Chase is running a 20% bonus on transfers to Air Canada Aeroplan through July 31, 2024. It’s available to Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card; Chase Sapphire Reserve®; J.P. Morgan Reserve; and Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card and Chase Corporate Flex cardmembers.
And it stacks with the 10% bonus available those who also have an Aeroplan® Credit Card. Those cardmembers receive a 10% bonus when transferring Ultimate Rewards points to Aeroplan when moving 50,000 or more points, up to a maximum of 25,000 Aeroplan bonus points per calendar year.
Thus, Chase Aeroplan cardmembers get up to 30% bonus Aeroplan points when converting at least 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points by July 31.
This is the exact same offer that Chase and Aeroplan ran last year during the same time period. In fall 2022, the offer was a a 30% transfer bonus from Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan, so this is not their best offer ever, but still very useful.
Air Canada is part of the Star Alliance, so you can use your miles for travel on member airlines like Lufthansa, Swiss, Asiana, ANA and Turkish. What’s more Air Canada Aeroplan doesn’t add fuel surcharges to awards any longer, and their awards are often cheaper than United’s – for instance East Coast to Europe in business class on Lufthansa costs 60,000 miles one way.
You can combine Star Alliance and other partner airlines into a single award. Air Canada has a plethora of airline partners outside of Star Alliance that you can redeem your miles with. And you can actually include both Star Alliance airlines and other partner airlines in the same award ticket, almost always bookable on their website.
For about 10,000 more points you can get for refundable awards that come with special club access on Air Canada business class transoceanic departures via Toronto and Vancouver. Air Canada Signature Suite lounges are not open to upgrading passengers or regular award passengers to keep them exclusive, and they offer some of the best lounge dining in the world. Here’s their Toronto lounge and their Vancouver lounge.
While many programs have eliminated stopovers – the ability to spend time in a connecting city along your journey – Aeroplan maintains them for generally just an extra 5000 miles each. And you aren’t limited to just one!
The program is also a great opportunity to combine your points in one place, since Aeroplan is also an American Express, Capital One, and Bilt transfer partner so you can pool points from various transferable points programs towards a single award.
Information about J.P. Morgan Reserve and Chase Corporate Flex has been compiled independently and has not been reviewed or approved by their issuer.
First off, I appreciate the conciseness of Gary’s posts. Factual and informative.
Just for clarification, unlike United MileagePlus, Aeroplan *does* have surcharges beyond gov’t taxes, and those apply to all awards. And if you do a cross-section random search of award availability and compare them with their corresponding cash fares, I think you will find that the value is about 1 cent per Aeroplan point, after their cash surcharge is taken into account.
The only sweet spot I have found is on *some* domestic flights within Canada. But other than that, Aeroplan redemptions are about a wash compared with cash fare – and equate to about 1 cent per point.
That being said, Gary’s highlight of the ability to combine transfers (as well as the ability to Family Pool in Aeroplan [if already enrolled; new enrollment suspended] ) is a valid advantage. Just make sure that your individual circumstance warrants taking up this promotion before transferring points out that are otherwise worth 1.5c apiece when booking thru the Chase portal.
Gary, thank you for the continued helpful content! I do have a Chase Aeroplan card so was hoping to
take advantage of the additional 10% transfer bonus (10% for having an Aeroplan card, stacked with the 20% bonus from Chase). When I get to the section of the Chase app to transfer points..it does indeed show the 20% bonus, but does not indicate that I’d get that additional 10%.
What do I need to do differently? Thanks!