Aer Lingus has now formally announced the plans for AerClub, its new loyalty scheme, which were trailed in the Irish press recently.
Some – but crucially not all – details can be found here on the Aer Lingus website.
Some points are clear, others are not so clear:
DEFINITELY: The currency used will be Avios
PROBABLY: You will be able to move points back and forth between British Airways, Iberia and avios.com
DEFINITELY: There will be a wide range of airline, hotel and other partners to earn miles
PROBABLY: The airline partners will come from Aer Lingus rejoining the oneworld alliance
DEFINITELY: There will be three status levels (Silver, Platinum, Concierge)
PROBABLY: These will match BA Bronze, Silver and Gold with similar oneworld benefits
DEFINITELY: AerClub will use a revenue based model for earning:
“The more you spend on flights with Aer Lingus, the more Avios points you will collect. The move away from our traditional air miles model means you will be able to earn points with every flight you buy, giving you more opportunities to build up your balance.”
Aer Lingus will be the first European airline, I think, to award Avios / miles based on spending rather than a mix of distance flown and travel class.
PROBABLY: This is a trial for a switch to a revenue-based model for British Airways and Iberia.
What Aer Lingus is doing here is a little odd. By making AerClub revenue based, frequent flyers in Ireland will have two options, assuming Aer Lingus does rejoin oneworld:
Credit their flights to AerClub and get status and Avios based on € spent, irrespective of travel class
or
Credit their flights to British Airways Executive Club and get status (which would be valid on Aer Lingus) based on travel class and distance flown
Timetable
AerClub will not be launching until next year so it may be a while before we get the answers to all of the questions that the current holding page throws up.
Gold Circle, the existing programme, is now closed to new members. The scheme will close completely on 31st March 2016.
Members will be emailed about the transition to AerClub. The conversion rate of Gold Circle points to Avios is not known.
The launch date for AerClub is “Spring 2016”. I would imagine that it will be earlier than 31st March in order to encourage all existing Gold Circle members to move across in time.
I will keep you up to date with developments on Head for Points.
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About Head for Points
Oh dear! If the entire airline world goes revenue-based what will American bloggers be able to blog about ?!
Domestic flights….
In terms of the move to a revenue based scheme BA have already done this for their OnBusiness scheme. The result was to make the scheme pretty much pointless for everyone except the large corporate clients. I guess the exec club scheme seems destined to move in the same direction.