Frequent Miler on the Air - Chase's disappointing Air Canada Aeroplan® Credit Card refresh | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep374 | 9-11-26

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

In today's episode, listeners weigh in on Nick's pick for "best Hyatt Place breakfast", Hyatt breaks up with one airline and ties up with another, and we review Chase's refreshed Air Canada Aeroplan card.Wild Card Challenge Update(01:15) - Which cards did our contestants pick for the Wild Card challenge?Learn more about the ongoing challenge hereGiant Mailbag(09:02) - In our Hidden Gem Awards Ep373, Nick said Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport had the best breakfast in the world... but do people agree?Mattress Running the Numbers(14:24) - Marriott Amex Offer: Spend $450 & get $200 back (targeted)Learn more about this targeted offer hereThis Week in Points(17:06) - US Bank adds Avianca LifeMiles as transfer partner(18:28) - Rove adds Copa Airlines as transfer partner, launching with 40% transfer bonus through SeptemberLearn more about Rove adding Copa here(20:13) - Hyatt dissolves partnership with AARead more about Hyatt's ending partnership with American Airlines here(22:27) - Hyatt adds partnership with Delta: https://newsroom.hyatt.com/DeltaAirLinesCard news(24:39) - Amex Bonvoy Business Card is coming(26:48) - Chase Sapphire Reserve enhances DoorDash benefitLearn more about this enhanced benefit here(29:34) - Chase IHG Premier Business anniversary free night certificate will increase to 50K points in 2027Personal Points(31:16) - Chase return protection success(35:54) - Atmos Summit $60K spendMain Event: Chase's disappointing Aeroplan Card refresh(38:25) - New Cardmember Offer(39:54) - The changes that really matter(52:20) - Quick summary of the good stuff and bad stuff(53:35) - Nick and Greg: Never got the card before. Is it worth it now?Subscribe and FollowVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie YoderCheck out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of the Voyascape Network, a collection of some of the world’s best travel podcasts. Explore more at Voyascape.com. For advertising or sponsorship opportunities on this show and across the network, email [e-mail] or you can find more information at Voyascape.com/advertsing.

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. On today's episode, listeners weigh in on my pick for the best place for a Hyatt Place breakfast. Hyatt breaks up with one airline and ties up with another, and we review Chase's refreshed Air Canada Aeroplane card. Frequent Myler on the air starts now. Today's main event, Chase's disappointing aeroplane card refresh. chases out with a great new welcome bonus for the aeroplane card, but they've also made some significant changes to the fees and benefits of the card.

Some are good, but in total, we're not fans. And so we're going to discuss the ins and outs of the newly refreshed aeroplane card in today's main event. Not so refreshing after all, but we'll talk more about that later. Remember, if you want to jump ahead to that or you want to come back to something later on, you can always expand the show notes for the full timestamps and description sections. So check there. Also check there for links to more information about what we're talking about. Wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up, like it, subscribe, enable notifications so you can find out every time we release something new. And speaking of releasing something new, we've got a wild card challenge update. So if you haven't followed along in the blog, this year's frequent byler team, challenge is called Wildcard. And so you can find more information on the blog about what we're doing. Last night as we record this a couple of days ago, I guess by the time this publishes, we drafted for the Wild Card Challenge. So what happened is Greg and Tim and I each selected our destinations. We have two destinations that we're traveling to independently and then one where the three of us

will meet back up. That one was assigned by the judges. And we selected our cards, the credit card bonuses that we will have to build this trip to these three places. And you'll hear more about that on the podcast in a couple of days. We'll be publishing the full live stream that we did when we drafted these cards to the podcast here in a few days. So listen up for that. Check out the blog for details. But to give you just the kind of high level recap of what happened, I'll let you know what everybody drafted. So Tim, his destinations are going to be Costa Rica, South Korea, and then our shared destination of Melbourne, Australia. And his cards to build that trip to Costa Rica, South Korea, and Australia are going to be the Aeroplan card. Now, he drafted it with a 60,000 point introductory

offer because that's what was available at the time when we did the draft. So he's got fewer points than he might if this draft had taken place a little bit later. He's got the IHG card, the Premier card, with 140,000 point bonus, and the Sapphire Reserve with 100,000 point bonus. And finally, a wild card added at the last minute, the Capital One Venture 1 card with a 20,000 point bonus. Unfortunately, his sort of obstacle that he has to master here is that he has to travel with both a carry-on and a checked bag. So he has to check a bag on all of his flights.

But he does get a 30% transfer bonus of his choosing. Again, those were all things that we drafted. I say drafted. We kind of selected our wild cards. So it was very random. For mine, I got Guadalu. Vietnam and Melbourne, Australia. My cards are the Lafanza Miles and Moore card, Bonvoy business card, Capital One Venture card and the Cathay Pacific card. I have the obstacle of not being able to hail

using a ride share app in my first two destinations. But I was very lucky and I drew the get out of surcharges free card. So I don't have to or the judges won't consider the surcharges on my flights against me. It won't count against me in the judging, which is really good news because I got the lot of miles and more card is my airline card. And I'm going to go out a loop, which I can only get to on Air France. So there couldn't have been a better power up card for me since I'm going to be spending a lot in taxes and fees. So that's that's a good power up. And then Greg, Greg, what did you get? Yeah. I got my first destination is Panama. And then I got, China, but I'm going to talk more about that in a second. And then, of course, the common destination

for all of us is Melbourne, Australia. As far as the points I have to work with, Delta, I got the Delta gold card with 90,000 points. The Bonvoy Brilliant card is my hotel card with 150,000 points. The Amex Gold card with 100,000 membership rewards points. And the bonus card pick was the American Airlines mile up card with 15,000 AA miles. So I think that'll be helpful for some kind of connecting flights if I have to do some positioning. So that's great. My obstacle card was called the night owl, and it means that I'm not allowed to fly before 10 a.m. on any given day. So I can't book any flight that departs before 10 a.m. And then my power up was called stay in the zone, which, of course, I had no idea what that was, but it turned out to be that I could replace one of my picks,

