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Aer Lingus flat bed flights are now bookable between London and Dublin

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Aer Lingus is soon to receive the first of its Airbus A321neo LR aircraft.  Whilst these are single-aisle planes which look identical to a standard short haul aircraft, they have the engine and fuel capacity to fly to the East Coast of Canada and the USA – and they will. 

In order to do this, Aer Lingus is installing flat bed Business Class seats – see the image below.

Aer Lingus A321LR business class with Avios

To allow passengers to have seamless connections from Dublin to and from key business cities in Europe, Aer Lingus is also timetabling these aircraft on selected short haul flights.  After arriving from North America, selected aircraft will do a return flight to Europe before heading back over the Atlantic.

The first Heathrow service is now timetabled.

From 1st November, you can book the A321neo LR on:

09.50 London Heathrow – 11.20 Dublin

07.30 Dublin – 09.05 London Heathrow

That’s the good news.  Here is the bad news.  Aer Lingus is not, at least for now, selling the flat beds seats as ‘Business Class’.  This means that there is no Avios reward availability in Business Class.

Aer Lingus A321LR business class with Avios

To book a flat bed, you need to pay cash for an Economy seat in AerSpace, the new Aer Lingus short-haul premium option.  This gets you a front row seat, an empty middle seat (not a problem here!) and a free snack.  You can’t book this with Avios, as Economy redemptions book you into the standard product.

I am keen to take a look at the new seating when it launches, although £181 for 45 minutes is not the biggest bargain in aviation today.

You can find out more about AerSpace on the Aer Lingus website here.

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Category

Aer Lingus and AerClub

Comments (21)

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

  • William PH says:
    13 Jun13 June 04:56

    And how many TPs and Avios will you get for your €181?

    • guesswho2000 says:
      13 Jun13 June 09:23

      TPs presumably 40, as for any short haul flight?

      • guesswho2000 says:
        13 Jun13 June 09:24

        Short haul J, that is.

        • Genghis says:
          13 Jun13 June 09:31

          I thought no TPs (just avios) on EI?

        • Pumplekin says:
          13 Jun13 June 10:29

          If you buy an EI ticket, you can’t get TP’s.

          If you try and buy it from BA instead you can’t as EI aren’t selling it as J.

          So unless something changes, there is no way to get the 40TP’s right now.

  • Nick G says:
    13 Jun13 June 06:17

    Rob

    The article refers to euros, yet your insert showing prices is in pounds. Therefore it’s £181 or about €203…. Worse value than you thought!

  • Nick_C says:
    13 Jun13 June 07:19

    How is this going to work flying back from the US to London on Aer Lingus? Will there be flights where you can just stay on the plane in Dublin on the eastbound journey? That could be attractive. Especially if they offer a proper breakfast on the Dublin to London sector.

    • Rob says:
      13 Jun13 June 08:34

      No, you would always need to clear immigration in Dublin.

      • Nick_C says:
        13 Jun13 June 08:49

        In transit? Flying East? Blimey.

      • Nick_C says:
        13 Jun13 June 08:50

        I was forgetting the Common Travel Area and thinking of Ireland as a “foreign” country

    • ChrisC says:
      13 Jun13 June 11:03

      It wouldn’t be attractive to EI as they wouldn’t be able to sell it as a separate DUB- LHR flight due to not being able to mix passengers.

      And EI will be scheduling these planes to other short European routes so there is no guarantee that the plans you are one is going to London when it could be Paris or Amsterdam.!

      • riku2 says:
        13 Jun13 June 17:54

        I thought they were scheduling these planes on European routes because they would otherwise be idle (in the same way that AY are using A350’s from HEL-LHR since they arrive from HKG early morning in HEL and don’t return to HKG until late at night).
        This story instead says it’s for “seamless connections” but I don’t think that is the case. Perhaps LHR-SIN-SYD on BA can be considered “seamless” since it’s the same plane the whole way through, but I don’t think that’s the case here.

        • Nick_C says:
          13 Jun13 June 18:12

          That was my thought. If you have to get off, clear Irish customs, and then reboard, then its hardly a seamless connection. Who really cares what sort of seat you get on the short hop from Dublin to London.

          And of course Aer Lingus have no desire to complete with BA.

          Perhaps there is a missed opportunity here though. They could perhaps have a direct flight linking the US East Coast with a British provincial airport via Dublin, picking up business from British airports not served by AA.

  • Memesweeper says:
    13 Jun13 June 08:10

    My goodness aerflex is terrible value on a short flight!

  • Aa says:
    13 Jun13 June 08:58

    Does it earn 40TP in line with BA or has it not reached that stage yet?

  • Chrisasaurus says:
    13 Jun13 June 09:01

    To be fair the price for the lie flat seat is £35 if you were otherwise going to be booking aerwhatever one tier down for the other components…

  • Howard says:
    13 Jun13 June 14:09

    Looks like the seating is identical to the BA 321 mid-haul aircraft.

  • @mkcol says:
    13 Jun13 June 16:02

    Think I’ll wait until they’re rostered on other routes to see if better value can be gained.

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

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