Originally Posted by Tax Dude

There's one other thing to think about that might be of interest to you depending on your budget. Air Canada has a pretty good London flight pass. For $6,248 you can buy a package of 6 one-way (3 round-trip) economy class tickets between Vancouver and London valid for one year. If you have status on Air Canada you can use your certificates to upgrade these tickets to Business class when you reserve your flight. It's a great value if you can upgrade, and still useful for people who have to travel on short notice or need flexibility because it books into Y class.

That amount of flying is enough to get you status on Air Canada. 6 direct flights would get you about 28k status miles which is Prestige, but if you add in some intermediate stops (eg. YYZ or YUL or both) you can get Elite (35k) fairly easily.

And, just because it's FlyerTalk - there's no reason to restrict your thinking to merely flying between London and Vancouver. You can buy an Air Canada ticket from London to Sydney Australia that will cost you less than $2,000 and will allow a stopover in Vancouver on your way home. I've seen it priced lower recently during sales too. That will get you 27k or so miles depending on how you route it and Prestige status. If you do that before the end of this year you'll get a few certs early next year to start you off which you can then use to upgrade your later flights. If you manage to get a Sydney flight in, plus another Vancouver flight before mid-October, you'll get instant Elite status (do a search) and a whack of certs to start you off, plus status and new certs for all of 2010, and Bob's your uncle. Of course, 3 LHR-SYD-YVR-LHR flights gets you well on your way towards SE status.....