It’s finally possible to redeem British Airways Executive Club Avios for travel on Aer Lingus directly on ba.com, but there’s one major issue.
In this post:
Aer Lingus awards now show on ba.com
One of the best ways to redeem British Airways Executive Club Avios across the Atlantic is for travel in Aer Lingus business class. Not only does Aer Lingus have a solid transatlantic business class product, but historically British Airways Executive Club has charged much lower fees for these flights than for travel on British Airways.
So while you might have paid $700+ for a one-way business class transatlantic award on British Airways, you’d pay under $200 for a one-way business class transatlantic award on Aer Lingus.
The catch has long been that these flights haven’t been bookable on ba.com. As noted by Head for Points, that has finally changed, and it’s now possible to book Aer Lingus awards on ba.com. That’s super exciting, since hold times with British Airways’ call center can be brutal sometimes. Furthermore, for those of us who hate picking up the phone, this takes the dread factor out of booking.
What happened to Aer Lingus carrier imposed surcharges?!
While Aer Lingus awards showing up on ba.com is cool, the shocking part is the surcharges. A one-way Aer Lingus business class award from Dublin to Philadelphia costs 50,000 Avios plus $199.47 in taxes, fees, and carrier imposed surcharges. That’s roughly what I would expect.
However, in the other direction that same flight costs 50,000 Avios plus a staggering $729.80 in taxes, fees, and carrier imposed surcharges. This is $550+ more than these flights used to cost, so something has changed here.
I’m not sure if this is a glitch or a policy change, though I’m working on trying to figure out. For that matter, I’m not sure if there are just general issues with surcharges on award tickets for IAG airlines at the moment.
For example, historically redeeming American AAdvantage miles on Iberia wouldn’t incur fuel surcharges. However, for the new Dallas to Madrid flight, there are $700+ in fees, which doesn’t make much sense, since that’s not showing on other routes.
If I have an update here I’ll be sure to report back.
Bottom line
It’s now possible to redeem British Airways Avios for travel on Aer Lingus directly on ba.com. which sure makes the process of redeeming Avios on Aer Lingus easier. The bad news is that awards originating in North America seem to have much higher surcharges than in the past.
I’m not sure if that’s a glitch or an “enhancement” as part of these awards being added to ba.com. If anyone has any insights I’d love to hear them, and if I find out anything I’ll report back.
What do you make of the surcharges on these Aer Lingus awards?
Yes, I tested, more than double tax and fee charged on economy class between DUB and YYZ.
I have used avios.com for booking IAD-DUB and DUB-IAD on Aer Lingus using Avios. The saver non-peak rate for IAD-DUB is 50K plus $141.10 (a slight increase) and 50K plus $170.07 (a slight increase). So booking at avios.com is the way to go. You can move your Avios from BA or Iberia back and forth at will.
BEWARE THE GLITCHES OF COMBINED AVIOS
Sometimes, I receive a message that my Avios cannot be combined....
I have used avios.com for booking IAD-DUB and DUB-IAD on Aer Lingus using Avios. The saver non-peak rate for IAD-DUB is 50K plus $141.10 (a slight increase) and 50K plus $170.07 (a slight increase). So booking at avios.com is the way to go. You can move your Avios from BA or Iberia back and forth at will.
BEWARE THE GLITCHES OF COMBINED AVIOS
Sometimes, I receive a message that my Avios cannot be combined. The easiest way to resolve this it to log out and log in again.
Second, glitch. On Combine My Avios the addresses for the accounts you are combining must be EXACTLY the same or you will get an error. This mainly show up with the auto addition of a 9-digit zip for BA that is not reflected in Avios. You need to change the BA address to the 5-digit zip. Then make the transfer before BA auto-corrects your profile address back to the 9-digit zip. You could also call or email when you have a problem, but who wants to do that? Listening to the BA music for hours on end while on hold is not advised.
