Such a short route might also make sense if you do it in conjunction with an (otherwise overpriced) Pass Plus from United or equivalent from another airline, where you pay a flat fee to fly X miles in a year, or two years, because you earn 250 or 500 miles per segment even if the segment is much shorter.

Does AC offer this program? If so, then you pay for (say) 25,000 miles and then fly between Vancouver and Victoria over and over, using up only 76 miles of your allotment each RT, but earning 500 or 1000 miles (whatever AC's minimum accrual per flight is, times 2).

On UA you could buy the ticket in July, do (say) PDX-SEA which is about 260 air miles RT, earn 1000 status miles each RT, doing 50 RTs in 2001 and 50 RTs in 2002. You earn 50,000 status miles (good toward the million mile thingie) each year and qualify for 1K on segments for 2001 and 2002, which means that you have status through February 29, 2004.