Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

It’s back – get 30,000 Avios for £300 if you know someone in Ireland

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AerClub, the new Aer Lingus Avios-based frequent flyer scheme, has brought back its generous Irish Independent / Sunday Independent offer.

You don’t need to be based in Ireland to join AerClub.  In fact, if you have an avios.com account, you are already half-way to being a member since your avios.com account number will become your AerClub account number.  You can register for AerClub via this page.

As the Avios from this offer will be dropped into your avios.com account, you will be able to move them across immediately to British Airways Executive Club.

Sunday Independent

What is the deal?

You will earn 30,000 Avios points when you take out a subscription to the Irish Independent or Sunday Independent newspapers for €349 (£300).

These are not digital subscriptions.  These are ‘we will push the newspapers through your letterbox’ subscriptions, which is why you need a friend or relative in Ireland – assuming you live outside the country – who would appreciate a free newspaper.

There are two options, both priced at €349:

Irish Independent and Sunday Independent, delivered daily for six months plus access to the digital edition, or

Saturday’s Irish Independent and Sunday Independent delivered weekly for 12 months plus access to the 7-day digital edition

You can sign up via this website here.

You will need to cancel your subscription before it expires, otherwise it will roll over at a monthly cost of €59 (7-day package) or €29 (weekend package).

Is 1p per Avios a good deal?

It isn’t a steal, clearly.  You need to have a clear strategy for how you would use them.

This is my general ‘what is an Avios point worth?’ article.  1p per point is too much for me to pay to add them to a fairly large existing pile.  If, on the other hand, you are not Avios rich and need to earn x,000 Avios per year to use your BA Amex 2-4-1 voucher then this could make sense.

Of course, if you are based in Ireland and would value the newspapers then it is a totally different proposition indeed.

The offer runs until 31st May.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

Get 5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

30,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

10,000 points bonus – plus an extra 500 points for our readers Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

Up to 80,000 points when you sign-up and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

Get up to 40,000 points as a sign-up offer and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (69)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Roger says:

    Amex offer
    £100 off £800 spend on Emirates
    On both platinum cards.

    • jamie says:

      Is that on the Amex Platinum? Thats annoying I just booked an emirates ticket last week Friday. I have reviewed my offers but I dont see the emirates discount available.

      • AndyGWP says:

        Was on my Amex Gold, but Roger states it was on his Platinum too 🙂

        • jamie says:

          Yikes. Do you think Amex will grant it to me although I booked some flight tickets last week friday and the fact that its not showing in my offers? not fair 🙁

  • the real harry1 says:

    if you want the newspaper deal but don’t know anybody in Ireland, you could ring up a doctor’s or dentist’s surgery/ hotel etc over there & ask them if they would accept ‘your’ paper getting delivered every morning – I bet most would be pretty happy

  • rick says:

    Can anyone confirm if they received 20K miles following PRGC to Platinum upgrade link?
    I have already spent £1k and received my base points but have not received my 20k MR points yet.
    I might give it couple of more days before I start conversation with Amex CS.

    I had some refund on my PRGC hope that is excluded in counting towards the £1k new spend.

    • MarkH says:

      Yes I upgraded to Platinum via the link and got the 20k MR points once I hit the £1k spend

      If your refund came after you upgraded then it might well count against your spend

      • the real harry1 says:

        yep got mine a couple of days after hitting the spend target

    • Genghis says:

      It’s net spend on the account so the refund will have counted against you.

    • Carl says:

      I received mine the next day when I hit the spend target. I never had a bar on the right showing progress towards spending target, so was a bit nervous, but they came through fine.

      Still waiting on my hotel status upgrades a month after sending through the requests though.

      • MattyS says:

        Mine came day after hitting £1k spend. Hotel status won’t now upgrade as I closed Amex account but didnt realise I had to link the card to Hilton account to get the status.

        • Rob says:

          You don’t.

          • MattyS says:

            Had an online chat with Hilton just after cancelling card who told me I did need to register it to get upgrade. I had applied for the upgrade three weeks before cancelling and got confirmation email straight away. Still nothing (nor on SPG upgrade) three weeks after.

          • Rob says:

            Did it for my wife last month, not linked

          • MattyS says:

            Will have another bash at them in that case as it seems very inconsistent from various comments recently. If not, will reapply in 5 1/2 months !

          • MattyS says:

            You are right Rob, as completely out of the blue and without contacting them, just had an email confirming my HH gold status !!

          • Roger says:

            I am waiting for my hotel status for almost a month too.

      • Carl says:

        Good news. Given that it had been a month since I first applied for hotel status upgrades with the platinum account, I tried again yesterday (this time just for Hilton) and it came through today.

        I can confirm what Rob said – you do not need to link your platinum card to your Hilton account.

      • Crafty says:

        Hotel upgrades seem like pot luck. Did mine immediately, the one I needed (Hilton) came Quickly, but a month on nothing else has. 3 weeks later did my supp and all hers came within days!

  • JPH says:

    Im i the only one still having Aer Club issues?

    Despite being an Aer Lingus gold club member, pre registering for AerClub and the 250 Avios points…

    Still no avios
    Still unable to link to my avios.com

    Have phonedAer Club 3 times but response always the same “working through a backlog” and they dont have ticket numbers to track progress so it seems as if each conplaint just goes down a black hole.

    How do companies get this type of thing so wrong in the age of the net?!

    • Nate1309 says:

      I struggled to get mine to link. But in the end it was the fact the password rules for avios.com and aerclub are different. my avios password was all lower case (and a number) and for aerclub it needed a capital letter, onvce I changed my avios password they would then link.

    • AndyGWP says:

      I tweeted Aer Club (as someone else suggested a week or so ago), and they credited the 250 avios the next day 🙂 – just send them your account number in a private message

      • Stu N says:

        Just given the twitter route a go, for 2 mins effort it’s probably worth a try.

        • Andrew* says:

          Never got any replies to emails or tweets – Facebook was my last chance saloon….

          • Stu_N says:

            Replied to my tweet asking me to DM them my membership number, done that and they replied saying they are looking into it.

            I can log into Aerclub and two EI regional flights have credited successfully, and I’ve been able to move the Avios to BAEC so I guess I am ahead of many here.

            I was pretty relaxed about the Avios when we had a 6 figure Household balance but now we are down to 4 figures again, I reckon it’s worth one pop at getting the Avios in…

  • Aliks says:

    I haven’t got much time for Aerclub – I pre-registered both myself and wife for the 250 points and neither of us have received anything.

    We can both log in to the Aerclub front end OK, but when I phoned Aerclub they said our accounts were not linked.

    Avios.com didnt want to know.

    Too much work for too little benefit.

    And one last whinge, I don’t see any mechanism to close Aerclub membership or kick them out of my avios.com account.

    • Andrew* says:

      Contact aer lingus on facebook if you use it… worked for me…

  • Barry says:

    I’m living in Ireland and would be happy to provide my address and a few of family members, etc if anyone is interested in the offer

  • Renwaldo says:

    My mother in law would love a subscription to this paper, and I really can’t justify spending £300 on 30K avios, so if anyone wants an address to use then please send me an e-mail or write here!

  • Lennie says:

    Anybody wants to use my address I can gladly accept!

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