either Panama or China, and then pick again, I could pick again from the other zone, meaning like if I chose, if I wanted to be in Asia for both of my first two destinations, I could have tossed back the Panama card and picked from the Asia zone. zone, another destination in Asia, or vice versa. And I chose vice versa. I thought it would be, I thought it was very likely our final destination was going to be like in Europe or Northern Africa. And I thought it would be reasonably easy to get there from Columbia. But man, I wasted that pick big time. So now I have Panama and Columbia as my first two destinations, which is, I think, very easy for me to do those two, but then getting to Melbourne in 48 hours from Columbia is going to be

really, really challenging. It's physically possible. It's not going to be easy to do with points. Not comfortably possible. Yeah. So, all right. Well, I mean, that's interesting. So we each have, I don't know, an interesting selection of cards. You can listen to more about that on the dedicated podcast we're going to publish and let us know what you think, what should we do? Who do you think is the favorite at this point? Who do you think is the underdog? Do you like how I made that into a question and made it sound like we legitimately don't all know who the underdog is here? Yeah, I'm going to just point out one more thing about Tim's picks. The Sapphire Reserve card is such a good pick because he gets to use all of the cards credit. So that means the $300

credit for any kind of travel purchased, the edit credits and stuff like that. So he's got a lot to work with an addition to the points from that card. All the rest of our picks just don't have a lot of credits like that. They're little ones. I've got some with like my Delta, Delta stays credit and stuff. So I'm good on hotels, but I think he has a real leg up with so many credits. But expectations are high. So, you know, that can also. to make it challenging because expectations are going to be eye for Tim's trip. So I look forward to seeing what he pulls out. Because I imagine he is going to try to add some flare and make it interesting since he does have some awesome capabilities there.

I think we're going to see something kind of neat out of Tim. So we'll see what happens. So there's the Wild Card Challenge. You're going to be hearing more about it in the next couple of weeks. So not only will you be able to listen to the full live stream where we drafted those picks and kind of catch our reactions in real time. But of course, then once we take off on this challenge, you'll be hearing more because we'll have a couple of live streams during the challenge where we have to check in in various destinations along the way. So there's going to be a lot more about that coming on the podcast in the next couple of weeks. And we're excited to see how that all unfolds.

If you're not already following Freakumiler on Instagram, you definitely should. And even if you're not an Instagram person, it's just the best platform for watching something like this unfold in real time. stories make it really possible for us to kind of share it almost as a, you know, a chronological story. I mean, there's no better way to put it than stories. Stories are great for telling stories as it turns out,

believe it or not. So Instagram is the place to go probably for, uh, live updates during the challenge. Though, of course on the blog, we will be publishing our journal updates every day too with what's been going on and what we've been up to.

So you'll want to check there as well. All right. Let's drag out this week's giant mail bag. All right. This week's giant mail. comes from a number of people. In our recent podcast called Hidden Gem Awards, Nick made a bold assertion. He said that the Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport had the best Hyatt Place breakfast in the world.

And so we invited people listening to report in. Was he right? Was he wrong? Are there better places? And a number of people did write in with support for, next assertion. So Amal wrote in saying, listening to the podcast and heard about your trip to the Amsterdam Airport Hyatt Place. I don't know how to send a picture on the comment on the blog, but in 2018, as an explorerist, I was deemed guest of the day. This is perhaps the greatest honor of

hotel has ever been bestowed on me, even with top tier status, which I didn't have at the time, wholeheartedly agree that it's the best Hyatt Place I've ever stayed at. Well, all right, there's a, I like that story, but there's a problem here, right? Did you notice the problem with this? I mean, Amol, you didn't mention breakfast there. Mention breakfast. So that's not supporting, that's not supporting that's not supporting assertion at all. So toss that one out. However, Batman 84 to the rescue, who wrote, who wrote, the breakfast at the Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport also has made to order eggs. You didn't mention that, Nick. It's even better than you think. Now, I know why Nick didn't

mention made to order eggs, but do you want to explain? You can imagine. Well, you know, it turns out some of us don't enjoy the taste of eggs. So some of us don't, don't ever order those made to order eggs. So it was not a highlight for me, but I can understand. I mean, it's a Hyatt Place. Have you ever ordered eggs at a Hyatt Place, Greg? I have not. No. If you ever ordered anything at a high at place breakfast. Sorry, go ahead. I have never interacted with a person to actually get food on my plate. Right. Okay. Travel three Adventure also wrote in saying Hyatt Place Amsterdam Airport is outstanding.

Breads, juice, meats, true European breakfast, excellent coffee. No chance any Hyatt Place matches this quality. Wow, man, that's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking for. That's it. Final word from Travel Three Adventure. But wait a minute. Kichu 23 says Hyatt Place Kyoto breakfast.

that's their pick. And T-Pet 204, Hyatt Place Kyoto is the best. It's the best Hyatt Place breakfast I've had so far. Well, it doesn't tell me anything. Maybe you haven't been to Amsterdam. I don't know. Well, true.

But Frequent Flyer collection says, the Hyatt Place in Kyoto also has an excellent breakfast buffet. I've heard it referred to as the best Hyatt Place breakfast in the world. So there we hear it, what, secondhand, third hand, that Nick was wrong and that Hyatt Place Kyoto is the best. We have so many other submissions. I'm going to just read the locations of these Hyatt Place hotels. People also wrote in with other like other types of hotels, but I'm only including those that specifically called out a Hyatt Place. We've got Halong Bay in Vietnam. We've got no idea how to say this.

