We typically focus on using points to save money on travel but points aren't the only tool at our disposal. A number of programs offer companion passes which, when used properly, can lead to significant savings. But which one is right for you and your family and how should you best use it? This is part of a series focused on optimizing rewards for economy travel, with this article focusing on getting the most out of Aeroplan, WestJet, and Porter companion passes. A nod will also be given to the BA Avios companion pass which works quite differently.
If you're already familiar with "base casing", then jump ahead to Getting A Companion Pass, Using a Companion Pass, review some cases where we maximize each type, and see my main lessons.
Referrals and Disclaimers at the bottom.
Consider Your Base Case
This advice applies whether looking for economy shorthaul, longhaul business, or anywhere in-between. It is critical to understand what you would do if you didn't have any points/companion passes as it will help you quantify how much benefit you're getting. This in turn will let you consider if you are meeting a reasonable benchmark value for your hard earned points and passes. Which airline would you have flown with? For example, if you would have flown with the cheapest airline (eg. Flair) for say $1200 for two people, using an AC companion pass to drop AC's price from $1800 to $1200 didn't exactly "save you money". But if you avoid Flair due to various reasons, that $600 savings may be very real to you.
Companion passes "save you more" the more expensive the ticket was, which means you can benefit from better departure times, cancellation rules etc at a reduced rate - but do any of these things matter to you for this trip? It's going to be easier to save if you were planning to be coming comfort vs economy basic.
Would you have not paid cash at all? Using points instead? Perhaps a flight chart? Be honest with yourself about what you want and why and price it out, this way you will be armed with the knowledge you need to determine if the companion pass is a good value. But I really should emphasize, if your base case is a very cheap flight, there's a good chance that you might be better off saving your companion pass for another time, just be mindful of expiration dates.
Getting A Companion Pass
At the time of writing there are three primary companion passes offered in canada, crossing the three major airlines that operate here, Air Canada, WestJet, and most recently added Porter.
All three of these passes require that you hold an associated credit card, but they differ in when you get your first pass and what you need to do in subsequent years.
Air Canada Flight Pass
Hold a premium Aeroplan card issued by TD, CIBC, or Amex such as the TD AP VIP or the Amex Business AP Reserve - annual fee of $599
Spend at least $25,000 CAD within the year and get it after the card anniversary date
WestJet Companion Pass
Hold the RBC Westjet WE Mastercard - annual fee $120
Awarded 4-6 wks after first purchase, and subsequent years 4-6 weeks after renewal fee
Porter Companion Pass
Hold the BMO VIPorter WE MC - annual fee $199 (waived in first year)
Special introductory SUB ending for 70k points (variable value likely worth ~$1000 overall)
Awarded 4-6wks after spending at least $9k in first 180d of holding card as part of introductory SUB
Subsequent years require at least $50,000 CAD per year
Easiest to obtain? Westjet WE Mastercard is the clear winner here, with Porter's intro offer coming in second place just for the first year. Westjet is not only the quickest to obtain, but it requires no spending. After the first year the Porter card requires a dramatic amount of spend making it a difficult recommendation.
Understanding Your Companion Passes
All three of these companion passes allow you to book a second ticket at a significantly reduced rate.
The Air Canada pass is limited to an Economy class fare, but can be any of the sub-fare types (basic, standard, flex, comfort, or latitude). Using a companion pass replaces the base fare with a region based fixed fare, but you are still subject to surcharges, taxes and fees.
Perhaps this is obvious, but the AC Companion pass will only save you money if the base fare was higher than the fixed fare you're replacing it with.
Westjet's companion pass allows booking of Economy or Premium economy tickets, and has a more simplified 2 region pricing scheme.
The ability to cover premium economy fares is a notable strength of the WestJet companion pass, particularly when considering their long-haul routes. Similar to AC, if the base fare is less than the companion pass's price structure it will not save you any money.
The simplest of the three is Porter companion pass which covers the entire base fare cost of your companion
While it is certainly held back by it's narrow flight network, by covering the total base fare the Porter companion pass provides more reliable savings - ie. saving you the base fare regardless of how low it is.
