A few years ago Air Canada offered a new trial product: unlimited-travel flight passes. If you were willing to limit your travel to a small region, you could get one for only a few thousand dollars. Some enterprising individuals picked these up and proceeded to take as many as a dozen flights per day on short-hop routes... racking up frequent flyer points for every flight.
Six months later, the unlimited-travel flight passes were introduced as a permanent addition to Air Canada's travel options, with one slight tweak: You now get a fixed number of frequent flyer points per month, independent of how many flights you take.
I cannot comprehend why they even thought about allowing the use of a reward scheme on an unlimited product. Reward schemes are there to increase the purchases of one-off products, whereas you want to deter unlimited customers from abusing their product.
The words 'thought' and 'Air Canada' aren't normally used in the same sentence.
I other news Air canada have announced the development of a new left-hand right-hand communications system will will hopefully allow the transmission of ideas from one side of the CEO's brain to the other.
It looks like Air Canada still has an unlimited pass but it's quite expensive. There are several but for example there's a pass called "transcontinental" that costs 3,322 per month for 3 months. It includes most western Canadian and American cities. You have to do at least 5-6 roundtrips per month to make it worthwhile.
5-6 round trips if you book two months ahead of time and pick the cheapest flights, maybe, but only 3 round trips if you only book a few days ahead and pick the flights which are most convenient for you. Flight passes are aimed at people who do a lot of flying and optimize for convenience rather than price.
Six months later, the unlimited-travel flight passes were introduced as a permanent addition to Air Canada's travel options, with one slight tweak: You now get a fixed number of frequent flyer points per month, independent of how many flights you take.