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Is Aer Lingus blocking Avios redemption flights within 60 days of departure?

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Strange things are happening with Aer Lingus Avios redemptions, and not in a good way.

It appears that Aer Lingus is now blocking Avios redemptions made within 60 days of the date of travel.

This isn’t good news, clearly.

EDIT: Our article sparked Aer Lingus to make a change – the cut-off is now 6 days. Click here to read more.

Is Aer Lingus blocking Avios redemptions under 60 days away?

There had been some posting on the, admittedly fairly quiet, Aer Lingus board on Flyertalk about issues finding Avios reward seats.

One poster then received the following reply after raising the question directly:

Avios redemption seats booked through www.avios.com are available to purchase on routes with Aer Lingus outside of 60 days.

This appears to be correct. It also impacts Avios availability via British Airways, as well as via the avios.com platform.

Here’s what I found last night. On 7th January (this search was done last night, 8th November), there is a lot of Aer Lingus availability between Heathrow and Dublin:

Aer Lingus Avios availbility gone

However, jump back 24 hours to 6th January, inside the 60 day window, and there is nothing. Not a single seat on any of the many flights. There’s nothing for any other January day either. All you see is BA flights:

Aer Lingus Avios availability gone

The key will be what happens today (Thursday to you reading this). If the 60 day rule is correct, all of those seats showing for 7th January should disappear during Thursday, but 8th January should still be there.

If this is a new Aer Lingus policy, it’s obviously not one I like.

It also makes little sense. We are now in the quiet winter season, and it is a logical time to dump MORE Avios seats onto the market. Overall cash demand is low, and the cash demand that is there is at low fares, so selling seats for Avios isn’t necessarily a bad alternative.

For clarity …. you can still redeem Avios for Aer Lingus flights using ‘Part Pay With Avios’. This is where you can get roughly 0.5p per Avios to reduce the cost of a cash flight booked on aerlingus.com. These redemptions are poor value for your Avios though, especially in premium cabins.

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Category

Aer Lingus and AerClub

Comments (37)

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

  • Philip says:
    9 Nov9 November 06:50

    This is crazy. I flew Aer Lingus PHL-DUB just last week in business – booked about 6 weeks in advance. Just 6 of 16 seats in that cabin were in use. Economy was less than half full too. As Rob says, surely they should be trying to shift Avios on these quiet flights.

    • Earthman says:
      9 Nov9 November 09:36

      In contrast,a recent DUB PHL on AA that I was on around the same time as yours in J was jam packed,no free business seats at all
      I credited to BA

      • A350 says:
        9 Nov9 November 10:23

        AA will typically never have any premium seats free or if they do, the entire flight would be “quiet” overall. Reason being AA offer their status holders upgrades and often there are long lists of elites on their upgrade lists and all premium seats hence get snapped up that way even if direct premium bookings may have been on the lower side!

  • PeterK says:
    9 Nov9 November 07:38

    For the second time I’m unable to log into my AerClub account, the error message states ‘there is a problem at our end’ . I’ve submitted a ticket to them but still no response. I’ve even tried resetting my password but this still returns the same message. Meanwhile no problem logging onto my vueling account which has the same avios number! I fear it’s going to be another long slog to resolve, like it was last time!

    • Bill says:
      9 Nov9 November 08:07

      Same issue

    • MC says:
      9 Nov9 November 08:57

      Aer Lingus IT is a cluster bomb of awfulness.
      The implementation of the Aer Club scheme was disastrous and they have ongoing technical challenges. It’s a shame it’s taken them years to make no improvements.

  • Nick says:
    9 Nov9 November 07:48

    Just checked the 7th and 8th and both still have Aer Lingus redemptions.

  • Dev says:
    9 Nov9 November 07:53

    Must be some sort of reaction to an ongoing fraud MO.

  • Bill says:
    9 Nov9 November 08:11

    Avios.com still displays Flybe branding on the sign in pages. What an utter mess

  • Peter K says:
    9 Nov9 November 08:40

    Hi Rob. Commenting is turned off on the BA Accelerating card article today. Also, no mention of a minimum income in the article…not sure if that’s an omission or there really is no minimum income?

  • Thywillbedone says:
    9 Nov9 November 09:03

    This makes sense. I have looked at booking relatively short notice trips to Ireland from the UK in the past year and could never find redemption seats – struck me as strange given very few Irish people collect Avios (earning opportunities very limited etc) and timing was outside busy tourist season. Only reason I was looking is that cash prices have been very high for those routes so the value per Avios was theoretically high. Very frustrating.

  • John says:
    9 Nov9 November 10:18

    Disgraceful behaviour by Aer Lingus to restrict the amenity and value of Avios in this way. Perhaps we’d all be better off if IAG printed some P45s and folded EI into BA once and for all.

    • A350 says:
      9 Nov9 November 10:27

      I don’t think this would ever happen, the optics would be awful for a “flag carrier” to be folded only then to be taken by a “British” Airways! Nationalisation is more like to happen than this. Also EI is overall a very profitable airline for IAG and also has far lower running costs than BA – can’t see penny-pinching IAG wanting to give that up. Heck so much so they felt it more appropriate to create an Aer Lingus UK for regional transatlantic rather than a BA branded subsidiary!

      • Rob says:
        9 Nov9 November 10:35

        Aer Lingus is performing far better than BA at the moment in terms of profit margin. Vueling is peeing all over Lingus, BA and Iberia though – profit margins are so high it is looking more like a monopoly business than an airline in a highly competitive environment.

        • Bernard says:
          9 Nov9 November 11:57

          That’s a bit selective. Vueling is a bucket n spade costa airline. Picking the summer period is the one when even they do well. On a trailing all seasons basis it doesn’t look quite so good.

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

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