or EconoFlex) for sale, there will be a Member Exclusive Economy discounted fare available
- Meanwhile, availability in Premium and Business cabins, which were not previously bookable, will come from a subset of the total available seats for sale in the Premium and Business regular fare buckets
- Member Exclusive fares will give members a discount on every eligible WestJet flight (as outlined above):
- Like before, there is no published award chart to the Member Exclusive fares program and its associated discounts.
- However, in the past, there was a predictable pricing pattern which we could figure out on our own; in contrast, the new Member Exclusive fares will offer a variable discount based on the flight, route, cabin, travel and booking period, and any promotions that WestJet puts on.
- As an introductory offer, Member Exclusive fares will offer members a discount of up to 35% on the regular base fares until December 31, 2020 with travel by June 27, 2021.
- Unlike previously, there will be no blackout dates on which Member Exclusive fares are not available – if there are eligible seats on a WestJet flight (as outlined above), it will be subject to some form of discount if booked as a Member Exclusive fare.
- Unlike previously, Member Exclusive fares are now combinable with other non-Member Exclusive fares and across different classes of service. You can book a Member Exclusive on your outbound journey and a regular fare on the return, without having to split things up into two separate reservations like you did previously.
- Unlike previously, Member Exclusive fares are now exchangeable if a traveller needs to change their plans:
- Any fees and/or fare differences (for example, if the new discounted Member Exclusive fare is greater than the one you originally booked) will need to be paid separately with cash. WestJet Dollars may not be used to cover this.
- Changes will need to be done over the phone for the time being, although an online functionality for making changes is in the roadmap for the future.
Now that the new Member Exclusive fares have launched, I’ll be following up this post with a deep-dive in the search engine to gauge the level of discounts that we can expect and locate the best sweet spots for your WestJet Dollars – stay tuned.
Remember, the base fare component of Member Exclusive fares will need to be booked in full using your WestJet Dollars balance, with the additional taxes and fees being paid in cash.
If you don’t have enough WestJet Dollars in your account, you can top-up by purchasing WestJet Dollars via Points.com at a rate of $2 per WestJet Dollar – which has increased from before, in order to encourage members to use Points.com as a means to top-up their balance, rather than simply purchasing the entire sum of WestJet Dollars required for an award outright.
Alternatively, you can boost your WestJet Dollars balance by applying for the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard. The card is currently offering 350 WestJet Dollars as a signup bonus, although there might be better offers coming around in the future, too.
First Impressions of the New WestJet Member Exclusive Fares
Update: Read this post for a closer look at how the new WestJet Member Exclusive fares work, and some of my honest impressions of them. You can also read my first impressions below, which were written prior to delving into the search engine and assessing the prices.
For now, my first impressions of the new Member Exclusive fares are mixed, as there are clearly a few downsides and upsides compared to before.
The program seems to be following the direction of the broader Canadian (and indeed, North American) loyalty market by appealing to the broader user base and integrating award bookings more seamlessly with regular flight searches, all while reducing the complexity of the pricing and framing it as a simple “always on” discount on the regular fare.
That’s good news for the average WestJet Rewards member, who will now have a much easier time finding Member Exclusive fares and using them to extract greater value from their WestJet Dollars, compared to the simple partial-payment option at the flat rate of 1:1.
However, it’s decidedly a very significant devaluation for the more dedicated “1%” of WestJet Rewards members who were familiar with the magnificent value of Member Exclusive fares from before.
The fixed pricing of 125 WSD on any transcontinental journey within Canada and the US was particularly attractive, since the one-way cash fare could sometimes be three or four times that amount. Member Exclusive fares were not available on every single date, but if you were somewhat flexible within a few days’ window, there was usually a decent chance of snagging one.
Ever since Air Canada announced a dynamic pricing model on their own flights under the new Aeroplan program, I’ve always said that WestJet could win out as the most attractive option for domestic travel if it just kept the 125 WSD one-ways under Member Exclusive fares.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and all that. I suppose it’s no surprise, but still disappointing, that the underlying economics of domestic and transborder – the same market forces that Air Canada is subject to, of course – ultimately pushed WestJet to move towards dynamic discounts as well.
To celebrate the launch, WestJet is offering an “up to 35% discount” on base fares as part of Member Exclusive fares until December 31, 2020, for travel until June 27, 2021.
