Darren Mak's blog

Air Canada is one of those company's that Canadians just love to hate, along with Canada Post, and phone companies such as Bell and MTS. I guess it all began back when these companies were crown corporations, they had a monopoly and really didn't need to excel in areas of Customer Service.

But recent changes at Air Canada have shown they are trying to change this legacy image. The latest news to come out of Air Canada, although not yet officially announced, is that for top-tier members of the Aeroplan frequent flyer program, they will be able to use North America Upgrade (NAU) certificates and System Wide Upgrade (SWU) certificates for flights booked in Tango Plus (T+) on North American routes from July 1st through September 7th, 2009.

Starwood Hotels has added even more functionality to their website today. In addition to adding a listing of your "earned awards" they have also added more detail to your Starpoints listing page.

Now when points post, you will see exactly where you earned them, making it easier to track down missing points. This is most important when looking at bonus promotions, and elite level bonuses as these have been difficult to decipher at times in the past.

For example when a promo posts a point bonus to your account, sometimes a number of them are posted at the same time for multiple stays, and in order to determine what stay the points were for, you had to call or email SPG to find out.

Another nice feature, is that award redemptions are also now fully described. In the past you saw an award redemption and the number of points that were deducted from your account, but not the hotel that the redemption was for. As you can see from the image above for example, a recent redemption I made for a trip to Paris in September is fully described on the website now.

Great job SPG... keep the enhancements coming!