A great move from Porter Airlines today as they will now provide instant loyalty benefits when purchasing their Porter Pass products. The airline now gives purchasers of the multiple flight packages instant VIPorter Avid Traveller benefits based on the total qualifying spend of the package – at the time of purchase.
This means purchasers will be able to enjoy the benefits starting with their very first flights and across every other flight rather than having to wait to have any potential spend and associated earned benefits assigned after completing travel.
With Porter Pass you’ll instantly earn all of your VIPorter Avid Traveller benefits based on the total qualifying spend of your entire package – at the time of purchase. So you enjoy your full set of benefits on every single flight!
These are the Avid Traveller levels and the required spend for each.
Click here to see the list of benefits for each Avid Traveller status level.
Here’s an example of the 10 flight credit Eastern Triangle (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto) pass:
From the above you’ll see that with PorterClass Standard you’d be just shy of VIPorter passport status but if you were to buy the Flexible option you’d hit the passport status (the eligible spend for the pass is below $3,000 as the above example includes GST/HST) and the PorterReserve Navigate Pass would get you Venture status.
Here’s another example – a 10 flight credit Western Triangle (Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver) <> Eastern Triangle (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto) pass:
With the above example the Standard option would instantly give you Passport status while Flexible would provide Venture status and the PorterReserve Navigate Pass would get you the second highest status of VIPorter Ascent.
Wrapping it up
With today’s announcement Porter Airlines becomes the first Canadian airline to offer elite status membership benefits for an entire flight pass package at the time of purchase. As the three major Canadian airlines duke it out for customers they need to come up with innovative ways to pull customers away from the competition – namely business and corporate travellers. By providing instant elite status to eligible pass product purchases, Porter has taken a direct shot at Air Canada and WestJet’s frequent flyers and now we’ll have to wait to see how they counter this industry first benefit from Porter.