However, I’d note that this doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the Member Exclusive fares, since the discounts are variable and could’ve been up to 35% anyway – it’s more of a way to hype up the launch and tempt members with what I assume is a larger-than-usual discount during this period.
In that regard, WestJet has also mentioned that they intend to run regular promotions on WestJet Member Exclusive fares in the future, so we could potentially see promotions where certain routes or classes of service are given heavy discounts as part of a special event.
Improvements to the WestJet Companion Fare
In addition to the new Member Exclusive fares, WestJet is also introducing a few new measures for holders of the companion fare benefit from the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard.
Until now, the expiry date of companion fares issued prior to 2020 has been extended until January 31, 2021 as a courtesy to members during the pandemic.
There may be further extensions coming down the line; however, recognizing that many members aren’t in a position to travel at this time, WestJet is putting on the “Share the Love” promotion until November 11, allowing companion fare holders to book two other passengers using their companion fare without having to travel themselves.
The idea here is that you can easily fly the in-laws, grandparents, or extended family over for a gathering over the festive period, or treat some friends who might be travelling to the companion voucher if you aren’t using it yourself.
At the same time, WestJet hints at a future benefit for companion fare holders: the ability to exchange your companion fare for lounge access, including the WestJet Elevation Lounge Calgary and other contract lounges in the network in Edmonton, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver – although the exact rules of this exchange have not yet been disclosed.
Nevertheless, if you currently hold a WestJet companion fare, you can give some consideration to how you’d like to use it: perhaps by treating two separate passengers other than yourself to a discounted companion flight, or perhaps by trading it in for access to the Elevation Lounge in the future.
(Remember, the Elevation Lounge is accessible via Priority Pass as well, so if you have a Priority Pass membership via another credit card, then you may find this upcoming benefit less valuable.)
Coming Soon: Ability to Gift Gold Status
Coming later in 2021, WestJet Rewards Platinum and Gold members will have the ability to gift one-time Gold status to another passenger who’s travelling separately on a round-trip WestJet flight. This will be granted as a milestone reward for members who reach certain levels of qualifying spend: $6,000, $8,000, $10,000, and so on.
As a reminder, the qualifying spend thresholds for WestJet status are as follows:
WestJet Status | Qualifying Spend |
Silver | $3,000 |
Gold | $5,000 |
Platinum | $8,000 |
Therefore, for members who’ve already qualified for either Gold or Platinum and are satisfied with their status level, this provides an additional incentive to continue racking up qualifying spend through their WestJet flying activity (or any co-brand qualifying spend promotions that WestJet decides to offer, such as the Double Qualifying Spend offer we’re seeing this fall).
The ability to gift status is a welcome improvement to the WestJet status program, and is very reminiscent of Air Canada’s Status Pass which was also introduced recently. I’m sure WestJet’s top-tier Platinum and Gold members will find considerable value in being able to share their status perks with loved ones even when they aren’t travelling together.
Conclusion
After putting the old Member Exclusive fares on pause in the summer, WestJet has now introduced the reimagined version of the program, aimed to deliver value to a wider set of WestJet Rewards members in the form of an “always on” variable discount on the regular base fare for the majority of WestJet flights, including the Premium and Business cabins.
While I certainly expect more than 1% of WestJet Rewards members to benefit from Member Exclusives going forward, I do think a great deal of value has slipped away for those of us who were power-users of the previous edition of Member Exclusive fares – although I’m hopeful that WestJet will put on attractive promotions on a regular basis to tempt us into parting ways with the large sums of WestJet Dollars that many of us have racked up.
At the same time, WestJet is clearly not finished in its ambition to leverage its WestJet Rewards loyalty program to win more business among Canadian travellers, with some exciting new features coming up – spread out across the co-branded credit card, companion voucher, elite status, and the reintroduction of global airline partners like Delta, Air France/KLM, and Qantas into Member Exclusive fares as well.
Stay tuned for the next post, in which we’ll delve straight into the search engine and find out just how much value lies in this new-and-evolved version of WestJet Member Exclusive fares.
In the meantime, WestJet has indicated they’re open to feedback on the new Member Exclusive offering, so make sure to leave your thoughts and first impressions in the comments below.
