The Barclays Arrival Premier card lets you transfer miles into a number of different airline loyalty programs and they have just added Air Canada’s Aeroplan as a new partner. Unfortunately you need to transfer 1.7 Premier miles to receive 1 Aeroplan mile. This is also the transfer rate for Japan Airline (JAL) miles, the rest of the airline partners transfer at a rate of 1.4 to 1 and are as follows:
- Aeromexico
- Air France/KLM Flying Blue
- China Eastern
- Etihad
- EVA Air
- Jet Airways
- Malaysia Airlines
- Qantas
Given this card has no sign up bonus and earns 2x miles on all purchases (really 1.174-1.42 airline miles) I don’t think it’s worth signing up for. If they did add a sign up bonus or improved the transfer rate that would change. Given that they have just added another transfer partner at the 1.7 rate it looks extremely unlikely they will improve the transfer rate unfortunately. Best we can hope for is a good sign up bonus, maybe in conjunction with the 60,000 mile bonus on the similarly named Arrival+? It’s also worth rembering that Air Canada will launch it’s own loyalty program to effectively replace Aeroplan in 2020.
Hat tip to DansDeals
[comment removed because it made no sense and was an obvious troll]
I never get turned down by Barclays…but I’ll turn them down on this one any day, everyday of the week.
Why are they not letting you do a product conversion?
I guess they don’t want people to get the bonus on Arrival & then PC to the Arrival Premier.
Lol this card still exists.
I can’t even get approved for Barclay cards anymore.
Why not, George?
Always the same reason, too many inquiries.
For people valuing JAL miles for emirates, this might be a great card after august since spg will only be 2 mariott points. Earlier to get 100k JAL miles you had to spend 80k on SPG now have to spend 120k . With Arrival premier you need to spend only 85k to get 100k jal miles.
Ya this is the ideal usage I think
Just be aware of the upcoming JAL devaluation.
I actually like this card for ongoing MS spending. I currently MS on the Arrival+, and I would come out ahead each year if I shifted that spending to the Arrival Premier.
Of course, the lack of a sign-up bonus sucks, but it’s whatever.
Plus it has a 150 dollar annual fee. Seems to me it would make more sense to use no fee 2 percent cash back card
And I thought this card couldn’t get worse.
It didnt.
They just don’t get it, do they?
Barclays market research did a bang up job on this new product. Totally worthless in nearly every respect. To Will’s point in the A+ post, I’d love to know the uptake for the card.