Boarding
This is one of the best benefits of the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Privilege card. You get priority boarding on Air Canada operated flights! You get pushed up to Zone 2, so you are behind the Super Elites and such but you get to board before most of the plane and grab that coveted overhead bin space. But wait you get first bag checked for free so in some cases you don't have to worry about that fight!

Credits and Companion Flight Offers
These are some great benefits from the cards that will save you money and/or miles! First off the TD card offers a once per year 50% discount on a companion business class fare. The fare class must be J,C, or D which are not the heavily discounted business class fares but perhaps your company will pay for your flight and you can then take along a companion at 50% off. It is the American Express Reserve card which offers up the big benefits in this category and are part of the reason this card has the highest annual fee of any publicly available card in Canada. First off, it has a $200 annual travel credit that can be used towards any booking made via American Express Travel, doesn't matter if its a flight, hotel or car rental. Then it has an Annual Partner Ticket Benefit. Once per year, you can redeem up to 25,000 Aeroplan Miles for a short-haul or long-haul round-trip Fixed Mileage Flight Reward in economy class and receive a second Partner Ticket for the same itinerary. Thus the card saves you between 15,000 and 25,000 miles on that award itinerary. Finally the Amex card has an Air Canada Privilege Flight Pass benefit. This benefit allows you to buy at a discount, eight prepaid, one-way flight credits within Air Canada’s North American network. All in all if you can take advantage of these benefits you stand to save quite a bit of money on your Air Canada travels.

The Mastercard option
Now you may ask why is the mbna Rewards World Elite Mastercard part of this portfolio. Well there is not one Mastercard card in Canada that gives you benefits for travelling with Air Canada. However in our Ultimate Credit Card series of portfolios the mandate is to provide a wallet that has one Visa card, one American Express Card and one Mastercard. So what do you do if there isn't a Mastercard that provides Air Canada benefits? You pick the best suited one that can help out this portfolio but not cost too much since the other two main cards come with hefty annual fees. Our choice is the mbna card. It doesn't cost you anything in the first year and from then on is only $89 per year but it gives you the same return and flexibility of some other Mastercard cards that cost much more than that. Honestly you'll only pull this card out where only Mastercard is accepted (Costco for example) or if there is a promotion that requires you to pay with a Mastercard. On the redemption side, this card is our go to choice for portfolios like this since it gives you 2% back towards any travel purchase or you can choose to get that 2% as cash back. Easy as that. Redeeming Aeroplan miles for an award ticket? You could always put the taxes and fees on the mbna card and then redeem your points against that charge.

Related: Which credit cards can be used to cover award ticket taxes, fees and surcharges?

The Ultimate Air Canada Credit Card Portfolio:

Related: American Express AeroplanPlus Reserve Review

Other Card Options:

You have another two options on the American Express side of things. You could go with the one level lower and grab the American Express  AeroplanPlus Platinum Card. It is very similar to the reserve card but limits the partner ticket benefit to short haul only (15,000 miles), has no travel credit or the discounted flight pass option. The second choice is to get The Platinum Card from American Express. It costs less per year in terms of annual fee and gives you a whole slew of benefits for non Air Canada travel. On the Mastercard side you could also look at no fee cash back card options like the Tangerine Card. We recommend you check out our Cash Back Credit Card comparison for other options.

Final thoughts:

As you can see just by getting the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite Privilege and the American Express AeroplanPlus Reserve Card you stand to make your Air Canada flying much more enjoyable and stand to save lots of money if you can take advantage of the credits and companion offers provided by the cards. This portfolio is not for everyone as many of you fly whatever airline is cheapest. This portfolio is for someone who will or does fly Air Canada quite a bit and does not have one of the higher Altitude elite status levels. For example, flying between Sudbury and Toronto every few weeks may only get you Prestige status with Air Canada which doesn't provide very many benefits but tacking on this card portfolio you'll be able to fly more like those Super Elites.

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