Aeroplan is offering some bonus miles for points transfers from their partner programs between May 21 and June 18, 2012. The bonus structure is as follows:

You can convert points from the following partners:

CIBC Aventura^®World MasterCard™ Card, CIBC Aventura^® Gold Visa™, CIBC Aventura^® Visa Infinite™, CIBC Aventura^® MasterCard™ Card, American Express Membership Rewards – Canada, BankAmericard^® Power Rewards^® credit card, Diners Club^® Club Rewards^®, Starwood Preferred Guest^®, Hilton HHonors™, Marriott Rewards, Wyndham Rewards^®, Best Western Rewards, Choice Privileges^®, Coast Rewards, Club Carlson^SM, Le Club Accorhotels (Accor hotels), Golden Circle Award, Hertz Gold Plus Rewards, Points.com

Please note that while Membership Rewards^® points from U.S. American Express Cardmember accounts may be converted into Aeroplan Miles, their conversion is not eligible for the bonus promotion.

As you can see, the US Membership Rewards program is excluded from the transfer bonus.

Looking at the above bonuses, if you transfer 100,000 SPG points to Aeroplan you would get a total of 150,000 Aeroplan miles (SPG gives you a 5,000 point bonus for every 20,000 points you transfer, plus the further 25,000 mile bonus).

Anyway, given that Aeroplan miles aren’t nearly as valuable as they used to be I wouldn’t just make a speculative transfer unless you have a specific redemption in mind where the numbers work in your favor.

Still, it’s a promotion worth keeping in mind.

(Tip of the hat to Gary)

Through December 12 Aeroplan is offering bonus miles when you convert points from their partner programs to Aeroplan miles.

Bonus miles are awarded in the following increments:

You can earn the bonus for each of their transfer partners, meaning you could earn 25,000 bonus miles from a Starwood transfer AND 25,000 bonus miles from a Membership Rewards transfer, for example.

The promotion is hardly surprising. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a transfer bonus from Membership Rewards to Aeroplan before, given that Aeroplan used to offer the all around best redemption values of any loyalty program, in my opinion. That was before they destroyed their award chart in July and started charging fuel surcharges on partner award redemptions just last week. I’m guessing these transfer bonuses will become the norm now.

But still, there are some decent values to be had here. Transferring 80,000 Starwood points will earn you 125,000 Aeroplan miles (you get a 5,000 mile bonus for every 20,000 miles you transfer, in addition to the above bonus), and transferring 100,000 Membership Rewards points will earn you 125,000 Aeroplan miles as well.

Through November 30 Aeroplan is only imposing fuel surcharges on Air Canada and Lufthansa flights, so if you can avoid those two airlines this might just be worth taking advantage of. Business class to Europe only costs 90,000 miles and Aeroplan allows two stopovers in addition to the destination.

So there’s no way in hell I’d make a transfer “just because,” but if you have a specific redemption in mind and the numbers work out, by all means go for it.

Aeroplan, Air Canada’s frequent flyer program, has always been a bit illogical with some of their policies. One of them has been that they imposed fuel surcharges on award tickets for travel on Air Canada, while they didn’t impose fuel surcharges on award tickets for travel on Star Alliance partner airlines.

If you usually redeem miles with US airlines you’re probably used to only paying reasonable taxes on award tickets, while if you’ve redeemed miles of a foreign loyalty program (British Airways, Lufthansa, ANA, etc.), you’ve probably noticed that a longhaul flight can cost you $500+ in fuel surcharges/taxes.

I never understood why Aeroplan imposed fuel surcharges on Air Canada but not on Star Alliance partners, but that has been their policies for years.

Well, with absolutely no advance notice, they’ve started imposing fuel surcharges for partner redemptions, including on ANA, Asiana, Lufthansa, and Thai. So far they’re not charging them on Singapore, Swiss, and United, though that may very well change too.

Just how much will an award ticket cost you now? As an example, a roundtrip New York to Frankfurt business class award ticket will now cost you an additional $560 in fuel surcharges. And that’s just a simple roundtrip ticket from the east coast of the US to Europe.

The sad thing is that up until this year, Aeroplan literally had the best mileage redemption opportunities out there. I had taken some amazing round-the-world trips thanks to them, like this one to Istanbul and Hong Kong and this one to Singapore and Seoul.

Then back in July they literally gutted their award chart, raising the cost of many of the most popular redemptions by over 50%. Then last month they started no longer allowing one to book into domestic first class when on an international business class award ticket. And now there’s this…

Aeroplan literally went from being the best loyalty program for award redemptions to one of the worst, and it’s all in a period of five months. I understand their old award chart with low redemption costs, generous routing rules, and no fuel surcharges was unsustainable, but to make three major changes in a single year (two of them without any advance notice) is truly classless.

