Aeroplan & Oneworld Are In Talks

To be fair Westjet also does a fair bit of code sharing with oneworld airlines too.

I have a feeling that WS maybe revamping its loyalty program to be more in line with Delta/Skyteam. Acquiring Aeroplan or part of it could be one of them. But then I'm just speculating so I really don't know 😛

I don‘t get how a loyalty program could operate without being attached to an airline. The whole idea of spinning off a loyalty program seems strange to me, other than as a pure bookkeeping exercise on paper only, for tax or balance sheet reasons.

I think there is at least some merit to the discussions. Besides AS (which is semi-oneworld due to its partnership with AA), the only foreign airlines to have Canadian credit cards are BA and CX, so there is clearly some oneworld demand in Canada. That being said, both of those cards are currently issued by RBC which is in bed with Westjet. The problems with oneworld are domestic Canadian flights (obviously) and also lack of service to airports other than the big 3 (YVR, YYZ, YUL). Here in Ottawa, our only oneworld service is 2 to 3 daily E-145s to PHL.

"Last week we learned that Air Canada made an offer to acquire Aeroplan, which is their spun off loyalty program."

Lucky, it is not Air Canada that made an offer to acquire Aeroplan, it is a consortium that includes Air Canada, CIBC, TD, and VISA. Please be clear about that in future posts.

Westjet is already trying to have their own FFP with RBC so not sure how Westjet would contribute on this either.

https://blog.westjet.com/rbc-and-westjet-announce-a-new-canadian-loyalty-platform-ampli/

@Alex (first comment)
They probably will keep the oneworld codeshares. I’ve seen a bunch of inter-alliance codeshare between skyteam and oneworld (example: AF, AM, VN, CI, MU, CZ and KE all codeshare with JL)

I'd say it'd make at least some sense if they're in talks with AA as well, but I doubt AA would want to have a program competing with their own to only add some marginal reward market access to Canada.

CP@YOW - Alaska has nothing whatsoever to do with Oneworld. The fact it partners with some of the airlines is irrelevant - they're bilateral agreements and not organised or accessible by Oneworld itself.

@Callum. I know. My point was to highlight Canadian demand for oneworld airlines based on the very few airline credit cards available in the Canadian market. If someone has the Alaska credit card they are probably not intending to fly only on AS, and if you look at its list of partners, with the major exception of Emirates, the majority are oneworld airlines (and in particular AA as I mentioned), regardless of whether there is a formal oneworld link.