If you’re looking to take the whole family to Europe this summer, Aer Lingus has just released an incredible amount of business class award availability.
In this post:
Aer Lingus summer business class awards
In the past couple of days Aer Lingus has released an unreal amount of business class award availability for travel between the US East Coast and Dublin this summer.
I see four or more business class award seats available on so many flights, which wasn’t previously the case.
There’s tons of availability from Boston to Dublin.
There’s also a lot of availability from the New York area to Dublin.
Even the Hartford to Dublin flight, which is operated by the smaller A321LR, has four business class award seats most dates.
Unfortunately I don’t see much availability from Aer Lingus’ West Coast US gateways, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. There’s also not much availability from their Canadian gateway, Toronto.
I’d say this is a really good opportunity to snag business class awards.
Aer Lingus A321LR
Best ways to redeem miles on Aer Lingus
There are three programs that are best for redeeming miles on Aer Lingus — Alaska Mileage Plan, British Airways Executive Club, and United MileagePlus.
Alaska Mileage Plan
Alaska charges 60,000 Mileage Plan miles for a one-way business class award from the US to Europe:
- You can position to an Aer Lingus gateway on Alaska Airlines
- You can plan a complimentary stopover in Dublin, enroute to your final destination in Europe
- There are no carrier imposed surcharges
- You can book directly on alaskaair.com
See here for the best credit cards for earning Alaska miles.
British Airways Executive Club
British Airways has a distance based award chart, and charges 50,000-60,000 Avios for a one-way business class award from the US East Coast to Dublin, depending on whether you’re traveling peak or off-peak:
- Pricing is per segment, and doesn’t include any positioning flights
- There are carrier imposed surcharges, but they’re very mild
- You have to call British Airways Executive Club to book
See here for the best credit cards for earning British Airways Avios.
United MileagePlus
United charges 70000 MileagePlus miles for a one-way business class award from the US to Europe, unless booking last minute, in which case it’s up to 3,500 extra miles:
- You can include flights on United and other Star Alliance partners on the same itinerary
- There are no carrier imposed surcharges
- You can book directly on united.com
See here for the best credit cards for earning United miles.
Aer Lingus’ business class product
Aer Lingus uses both Airbus A330s and A321LRs for their long haul flights. These planes feature fully flat staggered seats in business class, which are pretty comfortable, especially given that they operate relatively short flights.
Aer Lingus A321LR business class
I’ve always found Aer Lingus’ service to be friendly, and found the food and amenities to be pretty good. They offer an all around cute experience, in my opinion.
You can read a review of Aer Lingus’ A330 business class here, and a review of Aer Lingus’ A321LR business class here.
Dinner in Aer Lingus business class
Bottom line
Aer Lingus has exceptional award availability from some US gateways to Dublin, including Boston, Hartford, and New York. Many flights this summer have four or more business class award seats, which is pretty awesome.
Aer Lingus has a solid business class product, and on top of that Ireland is a beautiful country to visit in summer.
Anyone taking advantage of this great Aer Lingus business class award availability?
If you need to be awake and rested for something first thing in the morning then it makes sense to get that lie-flat seat for the overnight eastbound flight. I flew NYCDUB twice last year and the first time I had a flight time of 5h10m. There was barely enough time to do the food and drink service and an hour or two of shuteye time. Premium Economy (UA 787-10) was the sweet spot for me for that route. No way I'm burning 140k R/T.
As someone mentioned above, 70k miles for a 6-hour flight on a mediocre airline? How is this good value?
Would've been nice to see some to ORD.
Booked to MSP instead. Been browsing options for awhile but have some Avios to burn so kept hoping for EI or BA space. Thanks for the heads-up.
For everyone wondering about the 280K awards for Aer Lingus J, this is the equivalent of a “standard award” on UA or “AAdvantage Award” on A. In short, there’s no saver award seats on that flight.
And I’m with @SBS on this one. I do appreciate the notice about wide open saver awards and have taken advantage of several of them thanks to you. But 60K/70K for a flight that is 5-7 hours (depending on BOS or JFK and winds) seems a bit steep no?
On Alaska I see SEA>DUB in as 60k Econ; an obnoxious 280k in J on Aer Lingus.
Are you sure about the stated redemptions, Lucky?
Phantom space, just tried to book. Agent at BA was seeing two seats and went to book and inventory went to zero at booking
Setting aside questions about "travel through zombie apocalypse" ((C) Lucky), 70k United miles for a 6 hour BOS-DUB flight doesn't seem like a very good value compared to, say, 90k miles for DPS-IST-BOS on TK.
Thanks, Lucky! If I've already booked award travel on Aer Lingus in economy using BA Avios, can I call up BA and ask them to change the reservation to business class (I checked and there is business space available on my flight)? Would there be a change fee, or would I just be on the hook for the difference in miles?
Why does it show 280k miles for Chicago to Dublin on Alaskair? Nobody would book that.
lol @ Declan
:)
I think there will be a ton of bargains over the next 3+ months. I received an email from one hotel chain with discount prices for stays in...............Italy. Go figure :)
Airports and flying will be hit the most since there are so many people traveling to some many places the risk is much higher of catching the virus (or really anything) much higher.
"There’s also not much availability from their Canadian gateways, in Montreal and Toronto" - that may be due to the fact that they don't fly from Montreal :D