One of the key features of the premium Aeroplan co-branded credit cards is the ability to roll over unused Status Qualifying Miles (SQM) and eUpgrades to the following year.
Rolling over unused SQM gives you a boost on qualifying for Aeroplan Elite Status again, and rolling over eUpgrades can be helpful for flying in Air Canada business class at a steep discount.
What Are the Aeroplan Premium Credit Card Rollover Benefits?
If you meet the requirements listed below, you’re eligible to roll over up to 200,000 unused Status Qualifying Miles and up to 50 eUpgrades from your account to the next year.
Rolled-over SQM will help you requalify for Aeroplan Elite Status the next year, while rolling over eUpgrades gives you another chance to use them to move up to a higher class of service on Air Canada flights.
The rollover benefits are only applicable to cardholders with the American Express Aeroplan Reserve Card, the American Express Aeroplan Business Reserve Card, the TD® Aeroplan Visa Infinite Privilege* Card, or the CIBC Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege* Card. If you don’t have one of these cards, you aren’t eligible for any rollover benefits.
Aeroplan Premium Credit Cards
The rollover benefits are only applicable to the primary cardholder. Therefore, if you have any additional cardholders on your account, they can’t roll over unused SQM or eUpgrades from their own accounts.
Importantly, you must hold an eligible premium Aeroplan co-branded credit card by December 15 each year to be eligible for the rollover benefits. Therefore, make sure you apply well in advance of this deadline to ensure you can take advantage of the perks.
In addition to holding an eligible credit card by December 15, you must also have qualified for Aeroplan Elite Status organically to benefit from the SQM rollover benefit.
This means that you must have reached either the Status Qualifying Miles or Status Qualifying Segments threshold, and the Status Qualifying Dollars threshold, for any of the Aeroplan 25K, 35K, 50K, 75K, or Super Elite tiers to be eligible for the SQM rollover benefit.
As per the terms and conditions, if you were gifted status or if you earned status any other way, such as through Everyday Status Qualification or the Chase Aeroplan Card, you won’t be able to roll over any unused SQM.
On the other hand, to roll over eUpgrades, you don’t need to have qualified organically for status. However, you do need to have held status in the previous year, as well as have status in the subsequent year, to roll over eUpgrades.
Should you decide to close the credit card account after you’ve rolled over unused SQM or eUpgrades, the terms and conditions state that the rolled-over SQM and eUpgrades will be removed from your account, and any status earned as a result of the rolled-over SQM may also be rescinded.
The good news is that if you have any SQM or eUpgrades that are eligible to be rolled over, and as long as you’ve met the requirements outlined above, you don’t need to do anything else to have the benefits rolled over.
It’s a process that requires no extra effort on your part, and the rolled-over SQM and eUpgrades will appear in your Aeroplan account by March 30 of the following year.
However, in practice, the rollover usually happens well in advance of March, and many members have the rolled-over SQM and eUpgrades back in their accounts around the end of January.
How Does the Status Qualifying Miles Rollover Benefit Work?
For the SQM rollover benefit, the primary cardholder can roll over up to 200,000 unused SQM from the prior qualification year to the next qualification year. The rolled-over SQM will be helpful in requalifying for status again, as it gives you a boost for the following year.
Air Canada calculates the unused SQM to roll over by subtracting the SQM required for the status you qualified for from the amount of SQM available in your account. The difference is then redeposited in your Aeroplan account by no later than March 30 of the next year.
For example, suppose you qualified organically for Aeroplan 35K status in 2023, and at the end of the year, you wound up with 45,144 SQM, 21 SQS, and $4,500 SQD.
Since the SQM threshold for Aeroplan 35K status is 35,000 SQM, you’d be able to roll over 10,144 SQM to the 2024 qualifying year, since there are 10,144 SQM that you didn’t use to qualify for your status.
Note that the rollover benefit doesn’t apply to SQS or SQD, so you’ll need to start from scratch for those each year.
If you’ve extended your status through the status extension promotion, you’ll roll over SQM above the highest tier for which you’ve organically qualified.
For example, if you’re a Super Elite through to the end of 2024 through the status extension promotion, but you only reached 65,000 SQM, 40 SQS, and 6,250 SQD in 2023, you’ll roll over 15,000 SQM to next year. Since you organically qualified for 50K status by meeting the 50,000 SQM and 6,000 SQD thresholds, you’re only eligible to roll over 15,000 SQM, and not the entire 65,000 SQM.
