Costco is often thought as the place to get ridiculously sized jars of mustard or toilet paper on the cheap. Both of these things are still true. But one easy travel hack that is offered to Costco members can easily pay for the cost of a membership¹ in short order, and that is their gift card offer for flights on Porter Airlines and Air Canada.

For $449.99, you can buy a gift card on either airline that is worth $500 in flight credit. My math says that’s an instant $50 (and one cent) off without hardly trying.

And you don’t even have to fight for a parking spot at your local warehouse — both of these gift cards can be purchased entirely online, with an e-gift card arriving in your inbox (in my experience) within minutes².

There are a few things to watch out for, though:

• They are not refundable; on the plus side, they don’t expire, either
• You can only buy four Air Canada gift cards every 2 weeks³
• You can only buy 5 Porter cards at a time
• You can only use two methods of payment for any one Air Canada reservation. This effectively means either (a) you can only use one gift card for your reservation or (b) you can use two gift cards, but then the total cost of your reservation needs to be below $1000
• Air Canada gift cards are not valid at the airport, but Porter cards are.
• If you use a Porter card at the airport, then the value of the gift card has to be greater than whatever it is you’re trying to buy. You can’t split payment between a gift card and a credit card.

1. Basic membership is $65 annually and gets you two memberships for people at the same address ↩︎
2. Product notes claim up to 24 hours for delivery, but I’ve not experienced that myself ↩︎
3. “while supplies last” is also added to the text on the web. I don’t think these e-gift cards take up much warehouse space, but I could be wrong…. ↩︎