In conjunction with promo codes you can use airline vouchers or gift cards. At the beginning of the pandemic when flights were cancelled, airlines initiated a policy whereby they gave proprietary credit to their customers for the value of the cancelled ticket in the form of e-vouchers. Since customers did not receive refunds in their original form of payment (credit cards, cash, or cash-equivalent) they have no choice but to use the credit with the same airline for future travel.

An economic primer on why this works:

Most individuals splurge or spend a decent proportion of their disposable income on vacation expenses. When the individuals is no longer able to travel and that large sum of disposable income gets locked into propriety credit, it's not very economical or useful for them to keep their money in such an illiquid form (it is illiquid because the value can be used in only one way - with the airline). Individuals who want the monetary value  of the e-voucher only have the option of reselling it on a marketplace at a discount. This is because airlines do not exchange the vouchers for cash or cash equivalents - unless you expend a lot of energy arguing with them and can make a considerably good argument in your favor.

In addition, as the vouchers only purpose is to use towards a transaction with the airline, when the individual decides to sell they have to find a buyer who is willing to find a use for the voucher, A buyer would not be incentivized to buy the e-voucher at face value as they could use their own form of payment directly with the airline. As a seller, the individual is forced to sell the voucher at a discount which incentivizes buyers in the market and then inevitably liquidates your position.

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Now back to finding vouchers:

The people who purchase these vouchers are travelers who are comfortable travelling during the pandemic, or people who foresaw a use for the vouchers in the long term. During the pandemic, the number of people making up this demographic was a very small one.

In my experience, these vouchers are sold at anywhere between a 10%-30% discount for vouchers containing less than <$1000 CAD and anywhere between 5%-20% discount for vouchers above $1000 CAD.

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There is still time for you to take advantage of this illiquidity as many travel vouchers have become available after the most recent Covid wave (March 2022). Many traveler's received e-vouchers 6-8 weeks after cancelling their plans (turn around time). This has created a large supply of travel vouchers, many of which can now be found in online marketplaces, discounted from their face value.

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Below is a screenshot of Air Canada travel vouchers that are being sold on Kijiji (as per writing this article). If I were to purchase the second option on the list then I have $1173 CAD to use towards my next flight for which I only had to pay $900 CAD.

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