Air Canada Earn Your Wings Promo

On Thursday Air Canada and Aeroplan launched their latest promotion for flying on Air Canada called Earn Your Wings. The promotion not only awards you with bonus Aeroplan Miles for select flights on Air Canada but you will also have the chance to share in a pot of 10,000,000 Aeroplan Miles if you land in the top 25 ‘Wings’ earners.

What is Earn Your Wings? Earn Your Wings is a promotion strictly for flying (great for Frequent Flyers!) on Air Canada unlike the recent Star Challenge which was more coalition based by including lots of partners outside of Air Canada and basically you will ‘Wings’ for flying on Air Canada and also earn ‘Badges’ for select routes/cities/actions which translate to additional wings earned.  What I like about this promo is something that I have promoted from the FFB Group for a long time, an out of the box flight promotion that is not your standard double miles this or triple miles that. Now like many of these promotions with more complex earning options there are some vague rules and terms and conditions that I am sure Air Canada and Aeroplan will either fix or clarify along the way. As with the majority of promotions these days you have to register for it and you can do so here.

Straight from Air Canada, here is how to play this promotion:

HOW TO PLAY:

• Aeroplan members must register for this
  promotion, book their flights and fly between April 11 and June 16, 2013
  inclusively in order to be eligible to participate in this promotion
  and earn wings and badges.
• The objective of the promotion is to earn and
  collect wings and badges. Wings and badges can be earned in several
  different ways. Participants will earn wings for each flight segment of
  their journey. For example, participants who fly roundtrip from Calgary
  to Toronto will earn 400 wings. That’s 100 wings for each take off and
  landing. Select airports have been assigned a higher value of wings.
  For a list of those select airports and the value of wings assigned,
  please visit the Badge Legend.
• Participants must earn wings and/or badges in
  order to earn Bonus Aeroplan Miles. Any combination of wings and badges
  that total 2,000 wings will receive 1,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles. Any
  combination of wings and badges for a total of 10,000 wings will receive
  an additional 5,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles, for a combined total of
  10,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles.
• Additionally, there will be 10,000,000 Bonus
  Aeroplan Miles to be distributed equally amongst the participants who
  place in the top 25 ranking (the “Top 25”) of all
  participants at the end of the promotion period. All participants will
  be ranked using the online “Leaderboard” and each participant’s ranking
  is determined by number of wings earned and accumulated. By registering
  for this promotion, all participants understand and agree that their
  user name, destinations travelled and wings and badges accumulated will
  appear publically on the Leaderboard. The participants who place in the
  Top 25 at the end of the promotion, will receive their equal share of
  10,000,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles. If there are participants tied in the
  Top 25, then the 10,000,000 bonus miles will be split among each of the
  Top 25 participants equally.

Some key rules pop out right away: just like the Star Challenge, any Air Canada bookings made before the start of the promotion (April 11) do not count towards badges/wings. This is from the ‘additional terms and conditions’:

New bookings made as of April 11, 2013, for travel between April 11, 2013 and June 16, 2013, will be eligible. Any booking made prior to April 11, regardless of travel date, will not be eligible.

And when you book your tickets they must meet the following:

To qualify, the flight segments must be travelled in the following eligible fare options (booking classes) : To/From Canada and Canada/USA/Caribbean (incl. Central America) & Mexico: Tango (N,G,P,E,A); Flex (M,U,H,Q,V,W,S,K,L,T) ; Latitude (Y,B) ; Executive Class Lowest (D,Z); Executive Class Flexible (J,C); To/From Canada and South America/Atlantic /Asia/South Pacific: Tango (N,G,P,T,E,L,A,K); Flex (M,U,H,Q,V,W,S); Latitude (Y,B); Executive First Lowest (C,D,Z); Executive First Flexible (J)

Now that we got that out of the way lets look out how the earning works. Basically once you earn 2,000 Wings (any combination of badges/wings) you will earn Bonus 1,000 Aeroplan Miles. If you reach 10,000 Wings (once again any combination of badges/wings) you will awarded with an additional 5,000 Bonus Aeroplan Miles. When combined with the 2,000=1,000 means you will get 10,000 Aeroplan Miles for every 10,000 Wings collected with no apparently no limit to the number of wings you can earn. If you fall into the top 25 wings earners you will also share an equal part of 10,000,000 Aeroplan miles.

How do you earn Wings? The first and easiest way is simply by flying any Air Canada flight. Per the ‘How to Play’ above you will earn 100 Wings for every take off and landing. Which means 400 wings for a round trip flight without connections (per example above). Then you can and/or will earn additional wings by collecting badges for traveling to select airports or on select routes. The complete list of badges is below.

Here are some examples of how you can earn a little or a lot of badges with just a few flights

Example 1:
Fly between Ottawa and Toronto Billy Bishop (City Centre Airport) to earn 1,400 Wings
400 Wings for the flight (2 Take offs & 2 Landings)
500 Wings for the YOW Badge
500 Wings for the YTZ Badge

Example 2:
Fly between Vancouver and Seattle to earn 6,900 Wings
400 Wings for the flight (2 Take offs & 2 Landings)
1,000 Wings for The SEA Badge
500 Wings for the YVR Badge
5,000 Wings for the TCA Badge

Then do a flight between Vancouver and Victoria to earn 11,400 more wings
400 Wings for the YVR-YYJ flight (2 takes and 2 landings)
500 Wings for the YYJ Badge
500 Wings for the YVR Badge
5,000 Wings for the Pacific Coast Badge
5,000 Wings the Canadian Olympic Badge

With just these two flights you would earn 18,300 Wings plus 5,000 bonus Wings at the 10,000 level for 23,300 Wings.

As you can see with some creative thinking and planning you can potentially earn a lot of wings/badges which can translate into a decent amount of Aeroplan miles and perhaps a shot at the top 25 leaderboard.

For reference here are all the Badges:

Badge Legend

So what do think of the Earn your Wings promo? How many wings or badges do you forsee earning? Is there anything about this promo you don’t like? (I for one am a little peeved that cities in Alberta, Sask, Manitoba and Quebec are not included in any of the badges, the promo is much better for those based in YVR, YYJ, YYZ, YOW!) Feel free to comment below with your thoughts!!