Chase's 30% Aeroplan Bonus —
Who Actually Gets It

There's a new transfer bonus on the board, and it's a good one for a program that doesn't get bonused often. As of August 12, Chase is offering elevated transfers from Ultimate Rewards to Air Canada Aeroplan, running through September 30. Aeroplan is one of the more useful airline currencies in the Chase stable — a Star Alliance program with distance-based pricing, generous partner access, and a habit of not tacking on the fuel surcharges that make other programs painful — so a bonus here is worth paying attention to.

It's also being reported the way these things always are: a big number at the top, "transfer now" underneath. The number everyone's leading with is 30%. And 30% is real — for a specific, much smaller group of people than the headline implies. If you're going to move points into Aeroplan before this expires, the first thing to get straight is which number is actually yours.

What Chase Actually Launched

Strip away the marketing and the mechanics are simple. Normally, Chase Ultimate Rewards transfer to Aeroplan at a flat 1:1 — 1,000 points in, 1,000 Aeroplan points out. During this promotion, that rate is boosted. The size of the boost depends entirely on which card you're transferring from.

So the base offer — the one the overwhelming majority of Chase cardholders will get — is a 20% bonus, a 1:1.2 rate. Every 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points you send becomes 1,200 Aeroplan points, with nothing to opt into. If you carry a Sapphire Preferred, a Sapphire Reserve, or one of the Chase Ink business cards, that's your number. For a program that's usually a flat 1:1, an extra 20% at the moment you'd have transferred anyway is a genuinely nice tailwind.

The "30%" Headline Has a Card Attached

Here's the part almost every roundup races past. That eye-catching 30% figure isn't the standard offer — it's a stack. You get the base 20% like everyone else, and then an additional 10% is layered on top, but only if you meet two conditions at once: you hold the Chase Aeroplan co-branded credit card, and you transfer at least 50,000 points in a single move. Miss either one and the extra 10% simply doesn't apply. On top of that, the bonus 10% portion is capped, so it's not an unlimited multiplier even for the people who qualify.

This is the competitor delta worth internalizing. Most coverage prints "up to 30% to Aeroplan" and lets the reader assume that's the deal. The reality is that the Chase Aeroplan card is a relatively niche product — the vast majority of people sitting on transferable Ultimate Rewards hold a Sapphire, a Freedom, or an Ink, not the Aeroplan card. For all of them, the honest headline is 20%, and any article that leads with 30% without naming the card requirement is quoting the best case for the smallest group. We've seen this exact pattern before, whether it was Citi's 20% Flying Blue bonus that most people couldn't fully unlock or the co-brand fine print buried under every "transfer now" button. The move is always the same: find your rate before you believe the headline.

None of this makes the promotion bad. A flat, no-hoops 20% on a program as flexible as Aeroplan is a solid offer on its own terms. It just means you should size your expectations to the number you'll actually receive. And critically — because we don't carry a referral link for the Chase Aeroplan card and won't point you at a substitute — nobody should be applying for a new co-branded card just to squeeze an extra 10% out of one transfer. The math on a capped bonus almost never justifies a new annual fee and a hard credit pull. If you already hold the Aeroplan card, wonderful; stack away. If you don't, the 20% is your deal, and it's a fine one.

Is 20% Worth Transferring For?

Only if you have somewhere to put the points. This is the discipline that separates a good transfer from a regretted one, and it's the thing bonus coverage almost never emphasizes: transfers out of Ultimate Rewards are one-way and irreversible. Once your points land in Aeroplan, they are Aeroplan points forever. You can't move them back to Chase, you can't redeem them for a Sapphire travel-portal booking, and you can't send them to a different airline. A 20% bonus on points that then sit unused in Aeroplan for eighteen months isn't a 20% gain — it's a pile of stranded currency you talked yourself into.

So the sequence matters more than the deadline. Find the award first. Search Aeroplan's site for the specific flight, on the specific dates, in the specific cabin you want, and confirm the seat is actually bookable. Only when you're looking at real availability and the exact points price do you go back to Chase and transfer the precise amount that award needs — plus a small buffer for the occasional rounding difference. The bonus is the cherry on a redemption you'd already decided to make, never the reason to make one.

If you don't have a trip in mind, the better move is almost always to leave the points in Chase, where their flexibility is the whole point, and revisit when you do. Ultimate Rewards can go to Hyatt, United, Aeroplan, Flying Blue, and a dozen other partners; the moment you transfer, you trade all of that optionality for one program. A 20% bonus is a real nudge, but it's not worth surrendering flexibility you can't get back. We walk through this full framework in our complete guide to Chase Ultimate Rewards — worth a read if you're still building your points balance.

Where Aeroplan Actually Shines

Assuming you do have a redemption in mind, here's why Aeroplan is worth the transfer in the first place — the spots where it quietly beats the alternatives.

Short-haul Star Alliance economy. This is Aeroplan's signature sweet spot. Because it prices partner awards by distance rather than a fixed regional chart, flights under 500 miles on Air Canada, United, and other Star Alliance carriers start at just 6,000 Aeroplan points one-way. Run that through the 20% bonus and you're covering a short hop for roughly 5,000 Chase points — the kind of number that turns a $180 last-minute regional fare into a rounding error.

Partner awards with no fuel surcharges. Aeroplan doesn't pass on carrier-imposed surcharges on a long list of Star Alliance partners, which can save you hundreds of dollars in cash fees compared with programs that do. On a partner like a European or Asian carrier where another program might bill you $400 in surcharges on top of the miles, Aeroplan often bills you the taxes and little else.

A deep Star Alliance bench. With access to more than 45 partner airlines, Aeroplan can reach routes and carriers that are genuinely hard to book any other way — and its own stopover feature (add a stopover of up to 45 days for just 5,000 extra points on a one-way award) lets you turn one award into two destinations. It's the flexibility, not just the price, that makes Aeroplan worth holding.

The Move Before September 30

Put it together and the play is short. If you already have an Aeroplan redemption you want — a short-haul hop, a surcharge-free partner business seat, a stopover itinerary — this is a good moment to fund it, because a 20% discount on points you were going to transfer anyway is found money. Search the award, confirm the space, then transfer the exact amount from Chase and book.

If you hold the Chase Aeroplan card and your redemption needs 50,000 points or more, stack the extra 10% and take the 1:1.3 — just don't count on it above the cap. And if you don't have a specific award in mind, the honest answer is to do nothing. Leave your Ultimate Rewards where they are and watch the transfer-bonus calendar; there will be another one, and stranded Aeroplan points help no one. The best transfer bonus is the one you use on a trip you'd already planned — not the one you chased because the number was big and the clock was ticking.

One last reframe, because it's the whole philosophy of this site in a sentence: a bonus changes the price of a redemption, never the wisdom of it. Twenty percent off a flight you'll actually take is a win. Twenty percent off a pile of points you'll forget about is just a more efficient way to strand them.

Already deeper in the ecosystem? The Sapphire Reserve transfers to Aeroplan on the same 1:1.2 bonused terms, and if you're earning Ultimate Rewards on the business side, the Chase Ink cards feed the same partner list. To pair a flat-rate everyday earner with your Sapphire, a Freedom Unlimited quietly stockpiles the points that fund transfers like this one. Not sure how the pieces fit together? Our five-card framework for serious travelers lays out the whole stack.