I am curious about whether others have found the flight pass experience, based on the Welcome Aboard Pass, to be a motivator/catalyst for future flight pass purchases.

Mrs. Arf and I had a couple of Western Can passes and found the whole process of booking and using the passes very good indeed. It got us to actually read the fine print on the regular passes and we found that they look pretty good: the result is that we will be buying one of the western 10 credit passes later this summer for our fall travel. The Tango + booking class gives decent access to seats, which is great, and we like the flexibility. We are used to flying on the lowest fares we can find, so having flexibility is quite luxurious.

My one big gripe is that AC does not have, in my view, enough capacity out of YQR for the west. Pretty much every flight I was on was full (good for AC, but it causes problems if one misses a connection), and on more than one occasion I saw people on standby who couldn't get on a flight and thus had to spend the night in YYC. Also, late booking (ie within 48 hours) is a crap shoot. To be fair to AC, out of 22 segments flown we never got stuck anywhere and made it home pretty much on time every time. We did cancel one trip as the flight was delayed 3 hours, but we still could have gone. I'd also love AC to bring back the evening YVR-YQR flight they had for a short time a 1-1 1/2 years ago.