Book your dream vacation using Air Canada Aeroplan‘s latest promotion. To celebrate Aeroplan’s 40th birthday, the airline is offering a massive 125% bonus when you purchase Aeroplan points through July 11. The bonus drops to 100% from July 12 to 19.
Aeroplan usually sells points for about 2.58 cents per point. With the new promotion offering a 125% bonus, you can now purchase Aeroplan points for roughly 1.14 cents per point, which is below TPG’s July 2024 valuation of Aeroplan points (1.5 cents per point). Therefore, this sale can save you money if you have a specific redemption in mind. Keep reading for more details on this limited-time Aeroplan points sale and how you can maximize this promo to book your next flight.
Related: How to redeem Aeroplan points for maximum value
Air Canada Aeroplan is offering a 125% bonus when you buy points
Aeroplan members can buy or gift up to 500,000 Aeroplan points per transaction. Keep in mind that there’s an annual purchase limit of 1 million points, plus a 500,000-point annual limit on gifting points. Members must purchase at least 60,000 points to get the 125% bonus, which will cost 2,100 Canadian dollars (about $1,540) for 135,000 points, including the bonus.
While TPG typically doesn’t recommend buying points — unless you want to top off your account or have a specific redemption in mind — because the cost is usually greater than our valuation, with this sale, you can buy points for less than our valuation. Therefore, this sale can definitely save you money, especially on high-cost business-class award tickets.
It can be a great way to score Star Alliance flights at a discount — including round-trip business-class awards from the U.S. to Europe for as low as $1,368 before taxes and fees, which is incredible.
You need just 60,000 Aeroplan points each way to fly in business class from the East Coast to most of Western Europe. For example, you could fly Singapore Airlines’ daily fifth-freedom route between New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Frankfurt Airport (FRA) in Germany. From the 135,000 points you have purchased for $1,540, you would have 15,000 points left over, resulting in spending about $1,368 for the 120,000 points you need to fly to Europe.
You will still need to pay the airport fees and government taxes on top of your redemption. In the Singapore Airlines example above, those fees and taxes will set you back CA$331.50 (about $228), though some European airlines like Swiss will have even lower fees and taxes.
If you were to purchase a round-trip business-class ticket for the same flights, it would cost you almost $4,000. Therefore, you can save yourself more than $2,000 by purchasing points with this bonus.
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Plus, those 15,000 points left over could be used for domestic United Airlines flights, which start from just 6,000 Aeroplan points.
All Aeroplan members can buy points at this rate since this is not a targeted deal. While Canadian residents are subject to a sales tax on points purchases, U.S.-based Aeroplan members are not.
Air Canada allows members to add stopovers to one-way tickets for 5,000 miles, too, and doesn’t add fuel surcharges to any of its award tickets.
Related: How to earn Aeroplan points
Aeroplan Credit Card’s best-ever welcome offer
If you’re looking at other ways to top up your Aeroplan account, the Aeroplan® Credit Card from Chase is a valuable cobranded airline credit card that offers cardholders ongoing value for a low annual fee.
Right now, the card is offering potentially its best-ever bonus; however, it comes with a couple of caveats. You can earn:
- 70,000 bonus points after spending $3,000 in the first three months
- 40% bonus points on purchases (up to $40,000 spent) for 40 days if you apply for your first Aeroplan card by July 17
Per TPG’s valuations, Aeroplan points are worth 1.5 cents apiece, making the base 70,000 Aeroplan points earned worth $1,050.
For those who hold a Chase credit card, the issuer is currently offering a 20% transfer bonus to Aeroplan until July 31. Since Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Aeroplan at a 1:1 ratio, you’ll now get 1,200 points with this current bonus offer.
Buy Aeroplan points with these credit cards
If you buy Aeroplan points with this promotion, your purchase will be processed by Points.com rather than Air Canada. Unfortunately, you won’t earn bonus rewards for using a card with airline spending as a bonus category.
To earn the most points for your purchase, pay with a credit card that offers a solid return on non-bonus spending. Additionally, pay with a card that doesn’t add foreign transaction fees since Aeroplan points purchases are charged in Canadian dollars.
Here are some of our favorites:
*Based on TPG’s July 2024 valuations and not provided by issuers.
Bottom line
If you want to book flights to Europe, now could be the time to stock up on Aeroplan points. With the current promotion of up to 125%, you can use these extra points to cover discounted economy, premium economy and business-class flights. However, you must purchase the points before July 11 to get the full promotion. After that, the bonus drops to 100% until July 19.
This is a great deal to save money on your next flight or even top off your Aeroplan account to upgrade and purchase a business-class seat instead of an economy ticket once the extra points hit your account.
