Air Miles has been experiencing a slow descent, with its rival Scene+ replacing it in grocery stores in the Atlantic Canada region earlier this month.
Thus far, Air Miles’s ripostes have been lackluster at best. While the Scene+ ship forges full steam ahead, Air Miles appears to be floundering to respond, as exemplified by their latest efforts to try and make the program more attractive: a reduction to the requirements needed to attain Air Miles Gold and Onyx elite status.
Air Miles Gold and Onyx: Cool Names, Limited Perks
The new qualification requirements for Air Miles collectors to attain Gold and Onyx status are effective immediately, as of August 2022:
As we can see, the requirements to reach the highest status, Air Miles Onyx, is granted after accumulating only 5,000 Air Miles in a calendar year, or by holding any of the following Air Miles co-branded credit cards:
On the other hand, in order to earn Air Miles Gold status, you’ll need to earn 500 Air Miles in a calendar year or hold one of the following cards:
Compared to before, this represents a reduction of 17.7% for the Air Miles needed to qualify for Onyx status (6,000 to 5,000), and a 50% drop from the previous requirement to earn Gold status (1,000 to 500).
This looks dramatic on the surface, but do the perks of these loftily-named collector statuses make them worth achieving?
Gold members can spend Cash Miles on hotel bookings, which is decent enough. Aside from that, it gets some discounts on Dream Miles redemption for merchandise, which is generally a poor value.
Both Gold and Onyx members get discounts on using Dream Miles toward flights… which would be great, if Air Miles were useful for booking air travel in the first place. Me, I’d rather just focus on Aeroplan and be done with it, so I can go anywhere Star Alliance does.
On the other hand, Onyx members get concierge services and a “Personal Shopper”, allowing them to redeem their miles at a rate of 95 per $10 on theoretically any item of the member’s choice. The company’s marketing materials details somebody who acquired a Mercedes-Benz this way, but that seems to be an outside case.
Onyx members also get a Shell Go+ account, which slightly accelerates the rate of earning Air Miles when fuelling at Shell Oil stations. Not a very impressive perk with oil prices as high as they are.
To sum up, these are weak benefits that only really matter to…
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