Originally Posted by
taliesin
You probably want to transfer to Air Canada, which has the same Star Alliance partners as United. Aeroplan's award chart is similar to United's, with a couple of caveats: they charge more than half the cost of a RT for one-way awards, and they levy fairly heavy fuel surcharges for award tickets on many partners.
Depending on the specific itinerary you're interested in, you should also look at the other MR Star partners, ANA and Singapore. If your goal is to fly on SQ in a premium cabin, then that should definitely be your choice, as they give much better availability to Krisflyer members than to their partners. NH has a distance-based award chart that could be a good deal on certain routes, but they also charge pretty hefty fuel surcharges on most awards.
Some additional datapoints:
(1) Just booked two business tickets on LX thru Aeroplan, going to the Middle East. Total fees were around $200, so really not bad.
(2) Krisflyer indeed has great availability for its own, and if you book the ticket online and only on SQ-metal, the redemption takes 15% fewer miles. One caveat is that the fees are steeper. I was pricing a ticket from JFK to Singapore, and the total fees for 2 business tickets were $1,000. Not too bad, but not a crazy good deal.
In the future, if I wish to travel to Europe I'll either pay for a business ticket (generally in the $2.5k range if I book at the right time) or try to get award ticket on LX/LH/SQ. BA is now too expensive, and the SkyTeam carriers are not really worth it.
If I want to go to Asia, I'll probably do one of CX/ANA/SQ.