To goos. Nick, why don't you say that one? No, I'm not even going to try. I'm not. I'm going to try. I just want to hear you do it. One in Honduras. Okay. I'm going to stop it. Just one in Honduras.

We've got Managua, Nicaragua, Bangkok, Bangkok, Nairobi, Westland, Frankfurt. And let's see, two more. Dubai. And finally, Foshan Lishu, which is a high place in China. So that's a collection of ones where people wrote in things about why. they pick those as the best. The one in, I will read the one in China, points to the moon says that this one in China,

they write, I bet their breakfast beats the pants off the Amsterdam Airport buffet with made to order noodles, made to order kanji, multiple kinds of eggs, multiple stir fries, eight kinds of fruit. I couldn't believe it for less than $40 a night. It's way out of the way, so not much reason to go there, but I'm thinking probably any high place in China is going to be at least that good.

Yeah, you know, Greg, you called it. You said that probably there are some great options in Asia and no surprise here that most of the ones that people wrote in about were in Asia. Not entirely, though. I mean, there were a couple in the Americas there too and even in Africa. So obviously different places there.

But at least we had a few people who were like, Oh yeah, been to the Amsterdam one, and that is notable. I appreciate the fact that a few of you backed me up out there. So thank you for your support and those with other options. Well, now we've got some more high at places to check out on the next challenge. If only I had Tim Sapphire Reserve, I would try to get one of those in on this trip. But maybe he will. Who knows?

Right. All right. Let's move forward to mattress running the numbers this year or this week's mattress running the numbers. We've got a Marriott Amex offer out, spend $450. and get $200 back. This is targeted. So some people got this 200 back on 450. Other people got 150 back on 300.

That seems like a pretty good offer. Yeah. You know, the latter one is great. That's 50%. But even the spend 450 and get 200 back, that's really terrific. I feel like usually these kind of offers are about 20% back, right? the way they're arranged. So in this case, it is up to 50% back if you spend exactly what that total amount is.

In the past, we've had luck loading these kind of offers onto our cards and going in person to a Marriott and buying a gift card. Now, it's hard to find a Marriott that actually sells gift cards at the desk. And it's even harder once you do to find a employee that knows how to do it. But if you break both of those barriers, you should be able to buy one at the desk for exactly the top number. So like spend, get one for exactly $450, for example, and Amex should credit you back $200. Of course, if you read the terms, it'll say it's not valid on gift cards and stuff like that. So there's no recourse if it doesn't work. But in our experience, it does work.

So this is the first time in a long time. My wife and I both have it on a couple of our Marriott Amex cards. And so this is the first time in a long time that I think I am going to go hunting down a Marriott where I can buy gift cards because a close to 50% discount on these things is amazing. Yeah, that's interesting. So my initial reaction is these are great deals. I mean, that's terrific. then my secondary reaction is, boy, I keep earning a lot of Capital One shopping cash back. And Marriott is like my go-to redemption there.

So Marriott and Hotels.com. So I'm less interested in paying for a Marriott gift card these days than I would have been before that. So I don't know if I would go run out and do this. But now, now I need the judge's clarification question. What if I got this amex offer on the Marriott Bonvoy business card that I have for the Wild Card Challenge? Do I get to use it? Great question. that's that's one for the judges.

It's one for the judges since I do have the Marriott-Bonvoy business. I've not checked to see if I even have either offer. But all right, so there you go. Check and see if you have it if you're out there listening. This one's worth looking for. All right. This week in points. US Bank has added back most of their, well, all of the transfer partners they've launched,

and they've added an additional partner. So US Bank launched transfer partners on the Altitude Reserve card. And I guess some of the old flex. perks cards, just cards that are no longer available. So there's not a U.S. Bank card you can apply for today. I don't think anyway that will get access to transfer partners. But if you've got one of these older U.S. bank cards that's no longer available to new applicants, at least at the time we're recording this, you might have access to their transfer partners. So now they've added Avianca Life Miles. So the U.S. Bank transfer partner roster is Avianca Life Miles, Air France, KLM,

flying blue, Qantas frequent flyer, Ethiopian Shiba rewards. a core, a core is two to one, everyone else is one to one transfers. The core is two to one. Of course, core points are worth about 2.3 cents apiece against the U.S. dollar at the time we're recording this anyway. It varies a bit with the exchange rate since the core points have a fixed value. But we had reported previously that they had taken a couple of partners away, but everybody's back now. So all of those partners I just mentioned are again available if you have U.S. bank points on one of those few cards that offers transfers. So there you have it.

It's back. And Havianco Life Miles is new. All right. Good then. Speaking of adding transfer partners, Rove has added yet another. I feel like we're talking about this on almost every show about a new transfer partner, which is great. I love seeing new ones.

This time they've added COPA, which is again, Rov often adds ones that are not available to other transfer roll points programs. and that's true with Copa, and they're launching with a 40% transfer bonus through the end of September. Some interesting things to note about Copa, they seem to have enhanced United Award availability, or another way of saying that is with other partners, it's very, very hard to get, especially business class awards. You might have better luck with Copa. Additionally, they don't impose surcharges on partner awards,

and they partner with Emirates, it's really hard to book an Emirates award without paying very high surcharges. So here's a new way to book Emirates awards without paying those big copays. Yeah, that's great tip there, great information. A good ad. Rove, it's interesting.

