The Best Ways to Redeem Points for WestJet Flights

If you're looking to save money on WestJet flights, it's worth considering all of the different options that exist for redemptions as they're probably more bountiful than you think.

In this article, we'll look at 5 different ways to finesse your way aboard a WestJet flight using points. For each, we'll consider the ease with which you can earn points with credit cards in Canada, and the pros and cons of redemptions. At the end, we'll do a quick cross-comparison amongst programs for booking WestJet flights and how much spending it would take on groceries using different credit cards.

Personally, I've been leveraging one program for WestJet flights for outstanding value recently, and it's become my go-to approach for booking WestJet flights on the cheap. (It's probably not the first program you think of when you think WestJet)...

Let's dive in.

1. Air France KLM Flying Blue

This may come as a bit of a surprise, but Flying Blue is hands down the best program for booking WestJet flights with points. WestJet is a partner airline in the Flying Blue ecosystem, which means you can book WestJet-operated flights using Flying Blue miles.

The primary reasons for this boil down to a few factors:

Fixed Pricing for Partners

Flying Blue uses distance-based award pricing for partner airlines rather than the dynamic pricing it uses for flights on Air France and KLM. That means you know what a flight costs before you start searching, and the price holds regardless of how busy the route is (as long as there's award availability).

This matters most for peak travel periods like March break, summer, and the December holidays, when the cash prices run high but the price in Flying Blue miles remains the same.

For example, I recently needed to travel from Comox to Edmonton at the last minute. Round-trip flights paid for with cash priced out at around $1,200. Booking with WestJet points would have cost around 120,000 points, since WestJet points are mostly worth 1 cent per point (sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less).

Instead, I redeemed 14,000 Flying Blue miles and paid around $70 in taxes and fees. Once you crunch the numbers, I was looking at around 8 cents per point. It doesn't get much better than that for an economy redemption.

Flying Blue Miles Are Easy to Earn

Earlier this year, Flying Blue went from a 1:0.75 to a 1:1 transfer partner with American Express Membership Rewards. In other words, every Amex MR point you earn is effectively a Flying Blue mile (or Aeroplan point or British Airways Avios, if you decide to transfer them there instead).

American Express credit cards offer some of the best welcome bonuses and earning rates in Canada. For daily spending, the best example of this is the American Express Cobalt Card, which earns 5x American Express MR points per dollar spent on groceries, dining, food delivery, and bars (up to $2,500 each month).

If you transfer these to Flying Blue, you're effectively earning 5 Flying Blue miles per dollar spent on eats and drinks, which is an outstanding return.

25% Off Awards for Children

Flying Blue discounts award bookings for children aged 2–12 by 25%. In other words, if an award costs an adult 10,000 miles, it would only cost 7,500 miles for a child. Fortunately, partner bookings are included in this, too!

For families flying WestJet to a sun destination for a winter holiday or across the country to visit family, that discount alone can justify using Flying Blue over any other program.

Unfortunately, the same isn't true for infants-on-lap, since Flying Blue charges 10% of the adult cash fare. So be mindful of this if you're planning on bringing your infant on a trip since it's not a very good deal most of the time.

Reasonable Fees

Flying Blue's fees on WestJet itineraries are generally quite modest. Fortunately, there's no black hole of carrier-imposed surcharges consuming your redemption value in an "Other Air Transportation Charges" line item.

For example, a one-way flight from Toronto to Vancouver costs 15,000 Flying Blue miles plus $73.11 in taxes and fees.

Bear in mind that Canada has some of the highest taxes and fees for flying in the world, which is what you're paying. 

Excellent Award Availability

Flying Blue tends to have access to more than one WestJet economy award seat per flight, which is great if you're booking for more than one person or a family.

This includes travel during peak periods, which can save you hundreds or even thousands of dollars compared to the cash price. 

For example, you can fly non-stop from Calgary to Puerto Vallarta for the festive season for 78,000 Flying Blue miles and $623 in taxes and fees for four passengers.

