Just got the following email from Seats.aero...looks like Goliath is trying to hammer away at every David it can identify...I would love nothing more than to see this tried in open court so that AC/AP's business practices can be properly examined in the light of day...I doubt it will ever get that far as that is the last thing they want...I would love to hear their lawyers argue 'but your honour, our entire business model is all about pushing out as many points as we can and then making them as hard to redeem as possible, with only the most expensive redemptions readily surfacing to our members...we can't have these unscrupulous third parties out there helping our members find the greatest value redemptions with ease, that would kill us, so you must find for us!We want to provide an update on Seats.aero support for Air Canada Aeroplan. On Thursday, Air Canada had its attorney send a cease and desist letter to Seats.aero. Their letter demanded that we must stop retrieving availability from Aeroplan just 25 hours after receiving the letter. Their letter appears rushed and we believe it has no valid legal basis or argument, and could apply to any site or tool that searches Air Canada Aeroplan for reward availability.

Seats.aero works by periodically visiting the public websites of airlines and retrieving the reward availability for each date and route. This common practice is usually called “web scraping” or similar names and is used by all travel tools in some form. Courts have routinely held that retrieving public information from public websites is legal and does not require us to follow any restrictions the airlines may try to arbitrarily impose, as we are just visiting their public websites.

It appears that Air Canada is trying to intimidate us into shutting down Seats.aero’s support for Air Canada, and potentially other travel sites as well. We do not intend to comply with their request and will continue to maintain Seats.aero’s support for Aeroplan for the foreseeable future. We are confident in our position, and if needed, we will see Air Canada in court and defend our practices to the fullest extent possible.

Thanks for your support,

Ian Carroll