Considering the companion pass fixed fare you can determine which passes are the "cheapest" for certain situations. Assuming equivalent flight routing, taxes etc:
Domestic/transborder - the Porter pass covers the full base fare, AC is $99, Westjet is $119
Sun destinations - AC is $299, Westjet is $399
Europe - Westjet $399, AC $499
Asia - Westjet $399, AC $599
For premium economy Westjet prevails
For business AC has the advantage if you can secure eupgrades
Now that we've discussed how to get them, and how they work, lets get to maximizing them and covering some common pitfalls.
Case 1 - Maximizing AC
To demonstrate why base casing is so important, let's look at the savings across different base cases. Case 1a - YYZ-PUJ cheapest flight possible, "I don't mind flying econ Basic and I'm bringing no bags", I skip base casing and going straight onto AC to search with my companion pass.
Because the base fare was low (221 there and 196 back) the fixed 149.50 base fare saved us ~$110 dollars... Or did it? If we truly didn't care about fare class/airline we could have flown Westjet at $534 round trip per person, which would have given us a total 2 person cost of $1068. So we are actually spending ~$300 more and using our companion pass just to fly AC instead of Westjet.
Case 1b - YYZ-LIR - Business class back door - maybe you've read on another blog about the "latitude attitude" approach of booking economy latitude flights and then securing an instant eupgrade to business. But this strategy isn't always all its cracked up to be.
First off you need to have at least 25K status with Aeroplan to have the eupgrade credits to do this. You can get 25K by spending enough on an aeroplan credit card, or by racking up the points in the Aeroplan eStore.
Second, you need to find a flight with instant upgrade space available. You'll find that since the popularization of this approach, the availability of this kind of space has reduced significantly. What you'll see a lot of is waitlisted space
When what you want to see is like this:
In this case I was able to find 2 seats of economy latitude with instant upgrade space so I grabbed them and priced it out. How much did I save
It looks like I saved ~$1300 each direction or ~$2600 (base fare was ~$2960k and reduced to $300)! YAY!! massive savings right?... Right?? Not quite! If we had properly priced out business in the first place we would have seen that the business class tickets actually cost less than the economy latitude tickets on this route.
So instead of the $2600 we thought we were saving, we saved ~$1600. Still a very solid savings, but less than it would have appeared, and this took 8 eupgrade credits. This reveals yet another issue with "latitude attitude", and a reminder as to why you should base case - economy latitude ticket prices have gone up significantly in recent history. Note that this isn't always the case, but it's important to check. On these same dates but yyz-puj instead of yyz-lir latitude fares are $100 less than business and there is still instant upgrade space. This means you could get 2 business class tickets for close to the price of one with this approach.
Caution - not all business is created equal, make sure you check the plane type to know if you're getting pods or just recliners. Also, eupgraded passengers are the first to be bumped down a class if something comes up. This means you risk having paid all this for just another economy seat.
Case 2 - Maximizing WJ
The secret to getting the most out of Westjet is to consider the small companion pass fare difference going from economy to premium economy ($100) versus the large cash difference you typically see. Combine this with the fact that premium economy will be most appreciated at longer distances, and you'll discover that ex-NA Premium Economy is typically the sweet spot here for max savings. Flights like YVR-HNL Hawaii or the overpriced YYC-NRT Tokyo come to mind.
Worst use case is cheapest economy ex-NA routes like many sun destinations. High leisure travel competition keeps these cash prices low, but being ex-NA they experience the higher companion pass base fare of $399. For example a winter season YYZ-PUJ in economy can easily have a base fare under $399 (and ultrabasic can be lower still)
For Westjet either look expensive domestic economy, or longhaul premium economy for best value. The ability to save large on premium economy with no spend requirement to get the companion pass makes the Westjet card a keeper card in my book even before considering it's free checked bag.
Case 3 - Maximizing Porter
This pass is still very new and I don't yet have one myself to test, so this is all inferred based on the published terms. They place no apparent stipulations on the booking type and the companion pass covers the entire base fare. Lets look at some options to see how much you could save, still travelling in November but limited to Porter's network.