They keep adding interesting programs. And I say interesting. And Copa's not one that probably most listeners to this show have ever read. really looked at from in terms of the mileage program maybe you've looked at flights on copa but because they don't transfer with anybody else you probably haven't looked at it before now maybe it's worth a look and I don't know I find that exciting as a person who's into miles and points I find it exciting that they keep adding these new programs that

we need to learn more about and that create opportunities that we didn't know existed before so love it love it I hope they continue to add more partners so well done there all right speaking of partnerships, though, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we've got a partnership going away. Hyatt is dissolving its partnership with American Airlines. Ouch, when's that happening? Yeah. So it's basically at the end of the membership year or the elite earning year is when you'll no longer be able to get benefits from the other program. So, for example, so Hyatt's elite earning year ends at the end of this.

calendar year. And so afterwards, so starting in 2027, any milestone benefits, for example, you earn through Hyatt, you won't be able to redeem for American Airlines stuff. They have things like status for a day or even milestones where you could actually get status for the whole year. And so if you earn those, though, by the end of this year, you still get the whole, like, you get an email saying how many, how, you know, what date, you have until to pick that your milestone benefit. So you can still pick into next year if you, as long as you earned it this year. Did that make sense? And with American, it's a little different just because their elite qualifying year ends at the end of February. So just shift everything that way. Not sure how

important that is. Loyalty rewards that were Hyatt related were pretty stinky to begin with. So I'm not worried about that. But for those who were hoping for a saddest challenge back and forth, which has come regularly in the past, I think that's probably the biggest disappointment here is my guess. Yeah. Well, and also I think those who were interested in redeeming Hyatt points to have status for a day with American Airlines because, you know, I hadn't felt much pressure to re-qualify for American Airlines status this year because I thought, I mean, if I really needed the checked bags for a trip or something, I could, I could redeem for status for a day and we could have that. And now, unfortunately, that's going to be going away. But, but maybe something

is coming in its place. So the next surprise up is that Hyatt is adding a partnership with Delta. So we don't know much about this yet. We know there's going to be some dual earn that elite members of both programs will have the ability to earn Hyatt points and Delta miles on qualifying travel. That's kind of interesting in and of itself that I think you're going to have to have elite status of some sort in order to maybe be able to take advantage of this partnership. We don't know what that looks like yet. So we don't know anything about enrolling or what is, right? I don't think. Yeah. So Hyatt used to have that dual earning with American Airlines. And that was pretty nice where you would earn points in both programs for a stay or flight. And I think

it was contingent on elite status in order to get that, if I remember right. They took that away at some point, and that was too bad, but it looks like now they've partnered up with Delta, they being high it. And I think they, it seems like they rushed out this news to detract from the disappointment of people who are losing American Airlines, but they're not ready with any real facts. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of disappointing. But do, so, Just to speculate here, do you think we'll see something similar to what we had with American Airlines? I mean, would you guess that it's going to be possible to either A, status match or B, redeem Hyatt points to have Delta status for a short period of time?

Yeah, I mean, I think some kind of status match opportunities are very likely. But the idea of the status for a day type stuff, I don't know. It'll be interesting. You know, Delta often likes to kind of carve its own path. So I don't know what they'll do in that aspect. And all we know about when we'll find out more is the information will be shared in the months ahead. So that's very specific. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to bet that we won't hear much until after the end of the partnership with American Airlines. That's my expectation. So probably not until January. Well, next year. First week of January or whatever, something like that. That is within the bounds of the month. ahead. Okay. All right. Next up, card news. There is an Amex Bonvoy business card coming. So

Marriott has filed a trademark for the Marriott Bonvoy brilliant business. What does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. In the description of the trademark, it's clear this is for a credit card. So, uh, we, you know, there were rumors. There were, there were, um, surveys sent out a while back about, um, possible changes to Amex's Marriott business cards and also the idea of this new business, Bonvoy, brilliant business card rolling out. It seems like this is finally, I mean, we expected it a while ago, but it seems like it's finally making some steps towards actually happening that they filed the trademark. And so, you know, I think we can, it's not quite 100% confirmed, but it seems extremely like at this point that it is coming out, whether it comes out

in a week or a month or a year, we don't have any idea. You know, I think it'll be interesting because it'll be another very expensive Marriott card. We don't know exactly what'll, you know, what benefits and everything it'll have. But if it's anything like the rumor, I don't think it'll be super exciting, but there will be some, there'll be some things that that'll make it interesting, especially for those who like getting elite status. Yep. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully it will.

Nice to get another Marriott card out there. I wonder what restrictions there will be on getting the introductory offer because, of course, Marriott has those really crazy rules. Because Chase and Amex both issue Marriott cards. And so we'll see which card excludes you from what bonus and how long it needs to have been since you had it or have it or earned a bonus on it or jumped up and down or taxed. patted your head and rubbed your tummy three times, whatever it might be. Well, we'll figure that out and we'll publish it if and when it ever happens.

But again, no indication that this is going to be soon filing for a trademark doesn't really mean much in terms of the timeline. So we'll see what happens. All right. Next up, Chase has enhanced the DoorDash benefit for Sapphire Reserve cardholders. So previously, Sapphire Reserve cardholders have had a couple of DoorDash coupons that they could use each month. They could use a $10 credit on two order. Really, I say credit. It's really a $10 coupon, I think, for two orders per month from non-restrants.

So if you're ordering like grocery or a convenience store, whatever, you get a $10 discount twice a month on non-restron orders and a $5 discount once a month on restaurant orders. But starting October 1st, you're going to keep the non-restron order discounts, the $2.10 non-restron orders. But you'll get a $15 discount once. a month for a restaurant order. So they're adding $10 to that. That seems like a nice enhancement, 15 bucks off of a restaurant order. Now we're cooking with gas, Greg.

