Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Now earn WestJet Dollars on all American Airlines flights

The WestJet Rewards program has just taken another big step in becoming a full fledged frequent flyer program. As of June 27th, WestJet Rewards members will be able to earn WestJet dollars on all American Airlines marketed and operated flights:

As you can see WestJet has decided to go with a flat rate reward for various flight distance flown on AA. Since WestJet is a revenue based program for their own flights (% of base ticket price is awarded as WestJet dollars) they had to figure out a way to reward their members for flights not operated by them and it appears the flat rate distance based amount was the way to go. Why would they go this route? In my opinion if you buy a $10,000 First Class ticket from AA, WestJet would have to dole out at $100 in WestJet dollars for a ticket that do not see any substantial revenue from and since WestJet does not have set redemption levels other than the base $25 they could see a big hit to their own revenues from tickets where WestJet Rewards members are applying their WestJet dollars to.

Overall, this is great new feature to the WestJet Rewards program as any partner earning addition is in the world of travel rewards.  In addition to this new AA partnership, WestJet Rewards members can earn WestJet dollars on WestJet flights, WestJet Vacation Packages, WestJet codeshare flights on AA and Delta, and via the RBC WestJet MasterCards. I figure we will see even airline more partners come on board and perhaps even some hotel partners (I predict IHG) by the end of the year.

For more details visit WestJet Rewards

As of June 27th American AAdvantage members will now be able to earn AAdvantage Miles on all WestJet flights within Canada and between Canada and the U.S., the Caribbean, and Mexico as follows:
Class of Service Purchased Fares Booked in: Base Miles Class of Service Bonus Miles
Economy Class Y, V, B, Q, L, M, P, G, X, D 100% 0%


Here are all the WestJet T&C's associated with this new opportunity

Eligible towards annual qualifying spend:
No

To book a flight and/or to provide your WestJet ID:
Visit aa.com or call 1-800-433-7300

Missing WestJet dollars credit: Please allow up to thirty (30) days for WestJet dollars to be posted to your account.

To request retro credit for flights flown on American Airlines, American Eagle or AmericanConnection, please complete the online form available when you sign into mywestjet.com and select "My Requests". Be sure to include your flight date, origin, destination and ticket number. American Airlines ticket numbers are 13 digits and begin with "001".

Redeeming WestJet dollars: Flights operated by American Airlines are not available for redemption at this time.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks! This is a very interesting development.
    I would appreciate seeing your analysis of the reverse: earning AAdvantage miles on WestJet flights. I suspect there is better value there, especially for international redemptions, on many partners. AAdvantage redemption charts are mostly quite generous, especially when compared with Aeroplan.

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  2. I will put together an analysis for you shortly. Without delving into that analysis I would say in the long term and/or more frequent flyer that earning AAdvantage Miles on WestJet flights would be a better bet while short term and/or infrequent flyers would be better off with the WestJet program since they can do partial redemptions.

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