What a kick in the nuts…. I have been a WJ world elite card holder since day one. used to have amazing value between the matching fare class for 99 (they still match fares but business is ineligible meaning premium is the best you get…)
The worst part of this by far is the “other ATC” charge they tack on which is not eligible for WJD use either…. So I book a 1500 fare (plus tax and fees). I can use maybe 800 WJD and then still have to pay 700 out of pocket? wtf??? Used this to fly the wife and I on premium to LGW when they started flying and it cost about 1300 out of pocket for us both which at the time I thought wasnt bad.
the member exclusive fair is a partial step in the right direction (at least we can book business class now) but the companion voucher is all but worthless at this point and the earn rate on the m/c is underwhelming to say the least. I am at about 2k WJD and once I get to enought to take the wife back to europe in business class via member exlclusive fares, I will do that and then walking away from this joke of a program. I have friends and family that are long time Westjetters (pilots, FAs, AMEs) and they all said it’s pathetic how their service is completely gone and what made them great once, is now a thing of the past. And if they are the same as AC (which they are now) I will go there for the superior program.
The only other benefit WJ could introduce that would keep me staying, is the ability to purchase a fare upgrade using WJD. That seems to be hard to find in the market at a reasonable cost.
Thought AC’s devaluation was bad. WJ’s brutal
Thanks Ricky and especially to all those of you who posted comments. I’m not a big WJ user so all of your comments are really helpful. I got the RBC WJ ME card a year ago or so with all the perks they had at the time, including waiving the annual fee. I did use the campion ticket, that worked out well. I renewed again this year despite the pandemic in the hope that WJ’s counter to Aeroplan would be really good. I guess not. Now WJ has canceled its flights to Atlantic Canada. That’s a deal-breaker.
Again, thanks for the comments!
This is a terrible devaluation. As someone who primarily flies WestJet domestically, I’ll be using Air Canada on the new improved Aeroplan until WestJet fixes their loyalty program, if ever.
Extremely disappointed, instead of improving it, this program is going downhill.
I will now cancel my RBC WestJet ME and start shopping around. There’s much more value elsewhere.
The only silver lining of WJDs used to be their sweet spots for redemption. Now that this has gone the way of Delta with dynamic pricing (without even any olive branches like Delta’s flash sales), AND given that they’ve done nothing to improve the horrendous earn rates of WJDs, it’s an all around low-value program. Earning and redemption – you can make one or the other bad, but not both. That is a sure way to lose your loyal customers.
This felt like a half-baked plan that they needed to get out in the eve of the new Aeroplan changes. I think the numbers will speak for themselves as RBC starts seeing a lot of WJ MC cancellations.
Given that they still have announcements to make, I’d hope to see some of the following to make the changes more palatable:
– Flash sales to make domestic travel redemptions occasionally good value
– Fixed award charts for partners (like AAdvantage) that present outsized value for international travel
– Allow the companion voucher to be used on itineraries wholly within NA (so stop excluding Delta metal). I’ve always found the companion voucher hard to use, and with their price increase from $99 to $119 for NA travel, and the high price for other regions, I’ve just never found this to be useful. Exchanging this for lounge access would have been useful… except all of WJ’s lounges can be access with Priority Pass, which I’m sure a lot of folks here have 🙂
Like everyone pointed out, a huge devaluation and there is no way to sugarcoat this. This and increased fees for companion tickets really guts a lot of value out of WJ rewards program.
I really cannot see why I would fly Westjet instead of Air Canada. I am also thinking of cancelling my RBC card but will do an analysis first.
Instead of increasing ME to 150 or 175 each way they butcher the entire program and their brand. Terrible.
Westjet may have had the last laugh in that Twitter competition with Air Canada on refunds but in this case Air Canada is having the last laugh as their “loyalty program” is now going to be the chosen program for almost all Canadians.
Bye Westjet!
As far as I am concerned the value of the program was with the $125 WJD, period. Now that it’s gone I think a lot of Westjet lovers in this community will take their business elsewhere. Bye Bye Westjet, RBC now has a lame duck with the RBC Westjet cards.
If you intend to call WS, I hope you have better luck than me. After finally picking up this past week, the recording said my wait time would be between 2 hours and 40 minutes and 3 hours and 20 minutes. I’m sure glad I was not stranded somewhere needing help. And I thought no one could botch things up more than AC did with its switch to the new booking system. P2 and I just got our new RBC Westjet cards. What a waste!
This is useless with the $2/1 points.com rate. To thank us, they try to create a system to help us burn our companion certificates . Lose Lose.