Yeah, I mean, you know, at one level it seems ridiculous to make much out of this because, you know, it went from $5, $15. That's kind of piddly. But at the same time, I am a fan of this change. Before I didn't make use of these DoorDash things. Unless if I happen to be ordering from DoorDash, Great, and I saved five bucks, but I, you know, I didn't consider it. When I think about

Sapphire Reserve benefits, is it worth keeping the Safrae Reserve? I don't even consider it, because it's like something I barely ever use and $5 a month is nothing. $15 makes a difference because now it's like I could, I could order a lunch once a month that's, you know, basically free or close to free, depending on it, where I get it from. And, you know, suddenly that's significant. So 15 times. 12, you know, that's how much each year I would benefit, I guess, from this. And so, you know, suddenly it's a significant enough benefit to consider when I'm talking about how much value am I getting from this card. Yeah. I mean, I think that really nails it. It's not that I consider

it worth face value. I'm probably not going to use it every single month. But it's something that, like you said, I didn't think about it at all. It was not part of the calculus. Maybe I'd use it. I haven't ever, but maybe I would one day. But I wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to keep it. Because like, maybe I'll get $10 a year back by ordering this. But at 15 a month, I mean, that's relatively significant. So now you're at what is $180 a year in restaurant orders potentially. So even if I only use half of that, I'd probably use half of that pretty organically.

So that's something now. Now, like I said, now we're cooking with gas. So I like that. I appreciate that that's added. That's a good ad. So good news there for Sapphire Reserve cardholders. Even better. Even better.

Chase's IHG business premier card or premier business card, we've learned that the, you know, each anniversary with the card you get currently, you get a 40K certificate that's, that can be topped off. So you can basically use it as a 40,000 point discount off of an award stay. And that's going to increase in 2027. to 50,000 points. So whenever you would have normally gotten your next certificate in 2027, it'll be a 50K certificate instead of 40K. So that's just a 10K advantage out of nowhere. Yeah, I mean, that's nice. That's a good enhancement there. So great. Good news there for

IHC premier business cardholders. No word yet as to whether this might happen for consumer cardholders. Since they didn't announce it, I don't have any expectation. that that's going to come on the consumer card at the same time, it otherwise sort of matches up, so I don't know why they wouldn't. It would be pretty weird for them to do it only for the business and not the personal. I'm also curious to see,

I think there's a way to earn additional, or an additional 40K certificate with spend with this business card. Will that change to earning a 50K certificate? So we'll wait and see. This information was not released really officially. It was kind of leaked, but then Chase confirmed it in a Reddit thread. So it's confirmed, but we don't have details. Yep.

All right. So we'll find out more about that soon, I imagine. All right, personal points. Quick personal points from me. I published posts this week about Chase Return Protection success. And so Chase Return Protection, a couple of cards like the Ritz card and the Sapphire Reserve card have return protection where if you buy something and then the retailer won't accept the return. You get 90 days, up to 90 days to return it with this benefit on the card. And it

covers up to $500 purchase, up to $1,000 a year in claims. And so I had a situation where I bought something. It was about $220 and I wanted to return it, but I was outside of the return policy. So I went ahead and filed a claim with Chase. And it was surprisingly easy. It took about a week. I put in all the necessary information about a week later. They said, okay, yeah, your claims approved. And they paid me. And I was surprised in this case, I didn't have to mail back the item. I expected to have to ship it back to them.

But I didn't in this case, not really here or there because it's not something I wanted to keep. So I was intending to ship it back to them. But good news anyway, that it works well. I think that's kind of an under-the-radar benefit that now and then legit influences me to use my Ritz card. I did in this case because I wasn't sure if I would want to keep it or not. I wasn't sure how quickly I would know. And I don't live that close to Target. So it's not super convenient for me to get back anyway.

I had a lot of travel going on. So I did buy it so that I would have that benefit. I did use that card and it worked out well. So check out the blog for more information on that. One other short personal point I'll add, I flew the Lufthansa A380 this week from Munich to Boston. And everything I had read, I think, about that flight, the new seats on Lufthansa's A380 focuses on the fact that they're not the new

Aligris seats that they've installed on other aircraft for a variety of reasons. They had to go with a different type of seat on the A380. And I feel like that drew all the attention away. But my goodness, like that seat is so much nicer than the old business class on other Lufthansa planes that like I would seek out the A380 right now. Now maybe the A350 has better seats. Okay, great. If you got that option, awesome.

If not, the A380 would undoubtedly be my second pick with LLLUtonsa. The seat was super nice, huge improvement. So if you get a chance, if you see that one, you're like, oh, I don't know, Lufthansa business class. It's kind of an old product. The seats are funny. The in-flight entertainment is small. Not anymore on the A380s. So I think they've completed the retrofit on all of the A380s at this point.

So there's my little personal point for you. Don't hesitate to book that one. What about you, Greg? Good to know. Good to know. Yeah, so a little anecdote about the My Atmos Summit card. You know, one of the benefits of that card is if you spend $60,000 within your membership year, you get a 100K companion award certificate, meaning if you book a award flight with one companion,

the points price for the companion part of that award would be reduced by up to 100,000 points. So if I found an award that cost, let's say, 120,000 points per person, I would pay the full 120,000 points for me and only 20,000 points for my companion. So, all right, I had spent a lot on this card last year after I got the card in the fall, or in the late summer. And, but then I had like stopped spending on it this year for a while because I was doing other stuff. And, and, and, And then when I lost my city prestige card, which was my go-to card for 5X at restaurants, I realized, oh, I still have more spend on the Atma Summit card to get to that 60K threshold. And I really want to do that. I didn't have a lot more to do, but I had a decent chunk.

And this card earns 3x at restaurants. So I made that my default restaurant card. and I set up some reminders for myself as it got closer to the deadline. One nice thing about Bank of America's website for this is it clearly showed me when the deadline was for spend for this benefit. And as it happens, and it was just dumb luck. I met this threshold exactly the day before the deadline. Just wow. I was like excited about that I didn't have to do.

