I called and applied over the phone last week. It was a LONG process. They went over all my financial details in ridiculous detail! In spite of pulling up my credit report and basically saying it was fine they still wanted to know things like my heating and hydro costs. Now I have an appt at a branch where I have to bring in my t4 from last year, a recent pay stub and 3 months worth of statements from my checking account to basically prove what my credit report already tells them. I wasn't expecting to have to jump through this many hoops for this at all. If I had it to do again I'd just apply online and then call to get the fee waived if that works.

I know I've read some things about avios redemptions to the U.S. being a great deal but I need to look into that a bit further, I'm not sure if I can use them departing from YOW. If not I guess I'll see what else I can do with 15k avion points - I don't plan on using that card much. As far as long haul J, I think the taxes/YQ are really high. Is that correct or are there YQ free options like there are with aeroplan? If there are I'll consider moving a bunch of points to avios. If there's a thread discussing this can someone let me know? Otherwise I'll figure it out eventually.