Originally Posted by
ZenFlyer
Fwiw, my first UR transfer to Aeroplan took 24-48 hours IIRC, but every one since then has been instantaneous. Having read of some delays, I deliberately made my first transfer a small test transfer of 1000 pts, and by the time I had an award flight ready to book, the transfer wheels were greased so to speak. My experience with United has been similar except that the first (larger) transfer took about a week. So I'm not sure that this is actually a differentiating factor between UA and AP. YMMV of course.
My experiences as well. I always "test" the water by only transfer 1K on an initial transfer. Been using Aeroplan since the days when miniRTW was still redeemable. Our AMEX membership reward points were reserved for transferring to Aeroplan... Did a MIA-LIS-VCE//VCE-IST-SIN-PER//PER-SIN-HKG//HKG-TPE-IAH-FLL RTW in 2019. The booking process wasn't the easiest and the phone hold time was horrendous but it all worked out - the anticlimax was the IAH-FLL leg was on UA Coach - the only coach on the whole itinerary. At that time one had to choose partners carefully to avoid the hefty surcharge. Aeroplan since then eliminated the surcharge while adding $29 partner booking fee, and the 5K miles stopover feature. To me this is a very reasonable trade off because now you can book LH and the like without incur an arm and a leg surcharge.
Last year when the 30% bonus was offered in 2 short weeks we were on a Transatlantic cruise without internet access... Sigh. Been hoping for the same bonus to return this year. 20% is not as great as 30% but I will take it.
I also suspect Aeroplan would not devalue in near future given that they are new partner to Chase and really try to get a bigger market share in the lucrative US FFP cobrand cards business,