PS Slightly different topic, but for those who fly with Air Canada, Sobey's has Air Canada Gift Certificates for 10% off starting on Friday. As well I checked, they can't be used for Air Canada Vacations, so its only for those of you who will book flight only with Air Canada.
This really made me think. We are likely going to fly to the UK next summer, and if we do, there's a pretty good chance it'll be Air Canada, since they're the only airline that flies direct from Ottawa to London. That's going to cost my family close to $4000, and 10% of $4000 is not insignificant. Unfortunately, Air Canada's IT department sucks. (This is not a new observation.) After some digging into the details of their gift cards, I found that their payment system can't handle more than two payment cards at a time. So you can use two gift cards as long as they cover the full balance, or one gift card and a credit card to cover the remainder. And unlike Disney, gift card balances can't be combined onto one card. Since the cards available at Sobey's max out at $500, this really limits the value.
They recommend paying per-passenger to get around the limitations (to a point), but I can see all sorts of problems with that. For a start, it means I'll likely end up with small amounts leftover across several gift cards, which is annoying. And the adult fare for the flights I'm looking at right now is slightly over $1000, so even two gift cards per passenger wouldn't work (but I'm hoping that will come down a bit). Plus the environmentalist in me hates throwing out all of those plastic cards. But more worrisome is the possibility that this would mean four separate reservation numbers for my family, which would be a major pain at check-in. And I'm not even sure it would be possible for younger kids, if it means that they end up on an itinerary with no adult. I know that WestJet can handle this with "linked" reservations, but not sure about Air Canada. I don't suppose anyone has any direct experience with this?
Might still be worth picking up a card or two to offset the ticket cost a bit, but it's a shame that Air Canada's crappy IT department so severely limits the value of what would otherwise be a really great offer.
Anyhow, thanks for posting!