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Management and supervision

This one is for the travellers

I’m Jason Firth.

Fly-in Fly-out jobs are becoming commonplace in Canada, because the places where resources happen to be are not the places people want to live, or places where it’s not practical to place a down, or simply because the skills you need are not in the same place as where you need them.

I’ve been flying a lot lately in Ontario, and so I’ve been flying a lot on Porter Airlines.

I noticed something interesting in their frequent flier program. They have a “goal meter” on their website for their VIPorter program. It shows the $1500 level before you get to the Passport level, and the $3000 level before you get to the Priority level, but after that it shows $10,000.

How bizzare? I decided to look further into it.

It turns out Porter has another level to their frequent flier program. It’s invitation only, and requires a $10,000 annual spend on flights. It’s called the “VIPorter First” program.

It looks like it has everything the VIPorter Priority status has, and in addition:

2 Free checked bags

Free premium seat selection

Free last seat guarantee on sold-out flights

Free same day changes to reservations

Now, another note for people who travel very frequently:

Your spending shows up on your VIPorter level when you have completed the flight, not when you book your flight. By contrast, your VIPorter level when you book the flight is the level the flight will be treated as in their computer system, not the level you’re at when you fly.

This means that if you buy 6 months of tickets in advance in January, you won’t VIPorter status for any of those flights, in spite of potentially spending more than the $3000 level with them, even once you’ve taken $3000 worth of flights. Your new status won’t kick in until you’ve purchased a flight AFTER your status has activated.

Thanks for reading!

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