Just booked DUB > IAD on Aer Lingus this week in business. On avios.com, it was showing 50,000 miles + $150 in taxes and fees. On ba.com, it was showing 50,000 miles + $200 in taxes and fees. I used the "combine my avios" feature to move avios from BA to AerClub and book through them, saving $50 in taxes and fees.
Note that you have always been able to book Aer Lingus business...
Just booked DUB > IAD on Aer Lingus this week in business. On avios.com, it was showing 50,000 miles + $150 in taxes and fees. On ba.com, it was showing 50,000 miles + $200 in taxes and fees. I used the "combine my avios" feature to move avios from BA to AerClub and book through them, saving $50 in taxes and fees.
Note that you have always been able to book Aer Lingus business class awards online (without calling). You just have to do so through the aerclub (avios.com) website which is far less glitchy, and use "combine my avios" to move the points over, as needed.
Every time I look at using Alaska miles on Aer Lingus to book a business class award to/from Europe, the price is 280,000 miles. It has been that way forever. You can fly economy for 30K, but business is always 280K. I have never seen a Aer Lingus business class award for less so I just laugh when it is suggested that a person can book this award. Would I have better luck using Avios?
The Aer Lingus 60K AS business seats still exist, they're just capacity controlled and can hard to be find. After the 60K seats are gone, they go up to 280K. Try looking at next January/ early Feb - there are still a few there
A few days a ago, I transferred 26k miles from BA to Avios and booked a trip for mid May on EI BOS SNN RT. The all in taxes/fees were $267.
Just checked the same itinerary on BA - taxes/fees $362.87.
Could be a glitch, but I would price shop.
Booking JAL through BA.com now has about 500% higher fuel surcharges each way. So a r/t economy ticket SFO-HND is about 50k avios + $500. this was $100 a few months back (also through BA.com) So this isn’t limited to aer lingus- but I fear a trend we are going to be seeing more of.
AS is still only showing $19 in award surcharges from PHL - DUB and $53 for the other direction DUB - PHL in Aer Lingus business. Hopefully this is just a BA glitch
I think this might just be domestic carriers not catching up - rather than the other way around. I hope I’m wrong.
For Iberia DFW route, seems they’re now charging the fuel surcharge for flights leaving the US ($200 Y, $700 J) which is different from flights leaving Europe (around 120 euro). Just check ITA Matrix.
So a round trip ticket starting from US on these new routes would charge the US YQ twice.
Not sure about the $700 one, but it appears that on January 1, 2022 (or thereabouts) that Aer Lingus drastically increased their carrier surcharges (YQ) on US-DUB flights. They used to be about $70 on a roundtrip in economy, so the total taxes/fees paid by booking through the BA call "trick" was about $120. This year they shot up dramatically to $270 roundtrip (confirmed on ITASoftware Matrix), so a roundtrip now booked through the BA...
Not sure about the $700 one, but it appears that on January 1, 2022 (or thereabouts) that Aer Lingus drastically increased their carrier surcharges (YQ) on US-DUB flights. They used to be about $70 on a roundtrip in economy, so the total taxes/fees paid by booking through the BA call "trick" was about $120. This year they shot up dramatically to $270 roundtrip (confirmed on ITASoftware Matrix), so a roundtrip now booked through the BA call center is $320 in taxes/fee. Booking through avios.com (using Aer Lingus Avios instead of BA) the total for a roundtrip is $295 in fees (which doesn't appear to have changed much in 2022). So this takes a pretty great sweet spot (26k BA Avios + $120 roundtrip from anywhere Chicago to the east, to Dublin off-peak) to a much worse deal (26k EI Avios + $295).
Wow, if these are the correct charges, this is no longer worth it. One way BOS-DUB in economy is showing a $176 surcharge. It was $37 and the return was $83.
Any eastbound transatlantic flight booked through AAdvantage on BA has $700+ in taxes, the lion share being carrier imposed fees.
Good way of putting it, Lucky. An "enhancement," I am afraid. It's always an enhancement.