It used to be the case that one could purchase upgrade certificates for traveling between various Canadian & US cities. These paper certificates could be purchased at AC counters at the associated airports. They are briefly described under point number 2 in the first post here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...ir-canada.html

When you follow the link in that post to the page on AC's site that's supposed to describe the certificates, http://www.aircanada.com/en/travelin.../upgrades.html, there is now a message indicating that they are no longer being sold.

Did anyone here ever use them? I always considered them a back-up I could resort to if I ran out of status certificates. I never did quite run out, though, so I never had occasion to buy any. Clearly they were more restrictive than the UG certs associated with status, but they were better than nothing. Now they are gone too.