Should You Redeem Avios With Aer Lingus AerClub?

@Ben there were some comments about this on your combining Avios post last week. It seems to be a universal issue. Ever since AerClub shifted from using Avios.com to AerLingus.com for redemptions a little over a week ago, there's been a struggle to combine Avios from BA to EI. The Avios.com sign-in section is gone. AerClub doesn't have a combine option on the EI site. When you try to combine on BA.com and sign in it just continually reads "Combine my Avios is not available at the moment. Please try again later." I spoke to BA last week and they said there's no timeline for resolution of the issue.

Do you have any insiders that you can please contact? I have a lot more Avios in my BA Executive Club account that I'd prefer to transfer to EI for the lower surcharges on EI flights, but for now they're stuck.

+1 on this issue. I redeemed for an LAX-DUB flight last week and it was extremely frustrating. No way to use avios.com anymore, and they're no longer providing customer support (you used to be able to chat with an Avios agent on the website and they could push through). I kept getting the error mentioned above on the BA site, and agents at EI were not helpful. I ended up losing the flight I wanted, but the next day the error message stopped and I was able to transfer on BA and use on a different flight.

So you are unable to book a connected award ticket from BOS to Edinburgh? From what I can see I have to book BOS to DUB and then DUB to Edinburgh. Am I missing something?

Daughter going to college in Scotland so trying to figure this out.

If the whole award is economy then it can work. But I have never been able to add an economy connecting segment to the UK on an aer lingus business transatlantic award. I suspect it's aer lingus not being able to handle mixed class awards well and for their connecting flights to the UK, most (all?) flights are only in economy.

I ran into this a month ago with Iberia to British, but after terrible IB customer service, I Googled it and got the answer last week. I fixed it and was able to transfer points.

EVERY field between the accounts must match. Not just name/loyalty numbers, but email, physical address, and phone numbers, too. Basically, there's a very specific query being used to match accounts between programs, and if any of these fields are off, it will not locate your account, and throw a very stupid non-descriptive error.

It turned out my BA account had my physical address entered (a required field), but IB account had physical address blank (not required on IB). I would also double-check that your phone numbers are entered in the correct order if you have multiple entered.

@Darin Thanks! So you eventually got a transfer to happen? Any idea what worked in the end? I continue to get the error no matter what I've tried, including different browsers etc.

@Derek thanks for the input! I've had this issue before myself. I did double check and everything matches between my BA and EI accounts. I've made never had this issue prior to the transition from Avios.com to AerLingus.com last week and had previously made transfers from BA to EI without a problem. Unfortunately, it seems like more of a systemic issue in this case.

Any person who is able to redeem for business class on Aer Lingus has clearly entered into a pact with the devil . . . and should be burnt at the stake.

Does anyone know why Alaska MileagePlan has access to way more award availability on AerLingus than AerClub’s on program or BA? For example, in mid May the LAX-DUB direct flight is bookable using points virtually every day in economy using Alaska miles but the same availability does not show up on AerClubs own website or BA.

I know airlines frequently restrict partner award availability and make more awards available to members booking thru their own program but this is the first instance where I’ve consistently found the opposite to be true.

I was able to book LIS-DUB-ORD with the long haul in business by calling. This was back in October and I just flew it yesterday. The short haul experience on EI is half a step above RyanAir, but the trans-Atlantic experience was outstanding.

It's because they charge way more.
If Alaska will pay about 4x as much for the award it's no wonder they'll make more awards available.

I had to cancel an Aer Lingus booking and can’t transfer Avios back to BA. The login in page with Avios is broken. Any advice or links?

I have no idea what made it work. I did read about the information on both sides needing to be identical. It turns out the info on both sides was outdated, but with the same outdated info, so it should have worked. When it didn't, I changed both to my current information and it still didn't work until the next day. But maybe the changes just took a day to be matched? I have no idea. With no customer service to speak of on either side, I guess it's just trial and error. Very frustrating.

I apologize if this has been already asked and answered, but why I am able to book an award flight on AerLingus.com for CLE-DUB direct but NOT for CLE-DUB-CDG? I know the latter flight exists because I can pay for it, but I can't get any one-stop option to show up as an award flight? As I search further, I don't see any one-stop options available as award flights. Is this a limitation of AerClub: you can only book non-stop trans-Atlantic award flights and not one-stop options? If so, are there any workarounds? Thank you in advance.

I was trying to book a one-way flight using Avios MAN-DUB-BDL. I can book that route with cash as a single booking, but when trying to book with Avios I get the error message that the route does not exist. I called Aer Lingus and got a very clear answer from them - since they moved to their new computer system (which allows you to book using Avios via their site instead of the Avios site) it is no longer possible to book a connecting Aer Lingus flight with Avios on one ticket. I was told the only way to do it is to book 2 separate tickets, allowing enough time between arriving in Dublin and leaving to make sure we don't risk missing the trans-Atlantic flight. Not ideal, to say the least!