How to Cover Travel Expenses with Aeroplan Miles (And Why You May Want To!)
Guest post by Summer Hall
Do you want your miles to stretch a little further for cruises, theme park tickets, rental cards, vacation rentals, and tours?! Be sure to read this guest post by Summer Hall at Summer is Joy! Summer has put together a great guide for a unique way to cover travel purchases to make your points and miles stretch further than 1 cent per point when you want to use your points and miles to erase a travel expense!
Introduction to the Aeroplan® Credit Card
The Aeroplan® Credit Card is a co-branded personal credit card from Chase that earns Aeroplan miles, the loyalty program of Air Canada. Even if you have no plans to fly Air Canada or any of its airline partners, this card has a unique feature that makes it worth considering: you can use Aeroplan miles to erase travel purchases you make on the card, and it’s actually a great value! I recently opened this card and used the bonus to erase charges I made to my resort at Walt Disney World, and I’d happily do it again!
The standard offer on this card is 60,000 points after you spend $3,000 in three months. You also receive an additional 10,000 points when your annual fee renewal is paid in full (so a year after you’ve had the card). The annual fee is $95. This card also earns 3x the points on groceries, dining, and Air Canada purchases. So how do you use them for travel purchases?
Pay Yourself Back
Chase has a feature on certain credit cards called “Pay Yourself Back.” It’s their way of letting you use your points for a statement credit against recent purchases in particular categories. If you have a Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card or Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, it works very similarly to Capital One’s option to cover your travel expenses, which you can learn how to do here. When you make a purchase that codes as travel on your Aeroplan card, you can use points to Pay Yourself Back® for that expense at a redemption rate of 1.25 cents per point. So a $100 travel expense only requires 8,000 Aeroplan miles to “erase” and knock that expense off your statement entirely.
*This pay yourself back benefit was originally scheduled to end on December 31, 2023, but then got extended to December 31, 2024. It’s now been extended again through December 31, 2025 so I am hoping it will continue to be extended each year!
*There is a limit on how many points you can use toward travel category for Pay Yourself Back to 200,000 miles per year. This means you can get a statement credit for up to $2,500 worth of travel expenses on the Aeroplan card every calendar year.
This is GREAT news because if you were to cover that same $100 travel expense on a Capital One Venture card, it would take 10,000 Venture miles. Let’s see exactly how it’s done.
In the Chase app, when you select your Aeroplan card, scroll down and tap “Benefits & Rewards,” then tap Pay Yourself Back. If you’re on your browser click “Redeem” and then Pay Yourself Back.
You will see all the eligible categories of purchases that you can use points to cover. Notice that groceries and dining are also eligible categories, but your Aeroplan miles are only worth 0.8 cents per point when redeemed for those purchases. Not a good value!
Scrolling past the list of categories, you’ll see a list of all the transactions that are eligible to use Pay Yourself Back on. You have 90 days after a purchase posts to your account to erase it. Each transaction will show you how many points are required to completely erase it, but if you want you can partially cover a purchase.
If you choose to partially cover a purchase, however, you cannot later go back and redeem more points against it. Each transaction can only have points redeemed for it once, partially or fully.
Check the box next to whichever transactions you want to erase. You can select up to 5 at a time. Then you either type in exactly what dollar value you want to cover with points, or simply check the box that says “Apply full value” to apply the maximum number of points required to erase the purchase completely. (The screenshot below shows what it would look like to erase your annual fee, which can also be done).
You’ll see how many points you’re redeeming and how many you’ll have left afterwards. Then the last step is to hit “Redeem.” You can’t cancel it after this step, so proceed carefully. Once you hit redeem, you’ll receive 2 confirmation emails and a notice that your statement credit will be posted to your account within 2-3 business days.
So as a review: you can cover travel purchases by going to Rewards, then Pay Yourself Back, then scrolling through all eligible transactions made within the past 90 days, and selecting up to 5 of them at a time. You then specify the dollar amount you want a statement credit for, up to the full amount of the purchase, and click redeem. You’ll see a statement credit in a few days.
The Fine Print
Something very important to note is that there is a limit on how many points you can use toward travel to 200,000 miles per year. This means you can get a statement credit for up to $2,500 worth of travel expenses on the Aeroplan card every calendar year.
You can find how many points you’ve used toward travel by clicking the tracker on both the app and your browser:
Not only is Aeroplan a transfer partner of Chase Ultimate Rewards, but also American Express Membership Rewards, Capital One Miles, Bilt Rewards, and Marriott Bonvoy. However, Chase expressly states that you can only use Pay Yourself Back with Aeroplan miles earned from the Aeroplan card itself, from flying Air Canada, or by transferring from Chase Ultimate Rewards. So if you were thinking about transferring your Amex Membership Rewards or your Capital One Venture Miles to Air Canada and then using those to erase travel purchases on your Aeroplan card, think again, because that could get your statement credit revoked!
It’s okay though, because there’s a special perk that’ll make you want to transfer your Chase Ultimate Rewards. Having the Aeroplan card makes you eligible for a 10% bonus when transferring at least 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeroplan, up to 25,000 bonus points a year. So you’d end up with 55,000 Aeroplan miles in your account if you moved 50,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards to Aeropaln at one time, and that’s the case all year round. And sometimes, Chase even has transfer bonuses to Aeroplan in addition to that!
Credit cards that allow you to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards to Air Canada:
Best Uses for Aeroplan Pay Yourself Back
Anything that codes as travel would be a great choice to “erase” with Aeroplan points. I’m a Disney person, so my mind immediately goes to Disney cruises and theme park tickets purchased from a third party… but you should also think AirBnBs, rental cars, tours booked on sites like Viator, and even rideshares!
I recently used this perk to erase the cost of a Hilton stay that wasn’t available to book with Hilton points because the resort is a timeshare. I also prepaid for and then erased the cost of our rental car for Hawaii. And when I was staying at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge this past December, I used my MagicBand to charge everything I bought at the parks back to my room so it would code as travel, and then when we checked out, I used Aeroplan miles to erase over $900 worth of Disney food and merchandise!
The Bottom Line
Using points and miles to pay for your hotel and flights is always great, but every trip has travel expenses in addition to that. If you want to use points to reduce your out of pocket vacation costs even further, then the Aeroplan card is a great choice because of its 1.25 cent redemption rate for travel. It’s an even better value than cashing out Chase Ultimate Rewards points or using Venture miles to erase a purchase, because those methods only give you 1 cent per point. And we love to stretch our points as far as they can go!
I hope this post helps you see whether or not the Aeroplan card deserves a slot in your wallet based on this awesome feature and its potential to make your next vacation even cheaper. I know I’ll be using it to make my Hawaii trip later this year as affordable as can be!
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