The same flights (let's use the 7:15am departure as an example) price out at $3,222 (CAD). 

That works out to about 3.33 cents per point, and you could earn 78,000 Flying Blue miles by simply charging your groceries to the American Express Cobalt Card for a year and then transferring them to Flying Blue.

2. Delta SkyMiles

Delta SkyMiles works on similar logic to Flying Blue, as it has partner airline access to WestJet inventory, with some of the same availability advantages.

The main friction points that come with choosing SkyMiles over Flying Blue are accessing Delta SkyMiles in Canada and award pricing.

The only way to earn SkyMiles via credit cards in Canada is by transferring your American Express Membership Rewards points at a 1:0.75 ratio. For every 1,000 MR points you send, you receive 750 SkyMiles. That alone makes Flying Blue the stronger default, since you get more currency to work with from the same starting balance.

Plus, the award pricing with SkyMiles tends to be higher than booking the same flights with Flying Blue miles, and SkyMiles increases the cost of WestJet redemptions within three weeks of departure to boot.

For example, a non-stop one-way flight from Comox to Edmonton costs 7,000 Flying Blue miles (effectively 7,000 American Express Membership Rewards points). 

The same flight prices out at 15,000 SkyMiles (effectively 20,000 American Express Membership Rewards points).

For what it's worth, SkyMiles has marginally lower taxes and fees on WestJet flights and no change or cancellation fees, but the higher award pricing and less attractive transfer ratio waters that down completely.

Where SkyMiles makes sense is if you already have a meaningful balance that you've earned from flying or US credit cards and don't have any other good use for them.

3. Scene+

This one might come as a bit of a surprise, but I think that Scene+ is an excellent program to use for WestJet flights… especially if you care about earning WestJet Rewards status.

Leveraging Scene+ points for WestJet flights has nothing to do with award chart arbitrage or transfer partner strategy. That's because Scene+ points aren't transferable to any external partners, and they're worth 1 cent per point when redeemed against travel for a statement credit.

Why I think Scene+ points are great for WestJet flights is because they're easy to earn with Scotiabank credit cards, and they're easy to redeem for travel.

My top pick for earning Scene+ points quickly is the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card, which has the following earning rates:

• 6× Scene+ points per dollar spent at Empire grocery stores (such as Sobeys, Safeway, Save-on-Foods, Thrifty Foods, IGA, and more)
• 5× Scene+ points per dollar spent on groceries, dining, food delivery, and entertainment
• 3× Scene+ points on streaming, gas, transit, and rideshare
• 1× Scene+ point per dollar spent on everything else

With this card, you're looking at a predictable 1–6% return on your spending. For a household putting $1,500 a month on groceries, the accumulation over the year adds up to 90,000–108,000 Scene+ points – worth $900 or $1,080 – without factoring in other categories or spending.

When it comes time to redeem, you can book flights directly through WestJet using your Scotiabank card and then redeem your Scene+ points against the cost of the flight after the fact. A $400 flight costs 40,000 points, an $800 flight costs 80,000 points, and so on.

While there aren't any opportunities to get outsized value like you can with Flying Blue, Scene+ redemptions at 1 cent per point even compare favourably to WestJet points, where the 1cpp value applies to base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges but drops down to 0.87–0.95cpp for taxes and fees.

In other words, Scene+ offers a cleaner 1cpp for the total ticket price, and not just part of it like with WestJet points.

Plus, since you're booking revenue fares directly with the airline, your flights count towards status (as long as you don't book an UltraBasic fare). And if you already enjoy WestJet status, your elite perks will apply to your flights.

For anyone working toward an elite tier with WestJet, the combination of strong everyday earning and status-qualifying redemptions makes Scene+ the practical choice.

Note that the free checked bag that comes as a perk on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard wouldn't apply here, since you'd need to pay for the flight using the card to enjoy that perk. If this is important to you, you'll need to factor it in.