Red of the needle. Yeah, I mean, I was ready to do like, you know, okay, I'm going to do an extra charitable donation or something to, you know, make up for whatever was left. I will, don't worry people. I will do charitable donations, but not with this card. But yeah, so just a cool, fun little thing that happened. Yeah, neat. Well, that's great. That's good news.

And I'll be curious to hear how you use. your 100K companion certificate. So I look forward to hearing about how that. And also how long it takes to get the companion certificate from the time you complete spend, like when does it show up? It would be good to know that as well. So that would be good to know. All right.

This just in. I just checked my Alaska account to see if the companion certificate maybe was already there. And it is. So I'm not exactly sure how quickly it came. But I'll tell you this, that the final purchases went from pending to posted two days ago as I'm recording this. So it is two days or less.

It seems to me less is the most likely for it to show up. So shows up quite quickly once your purchases actually post. That is, they're no longer pending and they post and you exceed the threshold. So that's exciting. That's great to know. Great to know. All right. It also means that if you're waiting.

So there's an advantage to waiting to get these because they're good for a year from when they're issued. And so if you're kind of waiting until you need one, you know, maybe you leave like 50 bucks left until, you know, as long as you make sure it's before the end of the membership year. And then finish it when you know you have an award to book soon. Anyway, just an idea. All right. We'll be right back after this with our main event, Chase's disappointing Aeroplan card refresh. Jamie writes in, love the show, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Please help. That's true. Well, this can be confusing. And luckily for you, Jamie, we have a beginner's guide that can help.

You want to go to frequentmiler.com slash start here to check out our full beginner's guide. And we're back with today's main event. Chase's disappointing Aeroplane Card Refresh. So the good news is Chase is out with a great welcome bonus for this card or a very big welcome bonus. And there's some other good news about some new benefits that this card has that some people will be excited about. But there's some negatives to the changes too. and we'll discuss, you know, our net feelings about this after describing the details. But let's talk first about what's the new card member offer?

Yeah, all right. So the new card member offer for a limited time, new Chase Aero Plan card members can earn up to 115,000 points. So it's going to be divided up to into 75,000 bonus Aero Plan points after spending $4,000 on purchases in the first three months. then an additional 40,000 era plan bonus points after spending $20,000 in total purchases in the first 12 months from account opening. So again, it's 75K after $4,000 in purchases and an additional 40K bonus points after $20,000 in purchases, total purchases, that is, in the first 12 months.

So an additional $16,000 in purchases will unlock that. So, I mean, 115,000 Air Canada Aeroplane points. That's a great bonus. That's enough points. I think for a business class flight to any of the regions in the world from the United States, if I remember correctly, it should be the top end of the chart, like the Americas to, or North America area, to Asia to the Pacific Zone. I think the top distance band is around there, around the 115k. So between the points you earn from spend and the welcome bonus, you definitely have enough to at least get one way, probably round trip in business class, just about anywhere with Aero Plan's partners. So that on the surface, I mean, if we just take it at the surface welcome offer, that looks pretty good.

Yeah. Okay. But now let's talk about what's changing with the card. And if you already have the card, the good news is you're going to get the new benefits right away. And the downsides won't kick in until January for you. But for anyone who applies new now with this new card, you know, it'll be just all the new stuff, none of the old goodies. All right.

Now, comparing current to new, or I'm not current, but old to new, the annual fee, let's start off with the first big negative. The annual fee jumps from $95 to $195. So if you're applying now, $195 a year for the Chase Aeroplane card. That's expensive for a card that's like the only, like, it's not a mid-tier airline cards, the only aeroplane card available to U.S. residents, right? So, I mean, there are other airlines with a mid-tier card in that $2, $250 or $300 range. Yeah.

I kind of agree. On the other hand, I do feel like the starting point for many airline cards has moved it up to $150. That's true. That's true. So it's just a little bit more. Only a little bit more. On the other hand, I feel like for the American audience, they should be trying harder.

So like, yeah, many of the U.S. cards start at 150, but, you know, that's for like Delta and United. And, you know, people, a lot of Americans are not going to be looking first to Air Canada for their card. And so if they see that higher fee, you know, ouch. Anyway. But, but I mean, they increase the fee by $100. They must have added some benefits, right? Of course. So they are giving back $100 a year, is.

So you get now we'll get two $50 air Canada statement credits per year. So semi-annually. So it's that six-month thing, January through end of June and July through end of December. Each of those periods, you can get a $50 back on Air Canada's spend. This is obviously, for anyone who flies Air Canada regularly and pays for the flights, this should be easy to use. For the rest of us, you might be looking at it like, well, how the heck would I use this $50 off? Well, one way is we were told that this will work to pay for the taxes and fees for an award booking.

So if you use your Air Canada miles to book a totally different United, Lufthansa, whatever, there's going to be some taxes and fees. And supposedly that will be credited back. So that's some good news there, although I would not see that as an even trade from the $100 increase in the annual fee, would you? No, definitely not, because you have to book once between January and June and once between July and December. So that relies on you needing to book either a paid or award flight like every six months. And so that's, I don't know, that's another coupon headache to deal with.

Another coupon, just what we needed. All right. And a very highly specific coupon at that. You know, it's a really specific situation. All right. Let's talk about the earning rate of the card. There's good news and bad news here. The good news is previously the only travel category bonus you got was for Air Canada to spend itself, where you got 3x. But they're expanding that now to all travel. So that very wide description of travel, you get three points per dollar for travel. That's good. Another goodish thing is now you can earn 2x for travel. gas purchases. And I'm saying ish because there's so many cards that earn transferable points where you could get 2x like everywhere that, you know, and more than 2x for gas and other things

that it just doesn't seem exciting. But anyway, so those are the positives, but there's some negatives here. If you enjoyed getting 3x for grocery purchases, that's going away. That's dropping to 2x. And if you liked getting 500 bonus points with every 2x, you liked getting 500 bonus points with every $2,000 in calendar month spend. That's going away completely. So you will no longer get that additional bonus. So what do you think? Net good or bad there?

