Take Off, Eh

Wednesday's WSJ reported (subscription required) that Aeroplan is hatching a maniacal plan for global domination. Well, that's a paraphrase. In fact Aeroplan acquired LMG, an operator of retail loyalty programs in Spain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Canada, and the Mideast, as well as the UK's (apparently) popular Nectar program. Perhaps more interesting to us, was the Aeroplan CEO's comments that the firm remains interested in the US market. Aeroplan believes that an acquisition is the way to go in the States.

Now maybe you've heard, approximately EVERY US carrier has some sort of militant shareholder insisting that said carrier should divest its loyalty program. That includes not only American, but also United and US Airways (Star Alliance cousins to Air Canada) and Northwest (effectively based in Canada). We can imagine that any of those programs would be a tasty morsel for Aeroplan.

In the past we'd ignore this invasion from the north, but not after Rush and Bryan Adams. All signs point to credibility:

- Aeroplan is pursuing some corporate structure changes to facilitate deal-making (i.e. they want to raise money);

- Aeroplan's revenue is up over 20% so far this year over last (i.e. people will give money to them);

- The Canadian dollar is up more than 60% over the last 5 years to parity with the US dollar (i.e. the money will go a long way).

The next several months should have some fun news on this issue. Building a global loyalty brand with some leading carriers seems like a good way to mine a lot of customer data and mint some cash. Let's be honest, a lot of consumers are just fiends for acquiring loyalty points, cheap trinkets, and other shiny objects (Exhibit A: Flyertalk.com). Now imagine if you could use points for anytime rewards to Las Vegas *OR* Toronto. Nice.

In related news, earn two frequent flyer miles for every purchase you make using Google Checkout this month. Woo hoo!