It’s a joke. I just checked and I picked a flight to Phoenix from Edmonton and the “member exclusive fare” gave me $9.28 off the base fare. Not worth my while there are better options.
What a joke! @Westjet
Before you had just 1% of members redeeming for ME fares. Now I predict you will have 0.001% of your “loyal” members redeeming for ME fares.
The fare has to be paid fully in Westjet dollars? How can people even accumulate that many Westjet dollars without years of flying or tens of thousands in spending on your credit cards.
I know no one, and i mean literally no smart person on this earth is going to be purchasing Westjet dollars at a rate of $2/1 when the ME fare is $5 less than the basic fare price.
Good luck with your new ME program Westjet. I know my loyalty is going to Air Canada and all my credit card spending is going on my Aeroplan card. Atleast I can fly the world with reasonable amounts of points using Aeroplan.
Nice post and huge devaluation of WJD.
BTW from the screenshot that’s a pretty aggressive pace Ricky 😉
With the voucher extension, it’s possible to have 3 vouchers with 1 WS card I believe. Can’t comment on the dates, but not necessarily an aggressive pace.
I was convinced WS was going to take advantage of the current situation to score a slam dunk against AC. Now it feels like the WS program became useless and not appealing at all. Why would I keep a co-branded credit card such as RBC WS when there are so many better opportunities around. Major fail on Westjet’s part.
I find this program now to have zero value now to me. I require the full amount to redeem. This is ridiculous and is not likely for most consumers. Westjet great job taking out all the flexibility out of your program. I would love to see the numbers behind this business case and how redemptions decrease by X and Cost of Redemption goes up by Y so Westjet saves Z per annum.
I understand the industry is struggling at the moment but this isnt the right approach. Thankfully I am in YYZ and I have options.
Massive disappointment for the new program.
While the new AP program has increased on most fares, at least there are a select very few flights that are lowered in the number of miles that are required to fly that segment. The fact that they pretty much eliminated ME fares makes no sense to me. Especially considering the fact that they’ve increased the Points.com purchases to 2cpp.
I can’t believe I got the RBC Westjet card in August.
Huge disappointment
This just killed the Westjet loyalty program, and the RBC westjet credit card. Was due for renewal this week, looks like you just made the decision for me. I now see 0 value in your program. ‘If it isnt broke, dont it, or make it even worse’. I see no positive changes with the program, did you guys even try to be competitive?
Ways to know your program is bad: (1) It’s easier to redeem for your own flights on partners than your own loyalty program, (2) It’s easier to redeem on generic programs (Air Miles) than your own program, (3) It’s easier to collect cash back and redeem than your own program. Fail.
… or any other travel program – Amex, Avion, BMO, Scotia…
I’ve played around and done some sample searches and wow, WestJet must really think their customers are stupid if they think a 4% discount on business class fares constitutes a valuable loyalty program worth bragging about. I was expecting this revamped program to offer value on business class redemptions to help position themselves as a full-service airline that can compete with Air Canada, but these new ME fares just make them seem like a low-cost carrier that just happens to have some 787s in their fleet.
In many cases the Basic fares are actually cheaper than the ME fares; WestJet has essentially reduced their entire loyalty program to a marginal discount on seat selection.
We’re used to devaluations in the points-space but this is definitely one for the books.
Thanks for the massive devaluation Westjet!
Ricky voiced our opinion but you didn’t listen.
“Ever since Air Canada announced a dynamic pricing model on their own flights under the new Aeroplan program, I’ve always said that WestJet could win out as the most attractive option for domestic travel if it just kept the 125 WSD one-ways under Member Exclusive fares.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and all that.”
Westjet ME fares were my favorite aspect of Westjet and today is a sad sad day for me and many as it simply disappears.
We all expected a certain devaluation, because WSD125 + tax coast-to-coast was too good to be true, but a minor discount on standard fares is not what I wanted to see. While on paper, there is a chance to still get the WSD125 offer, it’s much less (if at all) accessible than before.
Essentially, ME fares as we knew them are pretty much gone, and I don’t think I am inclined to collect WestJet dollars. The WB from the WJWE card is now barely enough for a one-way redemption within Canada, and it would take a lot more time to collect a meaningful amount of WSD.
This is disappointing news from WestJet as all incremental value from earning WJD is gone. At this point, I won’t be renewing my WJ MasterCard and will put all my spend on my HSBC WE MasterCard instead. It continues to make more sense to earn cash like rewards if airlines continue to remove value from their reward programs.