You can check to see how many SQM you have by signing in to your Aeroplan account. Under the “Status” tab, you can see the number of Status Qualifying Miles, Status Qualifying Segments, and Status Qualifying Dollars you’ve earned in the current and preceding qualifying years.
You can roll over SQM year after year, as long as you meet the requirements for the rollover benefit.
Importantly, you can only roll over up to a total of 200,000 SQM each year, regardless of how many premium Aeroplan co-branded credit cards you have. For example, if you have two premium co-branded credit cards and have 150,000 SQM eligible to roll over, you’ll only receive 150,000 SQM, and not 300,000 SQM.
Lastly, rolled-over SQM count towards earning Threshold Rewards, which can further unlock useful benefits each year, such as eUpgrades, extra rollover SQM, and even banked Super Elite status.
How Does the eUpgrade Rollover Benefit Work?
Up to 50 unused eUpgrades can be rolled over to the next benefit year through the premium Aeroplan credit card rollover benefit. The expiration date of the rolled-over eUpgrades will be in mid-January of the following year, which essentially extends their expiration by exactly one year.
As per the terms and conditions, only eUpgrades earned through Aeroplan Elite Status qualification count, which means that any eUpgrades earned through promotions or that were rolled over from the previous year aren’t eligible to be rolled over again. Note that eUpgrades earned through Threshold Rewards qualify for the rollover benefit.
Keep in mind that your eUpgrades need to be valid for the date of travel to be used. A common misconception about the rollover benefit is that you can just apply eUpgrades to bookings with travel past their expiration date if you have a premium Aeroplan credit card, since they’ll eventually be rolled over.
You have to wait until the rolled-over eUpgrades are redeposited into your account to be able to use them on any bookings. They’ll disappear temporarily once they expire in mid-January, and then they’ll reappear once the rollover has been triggered.
You can see the expiration date(s) of your eUpgrades in your eUpgrade dashboard. Once you get to your eUpgrade dashboard, click on “View” under “My credit history”, and you’ll see a breakdown of the expiration date(s) of the eUpgrades in your account.
The list on this page is also where you’ll see your rollover eUpgrades appear after the process has been completed.
If you have a premium Aeroplan credit card, you can essentially extend the life of up to 50 eUpgrades to up to two and a half years.
Recall that any eUpgrades earned between January 1 and June 30 are valid until January of the next year, but any eUpgrades earned on or after July 1 will be valid until mid-January of the year after the next year.
For example, if choose eUpgrades as one of your Select Benefits on or after July 1, 2023, those eUpgrades will be valid until mid-January 2025.
If you haven’t made use of them by mid-January 2025, and if you have any of the eligible premium Aeroplan credit cards and meet the other requirements, those same eUpgrades will be rolled over to be valid until mid-January 2026. As long as you maintain your status over those years, you can extend the validity period of eUpgrades until a time where you can make full use of them.
eUpgrades can be very useful for booking flights in Air Canada business class without paying top dollar, or being subject to the wrong side of dynamic pricing for Aeroplan redemptions. Being able to extend their life by another year can indeed be a very valuable perk, that can in part justify the higher annual fees on the premium Aeroplan credit cards.
Conclusion
Cardholders of premium Aeroplan credit cards, such as the American Express Aeroplan Reserve Card, the American Express Aeroplan Business Reserve Card, the TD® Aeroplan Visa Infinite Privilege* Card, or the CIBC Aeroplan® Visa Infinite Privilege* Card, can roll over unused Status Qualifying Miles and eUpgrades for another year.
Rolled-over Status Qualifying Miles can make requalifying for Aeroplan Elite Status easier the next year, and having additional eUpgrades at your disposal can wind up saving you a tidy sum of cash or Aeroplan points.
As long as you’ve been approved for one of the premium Aeroplan credit cards by December 15 each year, you’ll be eligible for the rollover benefits. There’s nothing else you need to do to have your unused SQM or eUpgrades rolled over, as the process happens automatically.
The rollover benefits are some of the key features that differentiate the premium Aeroplan credit cards from the other cards, so be sure to have one in your portfolio if you think you stand to gain from the perk.
This story originally appeared on princeoftravel
