Chase Ultimate Rewards is offering a 20% transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan when you transfer between today and 7/31/24. That 20% transfer bonus can stack with the 10% bonus for Chase Aeroplan cardholders making eligible transfers of 50K points or more, making for a bonus of as much as 30% for eligible cardholders who haven’t yet maxed out the annual cardholder bonus limit.
The Deal
- From 6/15/24 to 7/31/24, Chase Ultimate Rewards is offering a 20% transfer bonus for eligible cardholders when converting points to Air Canada Aeroplan
- This is stackable with the existing 10% points bonus available to Chase Aeroplan cardmembers when those cardmembers transfer 50,000 or more Chase Ultimate Rewards points in a single transaction to Aeroplan points (up to a maximum 25,000 Aeroplan bonus points per calendar year).
Key Terms
- The Bonus Aeroplan® points offer is valid for Chase Ultimate Rewards® point transfers to Aeroplan points completed between 12:00AM ET on June 15, 2024, and 11:59PM ET on July 31, 2024. You must be enrolled in the Aeroplan Program with both your Aeroplan membership in good standing and your Ultimate Rewards credit card account open and not in default in order to participate in this offer. All Ultimate Rewards points transferred into Aeroplan points to your Aeroplan account and the Aeroplan bonus points, will be subject to the Terms and Conditions of the Aeroplan Program and cannot be transferred back to your Chase Ultimate Rewards account.
- Ultimate Rewards transfers by a primary cardmember into an authorized user’s Aeroplan account or any Aeroplan account other than the primary cardmember’s are invalid.
Quick Thoughts
The 20% transfer bonus to Air Canada Aeroplan can be a great deal considering the fact that Aeroplan does have some attractive sweet spots, particularly for those looking to build more complex award itineraries.
At a base level, those on the East Coast have a number of routes to Europe that ring in at 60,000 miles one-way in business class. Given the transfer bonus, one would only need to transfer 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points to book something like New York to Frankfurt in business class on Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa.
Those looking for more complex redemptions could do quite well with this offer. A couple of years ago, during our 3 Cards 3 Continents challenge, I flew from Washington DC to Cairo to Istanbul to Muscat to Bangkok to Singapore to Cebu Philippines with a layover of 16-24 hours in each city (enough time to see and do something fun in each place) — an itinerary like that would today cost 115,000 miles in business class (or add 5,000 additional miles to add a stopover of up to 45 days in a single intermediary city). With the transfer bonus, you’d only need 96,000 Ultimate Rewards points to book that same journey (or 100,000 with a stopover). With some creative routings, you could put together a pretty cool round-the-world type itinerary with two long one-ways.
Juicing things up a bit more, Chase Aeroplan cardholders still get a 10% bonus when they transfer 50,000 or more Ultimate Rewards points to Air Canada Aeroplan (up to 25,000 bonus miles each year). That means that an Aeroplan cardholder transferring 50,000 or more Ultimate Rewards points who hasn’t yet maxed out their annual bonus will actually receive a total bonus of 30% — so a transfer of 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points could yield up to 65,000 Aeroplan points. At the top end, if you were able to max out your annual bonus with a transfer of 250,000 Ultimate Rewards points, you would end up with a total of 325,000 Aeroplan miles. That could certainly be a great deal for those who highly value premium cabin flight awards.
Note that the terms indicate that the transfer bonus is only valid for transfers to a primary cardholder’s Aeroplan account, not the Aeroplan account of an authorized user. I’m not sure I’ve noticed that type of restriction in the past, but it’s worth being aware of that potential limitation. I look forward to when Aeroplan relaunches family pooling as that would likely make a restriction like that less of an issue for many.
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It’s great for people making high value J and F redemptions – but it’s also great for people making use of their PYB travel option. 1 UR = 1.3 aero = 1.625 cpp in travel redemptions. Maybe you want to take a train, or rent a car. Maybe you’re e.g. going to Europe with a family, and you can’t find a Hyatt suite nearby, so you need some family-friendly place to stay. 6150 UR = $100, which is a really solid redemption for something that flexible.
PS – this won’t be replicable but as an example of how handy that flexibility be… I used during that booking.com / Lufthansa promo in December to book small hotels in Europe. I’m looking at one night that just billed to the card, it’s $158, I can redeem 12680 miles as PYB, which was 9725 UR before transfer. Per the booking email, I should earn 4360 Lufthansa miles (plus 158 miles with air Canada). If you look at it as transferring 4360 UR to Lufthansa and using the rest to pay for the night, it’s about 3.0 cpp against the cost of the night.