As with all companion passes, the more expensive the ticket, the bigger the savings, however with its $0 base fare, the Porter companion pass is the only one that will save you money on any ticket. This plus the promotional SUB makes the new Porter credit card worthy of a one year hold, during that time you could determine if you want to continue holding it based on its other perks.
Summary of Lessons/Conclusion
Best value is with more expensive base fares - so be sure to consider companion passes when confronted with expensive tickets where you're inflexible on dates and have no alternatives
If your base fare is significantly under the maximum allowed for a given flight chart category, consider how you can upgrade your flight - Since the out of pocket price doesn't change for the companion ticket, you can select better departure time, route, seats, cancellation terms, rate of status accumulation etc. Effectively you get these things at half off the typical marginal cost.
Air Canada companion pass has the biggest global footprint and the ability to indirectly access business via eupgrades, but beware of elevated Latitude fare costs. - Given that cards like the TD AP VIP have great airline perks and compliment a Cobalt focused strategy, it can certainly make sense to target the companion pass with your year 1 spend and get a sense for your personal value from it in year 2 before deciding to hold the card long term. The only business premium AP card, the Business AP Reserve from Amex is also a solid choice for your business spending and can generate its own companion pass.
WestJet companion pass is the easiest to obtain with it being offered in the first year with no spending requirement and can be used directly for Premium Economy at great value - consider picking up 1 or 2 of this card for your household if you ever travel westjet as the opportunity cost is low, plus the sign up bonus is currently elevated. Having two is a useful strategy when trying to combat the sting of travelling with 4+ people.
Porter companion pass is the only one with a $0 base fare guaranteeing savings, but outside of the promotion first year requires too much spending to recommend. Between the more narrow flight network and the $50k/yr spending required to get the companion pass outside of the first year, this card should only be held if you value the other perks it brings like free checked bag, carry-on, seat selection, etc. That said the first year value of the current elevated bonus with a waived first year annual fee is very appealing, so sign up here.
Bonus - BA Companion Pass
The RBC BA Visa is a $165 dollar card whose earn rates don't compare that well to combining an Avion VI and Ion+ which have a similar total annual fee. The BA card earning 1x base and 2x on food while the ion+ earns 3x on food and gas. Since Avion points can convert to BA as well as having other uses, the higher earn rate and greater flexibility tilt the scale in their favour. Despite this however, the BA card does have some perks which can make it worthy of a slot in your collection. For starters 10% off BA flights can come in handy if you're already flying BA via cash, but more pertinent to this article it can earn a companion voucher for $30k CAD spend. Unlike the companion passes above, this is not actually for cash use but rather for point redemptions. It can either be used to cover the Avios cost of your companion's ticket (still paying cash fees), OR can take 50% off your own ticket's avios price. For example business class YYZ-JNB with BA is shockingly expensive:
If you wanted to fly this route, round trip for 2 people you'd normally be looking at 720k avios plus a boatload of taxes and fees (looking at you LHR). You could save 360k Avios by using this companion pass, an incredible return on spend for allocating $30k CAD. Alternatively you could take the 1 person price of 360k and drop it to 180k, still a solid savings.
Referrals
You can find most Canadian credit cards on my card comparison tool, signing up through those links supports the work that I do.
WestJet is my favourite overall companion pass, grab 1 or 2 cards for your household with the current elevated sub.
The Porter pass is new in town and while I'm unsure of its long term value, the first year value is great so its worth opening up for that alone. It's zero base fare make it a guaranteed savings.
The TD AP VIP is one of my favourite keeper cards and while in the process of getting its sub youre likely to unlock its companion pass to try out.
If you're on the fence, or wondering about other cards reach out to me for a free consult, and if you sign up for a card through my link, let me know and I will walk you through advanced tricks and personalized advice to help you get the maximum benefit both from earning and redeeming points - getting your travel journey going faster than you ever thought possible.
Check out my Keeper Cards series to see other cards worth exploring
Disclaimer
This should not be taken as financial advice and details are subject to change. I have made good intentioned efforts to be accurate but ultimately consult card terms and conditions