Amen, Nick.
Hugely disappointing, guys. The 4 seat Y count for 125 WJD was immensely valuable. Now it’s just a discounted fare. If I’m going to collect WJD or Aeroplan points more this change has made that clear which one. I’m happy I can get premium and business class but the cost will be too high with these kinds of redemptions. Maybe give it a rethink and go to a points system?
This is not an upgrade to WestJet’s loyalty program but rather a huge downgrade. I think many existing loyal customers, or the ‘1%’, are going to feel a little left behind with these updates. Even for the regular consumer, it is hard to see how these changes are beneficial. They will still need to accumulate WestJet Dollars to spend on ME fares…and now it will be more expensive than before.
WestJet please take another look at this new system. Air Canada has gone ahead and devalued their loyalty program. This is perfect opportunity for WestJet to step up and show why consumers should consider you guys on par with Air Canada.
Total disappointment at the new program.
I’m not impressed at all by these changes. It’s now more unpredictable than ever and some of the “up to 35% off” I’ve seen ends up being 2.78% off the Econo fare, or $29 more than Basic.
I don’t follow the logic how increasing the base fare by 2.79x over the old structure (requiring even more WSDs) and taxes by 2x makes it more accessible to members (looking at a different date on YYZ-YYC).
If the ME discount doesn’t stack with a coupon code for 15-20% off, then there’s no reason to book ME, just wait for a coupon code sale and apply that to get similar savings with no WestJet Dollar requirements.
The only bright spot I see is that Delta can still book award travel on Westjet at a constant 12.5k if I really want to fly WestJet – which doesn’t seem likely to me. With Air Canada offering e-upgrades on award travel and a much more rewarding frequent flyer program, this WS flyer is switching over.
Spent some time digesting it and it makes even less sense to me:
“The latter redemption option presented great value for WestJet Rewards members who were able to locate Member Exclusive availability, but it wasn’t very accessible to the majority of WestJet Rewards members due to the relative opacity and complexity of the program (i.e., there was never a published award chart or anything).”
There’s still no award chart! If anything it’s now more opaque since the discount is variable and there’s no hidden pricing chart.
“Plus, the Member Exclusive booking process was gated off from the main search and booking engine for WestJet flights, meaning that the majority of WestJet Rewards members had no idea about the value of Member Exclusive fares in the first place.”
Air Canada had a completely separate website for their award tickets, nevermind calling in for complex bookings! After this weekend they’ll have a gated off search since you’ll need to select to redeem AP from what I’ve read.
“Indeed, the numbers show that about 1% of WestJet Rewards members ever booked Member Exclusive fares, with the vast majority failing to realize the value in Member Exclusives and simply applying their WestJet Dollars as partial payment towards the base fare.”
Do their members even have enough WestJet Dollars to redeem for the full cost of tickets under the new, more expensive Member Exclusive program? I imagine members were redeeming $15 at a time, considering they dropped the minimum from $25 to $15.
The final straw for me is I need to pay the “Other ATC” charge on flights within Canada – the old ME didn’t have that.
We were all bracing ourself for a devalution obviously. But this is essentially removing ME fare as far as im concerned. They are basically giving us a (very low) % discount if you book using wjd.
I fail to understand the new value proposition, 20$ off econo fare if you use WJD? Who is this suppose to appeal to ?
Maybe having their cobranded CC / status will allow to have a more significant “discount” on ME fare, the same way AC is looking to do with with theirs and WS is just waiting to see what kind of discount AC will offer first.
As far as I’m concenred WestJet just killed their value proposition for intra-canada travel vs the new AP which will have even lower rates than currently on short-haul intra-NA! You can do better than this WS.
Wow, why didn’t they just make Member Exclusive Fares more accessible instead of this, quite frankly, massive devaluation??
Aeroplan is unfortunately devaluing ~30%, but WestJet seems to be doing a ~50% devaluation! Are they just trying to position themselves as a low cost carrier? Certainly won’t be signing up for the RBC WE anytime soon.
Wow, a pretty bad devaluation. Essentially a very modest discount on a regular fare. At least the Aeroplan deval/roll-out at least had some positives mixed in with the negatives. This is just all negative. A good awards program should have a range of redemption opportunities for all participants; this is all very unexciting and dissapointing.