I mean, this is easily net bad. I'm particularly surprised they got rid of that 500 bonus points because that seemed like a way to incentivize people to regularly use the card. I mean, that's the whole idea with this. A lot of issuers are trying the whole idea of the coupons. It's just trying to get people accustomed to using their cards more often. I thought that was a pretty innovative, way to get people to make this the card that they go to, I think it was a really poor decision to take

that away. It's only 500 points, but I think that for the behavior they want, not for me necessarily personally, but for the behavior they want, that was probably a good incentive, I would think. I think that dropping grocery from 3x to 2x is a huge hit on this card. And, you know, I look at the bonus categories. Three X travel, 2x grocery, 2x dining, 2x gas. You can earn more than that with points that transfer to Air Canada on a litany of of other cards out there.

There's no reason to get the Air Canada card for any of those bonus categories. Like you said, not only are there the flat 2X cards, there's plenty of 3 and 4x in those categories that transfer to AeroPlan. Why would you get this card for any?

I wouldn't get it for any of those. I guess if you're going to be spending on the card for other reasons, we'll talk about status and stuff in a minute, I guess getting 2x is better than getting 1x, but it's not exciting. No, not exciting. For those who have used this feature,

you'll be excited to hear that the ability to pay yourself back for travel purchases at 1.25 cents per point value remains. So that's unchanged. So what that means is you could use your card to pay for travel and then basically erase those statement charges with your points at better than one cent per point value. So 1.25 cents per point value. We've been told that that remains exactly.

as is, that's the good news. Bad news is the old card gave you a 10% bonus when you transferred points from Chase Ultima Awards to the Air Canada Aeroplane card. That's going away. And I've talked about in a couple of previous episodes how it was possible to combine a bunch of things to basically make your chase points worth up to 1.6 or so cents each

for travel, for any kind of travel purchase with your Canada card, and that relied partly on this 10% bonus. So without going away, you're not going to get that as much value as you would have before with that. The good news is, you know, since pay yourself back for travel is staying at 1.25, and since the 3x, since you now will be earning 3x for travel, you know, in order to use this pay yourself back feature, you have to have to. to book travel and before you were just getting one X for most of that. Now you'd be getting three X. So it's not as much kind of wasted opportunity when you're using it for that purpose. So mixed news. Yeah. Okay. So next step, elite status. The old card, you could renew 25K

status each year with $15,000 spent. It came with 25K status off the bat. And then you had to spend $15,000 on the card in order to renew that or you could upgrade to 35K status. with $75,000 spend. The changes there are that now it's just going to come with automatic aeroplane 25K status, so you won't have to spend the $15,000 a year in order to keep it. And that gives you a free check bag, priority check-in, priority boarding zone two, and Star Alliance silver for what that's worth. So the free check bag, priority check-in and priority boarding, of course, are on Air Canada

and then whatever the Star Alliance silver benefits are when you're flying on other airlines. So, I mean, nice-ish to get that as an answer. annual perk if you're going to take advantage of that. You can still upgrade to Aero Plan 35k status with $75,000 spend if you're going to put that much spend on this card. Yeah, yeah. And for those who want to earn higher levels of status, the card had already been changed recently to let you earn status qualifying credits. You can earn up to 25,000 status qualifying credits with $50,000 spend. That's a limit, that hasn't changed. So you'll still be able to do that with the new structure. Another thing that hasn't changed is if you want to do a million dollars of spend, you can still

earn that global plus one benefit, where for a year you can add a companion and to any award and they're basically free. I'm saying basically, because I read in the fine print, you actually have to have enough points for both of you. And then they, I guess they rebate the extra. I'm not sure how it works in practice. But regardless, I mean, if you spend a million dollars, you've got enough points. So that's probably not a concern. Discounted award pricing. That is, that's probably the most significant change we're going to talk about. Previously, they, it said it as a benefit that you had discounted award pricing, but what it really meant was like it was on, Air Canada has sort of variable pricing for their own flights, award pricing for their own flights. And so they had some

kind of mysterious discounts that you would get as a cardholder or an elite member. They've now formalized that for cardholders. You get a 15% discount. So just like Delta does, it's cardholders get 15% off the cost of awards for flying air Canada itself. We are unsure what happens when, so we know that if the award is entirely, flown on partners, this discount does not apply. We've gotten conflicting information at the time of recording about what happens if you have an Air Canada segment mixed in with a larger award. Yeah, it's unclear. Like you said, we've gotten both answers. We've gotten that this only applies

if it's entirely on Air Canada medal. And we've also gotten the answer that it applies if at least one segment of your one way is on air Canada, then it applies even if it's a mixed booking with a partner. So we don't yet know for sure, which way it's going to be with a discount. But one way or another, you'll get some discounted award pricing. And if you book a lot of awards that qualify for the 15% discount, that could certainly be a valuable benefit. Really just depends on how often you're booking those awards. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As before, you get a free check bag. I don't know how much it'll matter since you get your 25K status, so you get a free check bag anyway. The ability to get fourth day free when booking travel with points. Previously, it was just for hotels. They're adding in

car rentals as another fourth day free benefit there. I don't know. I haven't personally looked into the value possible when booking hotels or cars with Air Canada points. I do know that for hotels, at least. They have a certain collection of hotels that have sort of an award chart. So maybe there's possibility of getting good value there. Don't know. Yeah, you know, I've not found good value in looking with era plan points in the past. But Scott O'Leary, the VP of Air Plan, has mentioned once or twice before when I've met him at events that there's some opportunities in there worth finding. And so, And he's someone who's into points and miles. And so I would think that if he said that there's some opportunities in there

are worth finding that probably there actually are, but I haven't yet found them. Yeah, yeah. So that's worth thinking into. Yeah. And then, you know, the rebate that you could get every four years or so for applying for Nexus or Global Entry or TSA Precheck, that still holds. So all right.

