The Chase Air Canada Aeroplan card is out with a new offer. While the core introductory bonus offer remains 70,000 bonus points after $3K in purchases in the first 3 months, there is an added twist coming as a Limited Time Anniversary Offer: Apply for your first Aeroplan card from 7/8/24 to 7/17/24 and earn 40% bonus points on purchases for 40 days on up to $40K spent. That won’t do much to make the card’s earning rate compelling for otherwise unbonused purchases, but it might add a little pep in your step if you have big spending needs in the card’s bonus categories.
The Offer & Key Card Details
| Card Offer and Details |
|---|
70K Points ⓘ Affiliate 70K points after $3K spend in the first 3 months. $95 Annual Fee This card is likely subject to Chase's 5/24 rule (click here for details). FM Mini Review: Great card for regular or frequent Air Canada flyers Earning rate: 3X Air Canada ✦ 3X grocery stores ✦ 3X dining ✦ 500 bonus points with each $2K calendar month spend, up to $6K spend per month (1,500 points max) ✦ 1X everywhere else Card Info: Mastercard World Elite issued by Chase. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: Renew 25K status w/ $15K spend ✦ Status Boost w/ $50K spend ✦ Priority Reward w/ $100K, $250K, $500K, or $750K spend ✦ Free award companion for rest of calendar year and all of next with $1Million spend Noteworthy perks: Discounted award pricing ✦ Free checked bag ✦ $100 credit for NEXUS, Global Entry or TSA PreCheck every 4 years ✦ Carbon offsets on Air Canada awards ✦ Pay Yourself Back for travel at 1.25 cents per point, up to 50K points per year ✦ 10% bonus when transferring Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan (25K max bonus/year) |
Quick Thoughts
It’s interesting to see Aeroplan fold their credit card into the 40th anniversary celebration with a super-limited-time offer. The additional bonus points offered here beyond the previous offer are only valid if this is your first Aeroplan card and then only if you apply over the course of a nine-day period. That’s rather unique.
It isn’t necessarily wildly exciting since the bonus here just means that unbonused purchases would earn 1.4 Aeroplan points per dollar spent. You could already do better with a number of other cards on the market that earn 2 points per dollar spent that could then be transferred to Aeroplan.
That said, the additional 40% turns the card’s 3X bonus categories into a total of 4.2x. While there are some cards on the market that offer 4x or better transferable points on the same types of purchases, but a rate of 4.2 Aeroplan points could be ever so slightly better on up to $40K in purchases over your first 40 days. If you intend to spend towards elite status with the card, then getting this 40% bonus could be all the more appealing if you have large upcoming expenses.
If you were to spend $40K in categories that otherwise earn 1 point per dollar, you’ll earn an additional 16,000 points with this offer for a total of 86,000 points after $40,000 in purchases. I don’t think that’s nearly enough to consider putting $40K on this card given the fact that you could use less spend than that to earn a bonus or bonuses worth far more. Even if you did the entire $40K in purchases in categories that would otherwise earn 3x, you’re only looking at 48,000 “bonus” points on top of the 3x you could earn with this card at any time. Again, you could put a fraction of that $40K spend on a different “new” card and earn far more than 48,000 points that could be transferred to Aeroplan.
Again, the additional bonus here is likely most appealing for those who are interested in spending toward renewing 25K elite status with $15K in purchases or the status boost that comes at $50K.
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I’m late on this because the Chase card wasn’t listed officially for the first several days, but there was also a 40% bonus for existing cardholders. In theory that’s interesting for people like me who are working on the 100k offer, but ultimately by the time they confirmed it, I didn’t have a good chance to make use of it on dining/grocery.
No matter how much they try to polish this turd… still a turd.
They know what goes on. It’s almost as if they’re going after MSers.
Don’t see the hype regarding aeroplan points. I never find anything worth while and the cash outlay is high. Am I missing something?
