WestJet Rewards has revealed their Elite Status Updates for 2025 which include increased qualifying spend thresholds, enhanced priority boarding, improvements to upgrades, milestone awards adjustments and more.
This is the first set of updates we can expect fro the WestJet Rewards program and these will take place in January 2025. The airline has told RWRDS Canada that this is only beginning and to expect changes to the overall program next year as they plan on 2025 being the biggest year in the history of WestJet Rewards.
Increased tier qualifying spend thresholds
For the first time in the history of WestJet’s Elite Tier Status program they are adjusting the qualifying spend thresholds required to earn status.
| Tier Level | 2018 - 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Silver | $3,000 | $4,000 |
| Gold | $5,000 | $6,000 |
| Platinum | $8,000 | $10,000 |
As you can see all tier levels will see an increase in the amount of spend required to qualify. We never like to see increases in requirements in any program and it is an unfortunate change that will not be welcomed by some WestJet flyers.
However, for some elite members they will see this as a positive change. There are those who are extremely loyal to WestJet and fly the airline all the time to achieve status but then they end up having to compete for flight benefits and upgrades with someone else who may not be as loyal but achieved a higher level elite status with just one round trip international business class flight.
Looking at these new qualifying requirements the $6,000 threshold for Gold should keep most of the one international business class flight travellers to only achieving Silver status. Hopefully this may mean a thinning out of the higher elite level ranks so that those who do have Gold and Platinum status have more luck in receiving their promised benefits.
Rezoning of priority boarding
WestJet will begin the process of changing who gets to board in the various zones by giving priority to their highest tier members and those flying in premium and business class.
- Zone 1 will be reserved exclusively for Platinum members and guests seated in Premium and Business.
- Zone 2 will now welcome Gold and Silver members only, as well as guests in Extended Comfort seats
With these changes WestJet is trying to ensure that all top-tier members are always amongst the first guests to board the aircraft.
This is great news for Platinum members as they will have less people to compete with as boarding begins but of course that comes at the cost of Gold members being downgraded to Zone 2. That being said, the amount of people that will have Zone 1 boarding shouldn’t be very high for most flights so Zone 2 should still afford Gold and Silver members open access to overhead bin space and not fighting with the masses to get down the aisle as travellers seated in the last 14 rows of the aircraft will no longer be part of Zone 2.
Expanding eligibility for complimentary upgrades
Probably the most exciting change to WestJet Rewards Elite Tier Status for 2025 is the expansion of complimentary upgrades!
Starting January 15, top tier members travelling with a companion (who have lower or no status) on the same reservation will both be eligible to be upgraded to the Premium cabin.
Currently upgrades are offered to the elite tier member which makes it tough for those who may not be travelling alone to accept an upgrade as they don’t want to leave their companion in the back of the bus.
On the flip side, this may make it harder for those with lower tier status to receive upgrades should there be numerous higher tier members travelling with a companion who get the upgrade priority and the companion ends up taking the seat that the lower tier member would have otherwise been upgraded to under the old system.
Adjusting milestone award levels and choices
Another change coming to the program that will have some members happy and others not so happy are changes to the milestone award levels and choices.
- Currently with the 2024 program the milestone awards are provided at $4,000, $6,000, $8,000, $10,000, and then every additional $2,000 in milestone qualifying spend.
- For the 2025 program the milestone awards will now be awarded at $2,000, $8,000, $12,000, $16,000, $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, and $50,000 in qualifying spend.
Just as we saw Alaska Airlines announce for 2025, we see WestJet adding a milestone award to give to members before even reaching an elite status level. This is a good way to “dangle the elite status carrot” to members to hopefully entice them to keep flying with the airline instead of other airlines so that they can attempt to earn status.
The rest of the milestone award levels may not be met with much glee.
Currently members can earn a milestone award with every $2,000 in qualifying spend – which also means a $0 companion voucher (or other options) for every $2,000 spent.
For 2025, the milesone awards take a massive hit as they will take quite a bit more spending to achieve. After the first $2,000 spent it will take $6,000 more dollars to reach the next award, then $4,000 three times and then a spread of $10,000 for the next three!
Just seeing those numbers is not very encouraging. For example, in the current program you would receive five full fledged milestone awards for reaching $12,000 in spend while the new setup will only award three – actually let me rephrase that – the first milestone award at $2,000 in 2025 is not an “elite status” level of award so you could almost consider it 2.5 milestone awards
On top of all this the option to gift Gold Status as a milestone award is gone.
With all that said, WestJet will be introducing new milestone award choices and when I met with the WestJet Rewards team towards the end of October they ensured me that the choices should more than make up for the new levels they are awarded at. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Improving flexibility of companion vouchers issued as a milestone award
Another change that can be filed into the good news box is the extension of validity for milestone award companion vouchers. All companion vouchers that are earned as milestone awards will now have a two year expiry period versus the current one year expiry.
This also applies to existing vouchers as WestJet has already extended the expiry of any unused vouchers issued in 2024 by an extra 12 months.
I like this change as there are quite a few loyal WestJet Rewards members with lots of qualifying spend with the airline who earn more vouchers than they can use within a 12 month period. Now, there is a better chance of more vouchers being used up by these members rather than going unused. And remember these vouchers are different than the ones issued from the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard or WestJet RBC Mastercard as there is $0 co-pay on milestone vouchers. There is no change to the 1 year expiry policy on the vouchers issued on the credit cards.
Wrapping it up
2025 looks to be a year of sweeping changes to the WestJet Rewards program and they are kicking things off with these updates to Elite Status. There is good news comes with the enhanced priority boarding, improvements to upgrades and the extension of companion voucher expiry.
As with all frequent flyer program changes there is always some give and take and with changes comes the not so good news that there will be higher qualifying requirements to reach the elite status tiers, Gold Elites being relegated to Zone 2 boarding and the major changes that seriously drops the amount of milestone awards that members can earn.
With today’s announcement as it stands – my overall thoughts about these changes are that they are more negative than positive and that’s based on what we know now. WestJet does state “even more new choices for milestone awards will be added as part of the larger enhancements to WestJet Rewards coming later in 2025” so hopefully that will soften the blow to what right now appears as a decimation of those awards.
I hope that my opinion will change once we know what the additional new milestone awards choices will be for the program, along with other improvements hinted at with status lift changes and additional ways to earn qualifying spend (perhaps something like Aeroplan’s EDQ?). If the new milestone award choices turn out to be amazing and the other changes prove to be good that may move the needle in the positive direction. So stay tuned for our future coverage once WestJet reveals the additional milestone award choices and further updates to the overall program in the coming months.
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