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Air Canada is selling points with a 100% bonus and that brings down the price low enough where some of you will decide this makes sense. You can buy miles at 1.35 cents apiece and I believe they’re worth that. The offer is available until July 20.
Aeroplan normally charges 3.5 Canadian cents per point. With a 100% bonus that’s 1.75 Canadian cents per point.
- That’s 1.35 U.S. Cents ($0.0135)
- And no taxes for accounts with U.S. addresses where miles are paid with a U.S.-based credit card
Air Canada Aeroplan is a Star Alliance frequent flyer program. They offer access to Star partner awards across the alliance with no fuel surcharges, along with numerous other partners (like Etihad and Virgin Australia) and far greater functionality and better customer service than LifeMiles which offers incredible deals when selling miles for around 1.35 cents apiece as well.
Aeroplan has award charts that are distance-based by region, and allow you to combine all of their partners into a single award. For a simple example you could buy all the miles you need for a business class award to Europe. A one-way between the U.S. and Europe on Lufthansa is 60,000 miles plus taxes but no surcharges. 60,000 miles @ 1.35 cents is $810.
You can buy or gift up to 500,000 Aeroplan points per transaction, and buy up to 1 million points per year (gifting limit is 500,000 points per year). Of course if anyone really wants to blow this out Aeroplan allows family pooling of up to 8 accounts.
There are plenty of other ways to access Aeroplan miles, of course, so you may not want to purchase or purchase all the miles you’ll use (so taking advantage of this offer merely to top off an account).
The Aeroplan® Credit Card lets you earn a Welcome Flight Reward worth up to 50,000 points after you spend $3,000 in your first 3 months from account opening + up to 51,000 points through 10x total points on travel and dining in your first 6 months. That pairs nicely with this offer, and is one of the best card bonuses.
And Aeroplan is a transfer partner of Chase, American Express, Capital One and Bilt. It pairs really well with the Capital One Venture X card and its significant initial bonus as well not to mention with paying rent through Bilt.
They used to say that US Airways was the ‘official consolidator for excess Star Alliance premium cabin inventory’. Aeroplan may be taking on this role, since this has been a recurring offer.
Still, I may need to buy some. I burned through my remaining Aeroplan points booking business class awards to Australia, made even more convenient by Air Canada’s new Austin – Vancouver non-stop.
Be forewarned – if you are planning on using Aeroplan points to travel from the US with a connection through Toronto Pearson, it is a serious $#&%show at the moment. We just came back from Europe via Air Canada and they are cancelling most late afternoon/evening connecting flights. Hundreds of people stranded, few resources manning customer service counters and nobody answering the phone (was quoted a 2+ hr. wait on the AC 25K elite line). Web site self-service is poor. It will easily take you 1-2 hrs. lines to transit thru security and then another 1-2 hrs. for US CBP pre-clearance if you don’t have Global Entry. Heaven help you if you are checking a bag – I’m finally home in the US after being rebooked thru ORD the next day on United but my checked bags are still sitting in YYZ terminal 1.
YYZ is in serious meltdown mode right now due to staffing issues, maybe even worse than what I’ve read about Heathrow. Avoid it.
As long as your plans are firm, and you dont encounter schedule changes and avoid Air Canada metal you’re good.
You should probably mention how Aeroplan doeantbgave a functioning website or phone line when things break.