Let's now kind of summarize. What are the changes that really matter here? I'll talk about the good stuff and then I'll let Nick talk about the bad stuff. The positive changes are the 15% award discount. The ability to earn 3x on travel, which is the pay yourself back category that anyone would care about. The ability to get automatic 25K status, so you don't have to do any spend to keep that. And I guess for some people, the $250 Air Canada credits is goodish news, but it's not great news. Yeah, I mean, even as someone who books a fair amount of Air Canada Aeroplane Awards, I mean, I book at least one or two a year.

I don't know if they're always between January and June and July and December, so it still doesn't excite me. But anyway, the bad stuff, the annual fee is increased by $100. So another $100 out of pocket just to hold the card. no more 10% transfer bonus bump from Chase Ultimate Rewards and only 2x on grocery instead of 3x, no more monthly bonus either. So less incentive to use the card and earn good rewards in those ways. So I think it's true that neither of us has ever gotten the card before. So when you consider the whole bigger picture, the welcome bonus, the new benefits, good stuff, bad stuff. What do you think? I don't think you've had the card before. Is it worth it now? Would you get

it? Would you recommend it to someone? Who would you recommend it for if anyone? Yeah, you know, what's so funny? We did a, we did a episode recently about cards we're considering. And I mentioned the Aero Plan card that I was considering for a number of reasons. But now I'm not. Even with that bigger welcome offer, so the welcome offer looks pretty attractive for anyone who could spend $20,000 in a calendar year, but I mean, in a year. But there are so many other cards that have big welcome bonuses for transferable points and most of those transferred to Aero Plan if that's what you want. I'd much rather have the transferable points. So I'm just, I'm not thrilled about that. I'm definitely not thrilled about spending $100 more per year for a card that was kind of,

I was kind of on the fence about in the first place. And losing the 10% bump from check. Sultimer Awards. That really takes out the biggest reason, or a big reason that I thought even considered it. Yeah, I don't really understand this at all. I'm pretty surprised, actually. It's such a poor refresh here because there's just very little that's compelling in the new card. And, you know, it's, I find that surprising because Air Canada Airplane is pretty on top of things. They've got the most partnerships of any airline in the world. So, lots of great ways to use points potentially. And I know it doesn't work for everyone because they have both a zone and distance-based award chart. So if you're West Coast-based, probably you ignore

aero plan altogether, particularly if you're interested in going to Europe because it's a longer distance. It's going to cost you more miles. As an East Coast person, Air Canada Airplane is very useful for getting to Western Europe. So I have liked Air Canada Aeroplane. I've been a fan of Air Canada Aeroplane ever since they revamped their program a few years ago and have been very enthusiastic. about it and I don't think I could be much less enthusiastic about their credit card. There's just there's no there's nothing here for me. I don't think that 15% discount might be nice, but only if it applies on awards on partners and we don't even know whether that's going to happen if you have an air Canada segment or not. There's just there's nothing here.

Let's talk a little bit more about that before we give it up entirely. Suppose we find out that adding any Air Canada segment to an award will validate that 15% discount. You said that you tend to book a couple of year for a whole family. So would you, you would save a lot of points if you could cram in an Air Canada flown segment on all of those awards. Do you think you would? You know, let me count up the number of Air Canada Aeroplane awards that I booked that included in Air Canada segment ever. Yeah, I'm still at zero. So could I go out of my way to look for an opportunity to fly to Montreal or Toronto and

connect on? So yeah, I guess I could. Is the 15% discount going to be worth it to me? Probably not because I can earn those Air Canada Aeroplane plan points with all of the transferable currency cards that I have that earn more than 2x on gas and grocery and dining and 3x on travel. So, and the welcome bonus, like you said, it looks kind of nice, but $20,000 in spend could get you a huge welcome offer, you know, various times on a Jaster Capital One card or MX card that you could then transfer to Air Canada Aeroplane if that's your best opportunity or option for booking awards. So yeah, I mean, if you ask me, who do I recommend this card too? I mean, if you fly Air Canada a few times a year, then this might work out. Like if it's a few times a year, you're going to use the $50 credit. and you want the status benefits.

I say a few times here because if you're flying Air Canada a lot, you already got elite status then probably. And so the free elite status that comes with the card is probably not that special. And 3X on Air Canada, I mean, if you're flying Air Canada a lot, maybe you need to consider a card that earns four or five points per dollar on paid flights. So I'm not sure that this is at $200 a year. I'm not sure that this is the card I'd even be recommending for booking your Air Canada flights with. So yeah, I'm struggling to see who this card is a great fit for.

I'm surprised. I would have expected, if you asked me at the beginning of the year, what I thought might happen if there were changes in the aeroplane credit card world, my guess would have been that maybe they would introduce a premium card or a mid-tier card. So maybe like maybe this card would be in the middle, but I didn't think that they would essentially eliminate their intro card and turn it into a mid-tier-ish card. I mean, your points are good about the fact that other airlines in the U.S. us are going up, but for a foreign card to charge more than what it would cost you for a United

card or a Delta card of similar caliber, it just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't get it. Yeah, yeah. And not only that, those other cards have better credits with them. Anyway, yeah. All right, enough of that. Sorry, sorry Chase and Aeroplane. Yeah, I mean, I wanted to like it. Wanted to like it. Can't yet. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week, go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media. Join our frequent miler insiders Facebook group.

And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Thank you.