The Bonuses

The standard offer on this card (available on the RBC website) has historically been 15,000 Avion points upon your first purchase, and that’s what RBC is offering right now. While we’ve seen First Year Free waivers on this card in the recent past, that’s not available at the moment either.

The annual fee could potentially be waived by taking advantage of another ongoing promotion – the unadvertised Visa Infinite “customer war” deal.

Basically, many data points indicate that if you call RBC and tell them you are an existing cardholder of a competing Visa Infinite product (such as the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite or the CIBC Aventura Visa Infinite), RBC will waive the first year annual fee on their own Visa Infinite cards. The success of this “customer war” trick seems to be mixed, and you might need to call in a few times to get an agent who knows about it.

Since we’ve seen much better offers on this card until recently, I’d recommend waiting a while to see if any better offers come around on the RBC Avion if you aren’t in a hurry.

Rewards & Benefits

With this card you’ll earn 1.25 Avion points per dollar spent on travel-related purchases and 1 Avion point per dollar spent on all other purchases. (It seems like the official name is “RBC Rewards points”, but everyone calls them Avion points anyway.)

In terms of everyday spending, I’d say that the Avion card is a decent option for shopping at places that don’t accept American Express. Otherwise, I’d still go with a card like the American Express Gold Rewards Card for gas, groceries, and travel purchases or the Business Platinum Card for everything else.

What can you do with Avion points? The most compelling option is to transfer Avion points to several frequent flyer programs.

The points can be transferred at a 1:1 ratio to British Airways Avios and Asia Miles, at a 100:1 ratio to WestJet Dollars, and at a 10:7 ratio to American Airlines AAdvantage.

You used to be able to transfer to AAdvantage at a 1:1 ratio as well, but unfortunately this was recently devalued. Still, the Avion program can offer an avenue into earning AAdvantage points if you’re keen on flying with some of American’s partners that offer the world’s best travel experiences, like Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways.

Best of all, RBC often puts on 30% or even 50% promotions for transferring points to their partner programs. For example, in their most recent promotion, you’d get a 50% bonus on any Avion points you transfer over to British Airways Avios.

These can be some of highest value uses of RBC Avion points. If you signed up via the current 20,000 Avion points offer, for example, and transferred the points over to Avios during a 50% promotion, you’d get 30,000 Avios – good for seven one-way short-haul flights, a round-trip flight between the West Coast and Hawaii, or even a round-trip transatlantic flight between Toronto and Dublin. That’s an incredible deal!

Insurance Coverage

The RBC Visa Infinite Avion comes with pretty strong protection, as would be expected for a premium credit card:

• Emergency medical insurance for the first 15 days of any out-of-province trips

• Travel accident insurance, covering death or dismemberment, of up to $500,000

• Car rental collision/loss damage insurance, which allows you to save on the daily insurance charged by car rental companies

• Trip cancellation insurance of up to $5,000 and trip interruption insurance of up to $25,000

• Flight delay insurance of up to $500 for reasonable expenses incurred

There’s also a very compelling purchase protection scheme in place that will reimburse you for accidentally lost or damaged personal property within 90 days of purchase, up to a maximum of $50,000 per year, as well as an extended warranty feature that automatically doubles the original manufacturer’s warranty.

Overall, the insurance on this card is on par with other premium cards in the market, making it a solid option for any big purchases.