For any of you following along at home, I ensured I met the required AUD $4K spend, but deliberately leaving it somewhat late in the 90 day period. On March 7th I got a Star Alliance rewards email saying I had qualified, and that I had two weeks to select my Star Alliance status airline (obviously I chose AC Aeroplan) and that in two weeks time they would proceed with granting my new Star Gold status with whatever airline was selected in my Star Alliance rewards account at that time.

That day (March 21st) duly arrived, and a couple of days later I had an email confiming that Air Canada had approved my status, and on logging into Aeroplan I could see I was now an Elite 50K, with my status valid until the end of 2025 (though i need to keep the credit card current during that time). I seem to have all the usual benefits that are applied during an early recognition period, ie the number of eUpgrades offered as a select benefit is lower than for a full year. No complaints from me, though, this seems more than fair - stark contrast to, say, Air New Zealand's approach to this promo, whereby you only get 'nominated' gold status, which means the usual *G benefits but no free upgrades etc.

Due to the promo I should also receive 50K Aeroplan miles, though it says they can take 6-8 weeks to arrive.

All up, thanks to the various opening promos this is a great deal, in the short term at least. Status and various perks for up to two years, for a $450 annual fee (though waived for the first year).

As an ongoing proposition, I'm less clear about the value of the card - you need to spend $30K/year to get Star Silver status (mostly useless) or $60K/year to get Star Gold status. It would be much more user-friendly if you could earn status via a mix of flying and spending, eg 25K SQMs flown + $30K spend gets you Gold, but as of now there seems to be no provision for that. The $60K/year spend is particularly egregious when you only earn 1 *A reward point per dollar (which equates to 0.8. Aeroplan miles) on the first $3K of spend per month, and after that it drops to 0.5 reward points per dollar (0.4 Aeroplan), so you'll only earn the full whack on a maximum of $36K of that $60K spent. It is handy being able to earn and transfer to multiple different *A FFPs, though.

So will I keep the card beyond two years? Who knows. But for now it's definitely working for me, and it's an easy way for me to cover my bases while deciding how best to transition away from Asiana, which was previously my *A FFP of choice. And for us Aussies it's handy that Aeroplan 50K gets you useful benefits when flying Virgin Australia domestically (eg lounge access) AND you can earn SQM on domestic flights, to my surprise.