Edelweiss Increasing Seasonal Service between Vancouver & Zurich

Swiss charter carrier Edelweiss is increasing their summer seasonal service between Vancouver and Zurich to 3 times weekly. 2 of the weekly flights are direct and the third routes through Calgary. One of the good things about these flights is that Swiss Air codeshares on them so they can be booked through Swiss to earn Miles & More miles.

Source: Airline Route Updates

American and WestJet continue to expand codeshares

From Airline Route Updates, American and WestJet have further expanded the routes they code share on:

American Airlines operated by WestJet
Calgary – Edmonton
Calgary – Phoenix
Calgary – San Diego
Edmonton – Phoenix (eff 01OCT11)

WestJet operated by American Airlines
Los Angeles – Fresno
Miami – Jacksonville FL
Miami – Key West
Miami – Nashville
Miami – New Orleans
Miami – Pensacola
Toronto – Boston

Air Canada adds mobile booking to iPhone app

From the AirCanada.com website:

"Mobile booking has arrived! Now you can use the Air Canada iPhone App to search for flights, view flight details, select your seat and share your itinerary with family and friends.
The app’s features allow you to:

• Book a flight: Across Canada, across the border or across the world, for business or pleasure, alone or with your family, you can now book any flight to any Air Canada destination using your mobile device.
• Store passenger information with Air Canada mobile+: In addition to being able to securely store your payment information, Air Canada mobile+ can now also store passenger information. Once set up, you’ll be able to complete a booking with no typing whatsoever!
• Track your bookings: You can now fully track all your bookings on the go! The Air Canada iPhone App allows you to see all the changes made to your bookings, even flight changes!"

While I have not tried out the mobile booking I did use the seat selection feature on my iPhone last night to change seats on a booking and must say it was really easy to do. This is nice new feature to AC's mobile app.

Earn up to 105,000+ Bonus BA Miles between Canada and LHR (or beyond)

British Airways is running a new promo for their Executive Club members in North America which of course includes us here in Caanada. The offer although limited to Full Fare tickets is definitely worth taking advantage of you or your employer buys these type of fares. The offer is as follows

British Airways Executive Club
Earn up to 105,000 (and more) Bonus Avios Points/BA Miles when you fly on a full-fare, transatlantic round-trip ticket for travel beginning and ending in North America. Valid for flights that are operated and/or marketed by American Airlines, British Airways or Iberia Airlines in the following booking classes: First (booking classes F, A), Business Class (booking classes J, C, D, R, I) World Traveller Plus Premium Economy (booking classes W, E, T) and Economy (booking classes Y, B, H)
- 25,000 bonus Avios points/BA Miles for first round-trip purchased and flown as an Executive Club member in a qualifying full-fare
- 35,000 bonus Avios points/BA Miles for second round-trip purchased and flown as an Executive Club member in a qualifying full-fare
- 45,000 bonus Avios points/BA Miles for third (and each additional) round-trip purchased and flown as an Executive Club member in a qualifying full-fare
Full Details, Online Registration & Booking (Registration is required) Until Dec 31, 11
Restrictions
Valid for residents of U.S. and Canada only

WestJet and El Al sign interline agreement

On September 12th WestJet signed an interline agreement with Israel's El Al Airlines. The agreement will allow consumers to purchase one ticket for flights from Israel to Toronto on El Al and connect to WestJet flights within Canada and to Florida and the Caribbean.

To celebrate El Al Matmid Club members can earn 20% bonus Matmid points on the WestJet portion of their flights during the month of December.

Source: Shalom Life

KLM starts codeshare service on select WestJet routes

It didn't take KLM long to get their codeshares onto WestJet flights after receiving CTA approval a week or so ago. Starting on September 26, KLM will be placing their flight numbers on the following routes (you'll notice they all originate in cities that KLM serves to connect to/from their Amsterdam flights):
Calgary – Abbotsford
Calgary – Comox
Calgary – Edmonton
Calgary – Kelowna
Calgary – Montreal
Calgary – Ottawa
Calgary – Regina
Calgary – Saskatoon
Calgary – Vancouver
Calgary – Victoria
Calgary – Winnipeg
Montreal – Edmonton
Montreal – Winnipeg
Toronto – Calgary
Toronto – Edmonton
Toronto – Edmonton – Kelowna
Toronto – Halifax
Toronto – Kelowna
Toronto – Montreal
Toronto – Ottawa
Toronto – Regina
Toronto – Saskatoon
Toronto – Thunder Bay – Winnipeg
Toronto – Winnipeg
Vancouver – Edmonton
Vancouver – Kelowna
Vancouver – Ottawa
Vancouver – Prince George
Vancouver – Regina
Vancouver – Winnipeg

Source: Airline Route Updates

LifeMiles: LH Business Class from N America to Europe for $1800+tax

Here is another buy miles offer, not as good as the soon to end US Airways Dividend Miles offer (where you can get Business Class to Europe for around $1400-$1500) but still pretty decent nonetheless. We found the following buy miles offer during our update of FFB's LifeMiles page.

LifeMiles is the FFP of Latin America's joint venture airline Avianca TACA and until the end of September they are offering double miles (ie 100% bonus) on miles purchased in the program. The program allows you to purchase up to 75,000 miles for a total of 150,000 miles if you include the bonus. Now, here is where we get to the business class for $1,800: LifeMiles is partnered with Lufthansa and to redeem for a business class from North America to Europe on LH you need 120,000 LifeMiles, which means you need to buy 60,000 (+60,000 bonus) at $30 per 1,000 plus tax or $1,800+tax for the total amount.

The one major caveat is that you have to be a LifeMiles member as of September 5th, so those of you who are reading this and were members before then, this can be an advantageous offer to make use of, for the rest of us who are not or were not, we'll have to keep our eyes open for the next time this offer comes around (hopefully they can be like US Airways and offer it a few times per year)

For complete details on this offer please visit LifeMiles

$350 Sign Up Bonus for the WestJet RBC World MasterCard extended

You may recall our post from July 15th announcing the larger sign up bonuses for the WestJet MasterCards from RBC. At that time the offer was to run only until August 31 but the offers of $350 for the World MasterCard and $100 for the regular WestJet MasterCard have been extended to November 14.

For more details please visit WestJet.com.

Delta to resume Toronto-Boston service

Delta is bringing back their non-stop service between Toronto and Boston. The 2x daily flights will begin on November 6th and will be flown with a Pinnacle Airlines CRJ200

Once again, thanks to Airline Route Updates for the info.

Air Canada cuts Vancouver-Yellowknife seasonal service

According to Airline Route Updates Air Canada will not operate its winter seasonal service between Vancouver and Whitehorse Yellowknife as it had for the previous two winters.

* Corrected per comment below - must have been a crazy day to screw that on up!