March 31 Update: Earn up to 48,000 Avios for free, major schedule update from Air Canada, 20x PC Optimum points with Beauty Boutique & more + MORE Apr 1st

With the new HSBC World Mastercard World Elite offer we updated our Travel Hacking 101 post. With this new card offer you can now earn up to 48,000 British Airways Executive Club Avios at no cost outside of credit card spend. Learn more here.Our feature on What you actually have to spend to get some of the best credit card welcome bonus offers has been updated with the new HSBC World Elite Mastercard offer. See the feature here.Air Canada provided a major schedule update yesterday amidst their announcement of up to 16,500 lay offs. It’s insane as to how little their entire operation will be in April Their page shows a small amount of flights within Canada and flights to the U.S. are only out of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver (and there aren’t very many of those flights). To Europe there will be up to 30 flights per week out of the three same cities, five flights per week in total from Vancouver to Hong Kong and Tokyo. Air Canada will also operate a handful of flights from Toronto to Mexico City and Barbados…

The limited time increased welcome bonus of 350 WestJet dollars on the WestJet RBC World Elite Mastercard that we have seen since November has been extended to June 30. The regular bonus of 250 WestJet dollars when you apply for and receive the card is still the norm but if you get the card now you’ll get an additional 100 WestJet dollars when you make your first purchase on the card within three months of being approved for the card. That’s a really easy welcome bonus to earn considering most of the cards competing with this card have a lot of spend requirements tied to them! You literally only have to make one $1 purchase on the card and you have 350 WestJet dollars to use right away towards to flights or vacation packages with WestJet.Related: What you actually have to spend to get some of the best credit card welcome bonus offers Even though there isn’t much travel happening right now, especially to destinations outside of Canada this may be an offer you’ll want to check out if you are starting to plan for future travel…

For nearly a month now we have been looking at how you can use your loyalty programs and credit cards to help you out financially during these difficult times. In many of our articles we talk about the liquidity of your points, miles and even cash back as there is a lot of variation from each of the programs and card issuers. It is the latter where much of that variation comes in – that is how quickly or how easily can you access your credit card points or miles or cash back to help lower your credit card statement balance. The reason we look at this is front and centre in our news and world today. Thousands of Canadians are being laid off from work or are working much less hours from home or at their workplace and this means lower to even no income. On the date of publishing this article a survey reported that 49% of Albertans were already feeling a financial pinch. That’s where you can look at your credit card reward programs as source of financial aid by using the rewards or cash back to help pay down your expenses…