“The cash outlay is high” — this doesn’t make sense. Aeroplan doesn’t add any carrier-imposed surcharges other than their $39 CAD partner booking fee (about $28.60 in USD). All they charges are the taxes & fees you’d pay when booking any ticket on the same itinerary (though any program) + that ~$28.60 per person. If the cash outlay seems high, then you are likely booking tickets departing or transiting countries with high passenger taxes (that you’ll pay on any ticket departing / transiting those countries).
“I never find anything worthwhile” — it’s hard to say why without knowing what you’re looking for, but even still it might not be a fit for you. Every program has its purposes/strengths and its weaknesses. Generally speaking, I think of this kind of comment as being akin to needing a screwdriver and complaining that your hammer isn’t worthwhile. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the hammer, it’s just not the right tool for the screwdriver job. If what you need is to put screws in something, then sure the hammer isn’t the right fit for you. But a lot of people need to bang in nails, so of course the hammer is going to be a popular tool still even if it isn’t the right tool for your tasks. There’s nothing wrong with the hammer — it’s great at what it does — and there’s nothing wrong with you, you just don’t need a hammer. But would it make sense to you if I said that I didn’t get the hype on hammers? I assume it wouldn’t — you’d say, “Nick, surely you can imagine that a lot of people have to nail things together, right?”.
Aeroplan’s core strengths are its diversity of partners and the ability to build complicated itineraries since you can mix and match partners and add a stopover on a one-way award for 5,000 miles. That makes it possible to do things like what I did during 3 cards 3 continents, which was to fly from Washington DC to Cairo, have an 18-hour layover to visit the pyramids and whatnot, then fly to Istanbul with another similar layover to take a cruise of the Bosporus before heading back to the airport to fly to Oman for another ~18 hour layover with time to snorkel with whale sharks and sea turtles before flying onward to Bangkok where I visited the Grand Palace and flower market and then onward to Singapore, where I got to eat a delicious Bib Gourmand crispy curry puff and finally to Cebu, Philippines all in business class (on Egyptair, Tutkish Airlines, Oman Airlines, Gulf Air, and Singapore Airlines) for what would cost 115,000 miles today. Or I have a trip booked this summer where we’re flying in business class from Paris to Mauritius, stopping over in Mauritius, and then continuing on via Kuala Lumpur to Singapore for one night in Singapore (an almost-24-hour-layover) and then on to Osaka before that ticket ends in Guam (that all cost about the same 115K I believe and less than $200 in taxes per passenger…maybe closer to $100 if I remember correctly).
Another thing I like about Aeroplan is their expanded access to Singapore Airlines business class space. You can sometimes get 8 seats from New York to Frankfurt in Singapore Airlines business class for 60K per passenger.
Obviously those types of trips may not appeal to you. If you primarily want to travel domestically or if you’re trying to search a ticket from the west coast to Europe, then you may not be finding anything worthwhile (if that last case is your situation, it might be worth looking at buying a separate flight to position to NYC / DC / Boston and then getting an Aeroplan award from one of those cities to Europe as one of many such examples I might imagine).
Again, despite all of that, maybe your task just requires that screwdriver and maybe you’ll never need a hammer. Nothing wrong with that.
Hey Nick. Thanks for the response. I have flown to Europe many times from the east coast and I have never found any use for aeroplan. There pricing is deceiving in economy. They show the lowest points fare but if you want a free checked bag – it’s significantly higher in points. For my trips I have also found business class to be ridiculously high. I will keep on looking for value but so far I personally haven’t found it. I find flying blue to be much more valuable. As you said – different strokes for different folks.
Keep up the good work
Existing cardholders can also get 40% bonus miles on spend from July 14-17. Registration required.
Does Aeroplan allow combining for family accounts or something like that?
Not right now. They launched the capability last year and shut it down quickly because of fraud concerns. If you created a family pool during the limited window when it existed (I did), then your pool still exists, but you can’t create a new pool right now.
I’m told that they intend to bring it back and I expect that it will likely happen this year, but we don’t know when.
I suspect that the answer is “no”, but does purchasing Aeroplan points via points.com count toward the 3x bonused “brand” spend?
No, it is points.com not aircanada or aeroplan
It sounded cool until you broke it down.