It’s amazing how badly those with American Express Membership Rewards points have gotten screwed this year. First three massive Aeroplan devaluations. Then Continental was removed as a transfer partner as of September 30. And now in a week British Airways is massively devaluing their award chart for US based flyers.

What does this all translate to? There’s no way to redeem Membership Rewards points for travel on Star Alliance without paying fuel surcharges (Aeroplan and ANA both impose fuel surcharges). There’s no way to redeem miles at a reasonable rate for travel on OneWorld anymore (British Airways is devaluing their award chart). So that leaves transfers to Delta SkyPesos. Exactly what most people recommend not using your miles.

If American Express Membership Rewards wants to remain even a remotely decent loyalty program, they better get working fast, negotiating with Alaska, American, and/or US Airways.

I highly recommend tweeting Aeroplan to express your displeasure with the changes and also tweeting American Express to let them know how much less valuable this makes Membership Rewards points.

Day by day the value of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card increases, which is what I’m switching just about all of my spend to.

(Tip of the hat to Gary)

As I blogged about in April, Aeroplan will be adjusting their award charts as of July 15, which is Friday. So that makes today (Thursday) the last day to book awards at their old award prices. Some awards, including those for travel between North American and Asia/Australia, are going up by close to 50%.

Keep in mind that Aeroplan’s call center closes at midnight eastern time, so leave plenty of time to ticket tomorrow.

Aeroplan, I’ll miss the 120,000 mile round-the-world adventures I had with you.

Via Gary, through June 30 Fairmont is offering 500 Aeroplan miles to new and existing members of President’s Club that opt-in for email communications.

Via Milepoint:

No stay required. Member must enroll with Enrollment Code PASHN or update profile with Promotion Code PASSION and opt-in for communications by June 30, 2011.

The 500 bonus miles will only be rewarded if you opt-in to receive communications from Fairmont President’s Club.

You have to enter your Aeroplan number on the “Airline Partner Programs” tab on the enrollment page, which is kind of hidden (you have to expand it). If you’re already a member, simply go to your profile and update your “Airline Partner Programs” with your Aeroplan information.

There are a few award redemptions that are just too lucrative not to take advantage of, and for me one of those has been the Aeroplan first class award from North America to Asia for 120,000 miles roundtrip in first class, allowing one to route via Europe. Just a couple of examples of the awards I’ve booked through Aeroplan include Tampa to Chicago to Zurich to London to Istanbul to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Munich to Zurich to New York (trip report here), and Tampa to Washington to Tokyo to Singapore to Bangkok to Tokyo to Seoul to Frankfurt to Seattle (trip report here).

Understandably these types of awards weren’t especially profitable for Aeroplan, so they recently announced that they would be modifying their award chart as of July 15. Kudos to them for giving some advance notice, and I certainly can’t blame them, since the region pairs that saw the greatest mileage increases were those that were previously most taken advantage of.

Anyway, I’ve had a bad habit of booking award travel fairly close to departure lately, and I tend to think that one of the most enjoyable aspects of travel is the anticipation. So this time around I booked my award 10 months in advance. I’ll be doing this one with a friend, since premium cabin travel can only be so much fun alone, in my opinion. Actually, I kind of take that back, since I had a pretty damn good time in the Qantas A380 first class suite for over 30 hours last week, but still.

For once, however, the trip isn’t just about maximizing the amount of time in the air, but more about maximizing the time on the ground and also getting a good mix of airlines in (since my friend hasn’t flown first internationally quite as much as I have).

Anyway, we’ll be flying from San Francisco to Munich in Lufthansa first class and spending about 22 hours in Munich (which technically isn’t considered a stopover). Then we’ll fly from Munich to Zurich to Bangkok in Swiss first class, allowing us to experience both the Lufthansa first class lounge in Munich and the Swiss first class lounge in Zurich.

Then a couple of days later we’ll fly from Bangkok to Hong Kong in Thai first class. Thai’s in-flight service is quite good, though the real show stopper is the ground experience — despite Bangkok to Hong Kong being only a two or so hour flight, you get all the first class ground services, including an hour-long full body massage in the first class spa.

Then after a couple of days we’ll fly from Hong Kong to Seoul in Asiana business class, and after a quick overnight fly from Seoul to Frankfurt in Asiana first class. After yet another overnight we’ll fly from Frankfurt to Seattle in Lufthansa first class.

Anyway, while I’ve just about tried all the products before, I’m nonetheless excited about it, because first class cabins are constantly harder to get into due to many airlines eliminating first class and also more competition for the same seats, given that consumers are getting smarter not only in terms of using their miles, but also in terms of earning more miles through means other than flying.

Now I should probably go ahead and get started on the report from the four continent trip I returned from yesterday. It would be a lot easier if I weren’t headed to Paris this weekend!