Thanks for a tip from TravelStar at FlyerTalk! As of this morning, when I log into my Membership Rewards portal, Aeroplan no longer appears on the partner list. Whether this is a glitch or a true loss of partnership remains to be seen.
If the partnership between American Express and Aeroplan has ended, it is a big loss to the value of the Membership Rewards program. While Amex still has other Star Alliance partners such as ANA and Singapore, Aeroplan offered some unique value in that their award chart to Europe was still very reasonable (90,000 miles round trip in business) and they did not levy fuel surcharges on all partners – even carriers that charged heavily, such as Swiss.
I’ll see what American Express will tell me about this. I really do hope it’s a glitch, if nothing else because a no-notice termination of a partnership is always troubling when it comes to confidence in a points/miles currency. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, of course, with Chase recently losing Korean as a transfer partner – although stories are mixed as to whether it’s a temporary issue to iron out some wrinkles.
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