4. WestJet Rewards

WestJet's own loyalty currency (WestJet points) is worth understanding, mostly so you know what you're working with.

At the time of booking, WestJet points are worth 1 cent per point toward base fare, carrier-imposed surcharges / other miscellaneous fees (Other ATC), baggage fees, and seat fees. Third-party taxes and fees are excluded from that valuation, and you'll get 0.87–0.95 cents per point when redeeming WestJet points for those (105–115 WestJet points = $1 off of taxes and fees).

It's worth noting that redeeming WestJet points for Member Exclusive Fares can improve your redemption value marginally, but not materially, and certainly not anywhere close to the redemption value you can get from Flying Blue.

When it comes to earning WestJet points via credit card spending with the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard, you're looking at 2 WestJet points per dollar spent on eligible groceries, gas, EV charging, public transit, rideshares, WestJet flights, WestJet Vacations, and Sunwing Vacations, plus 1.5x WestJet points per dollar spent on everything else.

This translates to about a 1.5–2% return on spending, which is fine. However, it's also a much lower return than what's offered with the Flying Blue and Scene+ pathways mentioned above (also SkyMiles, in some cases).

It's worth noting that the RBC ION+ Visa earns 3x Avion points per dollar spent on qualifying grocery, dining, food delivery, gas, rideshare, daily public transit, electric vehicle charging, streaming, digital gaming and digital subscriptions^†.

Since Avion points transfer to WestJet Rewards at a 1:1 ratio, you're looking at an effective 3% return on spending. However, I'd argue that Avion points (earned as part of The Optimized RBC Credit Card Portfolio) are better spent elsewhere.

Examples of Redeeming Points for WestJet Flights

To illustrate the above discussion, the tables below show a short-, medium-, long-, and ultra-long-haul flight with WestJet (as well as a sunny destination), the cost in each of the aforementioned programs, and the effective value in cents per point.

I've also included the shortest pathway to earn the points via daily spending on groceries with the best possible credit card for each program: American Express Cobalt Card for Flying Blue and SkyMiles, the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card for Scene+, and both the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard and the RBC ION+ Visa for WestJet points redemptions.

The flights listed are all the exact same flight on the exact same date (the dates aren't important, since this is just meant to illustrate the different pathways to booking the same flight). I just chose a random date and ensured that there was award availability in Flying Blue and SkyMiles for the comparison.

The WestJet cash fare listed is Econo, since that's the closest fare to what Flying Blue and SkyMiles redemptions book into (they code as a Member Exclusive Fare, in case you're wondering).

Short-Haul: Comox (YQQ) to Edmonton (YEG) – Cash Fare: $447.26

Medium-Haul: Calgary (YYC) to Toronto (YYZ) – Cash Fare: $466.68

Sun Destination: Calgary (YYC) to Cancun (CUN) – Cash Fare: $499.87

Long-Haul: Toronto (YYZ) to Dublin (DUB) – Cash Fare: $510.62

Ultra-Long-Haul: Calgary (YYC) to Tokyo (NRT) – Cash Fare: $1,135.42

Effective Value: Cents Per Point

Here's how each program stacks up in terms of effective cents per point (cpp) across the five routes listed above. For Delta SkyMiles, I've included both the cpp per SkyMile and the effective cpp per Amex MR point, adjusted for the 1:0.75 transfer ratio.

As always, these are just a very small sample of flights, and you should always run the numbers yourself if you're looking to compare redemption values.

As you can see, the shortest pathway to booking the exact same WestJet flight in these examples is always by using the American Express Cobalt Card to buy groceries and transferring your Membership Rewards points to Flying Blue at a 1:1 ratio.

Where it gets interesting is when the SkyMiles redemption prices are high, and when that's combined with the less-than-favourable 1:0.75 transfer ratio, Scene+ points earned with the Scotiabank Gold American Express Card become the second-best option.

I think this is another excellent example of how knowing your options and being strategic in your approach to earning and redeeming points can result in a much shorter runway to the same seat.

Conclusion