BA Silver and Gold members lose lounge access in Shannon and Cork when flying Aer Lingus

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• LittleNick says:

  20 Nov20 November 06:58

  Shannon is the main real loss as presumably you can access the Cork lounge using priority/dragon pass? Take it no other way to access the Shannon lounge?

  • William says:

    20 Nov20 November 07:01

    Snn is not aer lingus operated. You can access with PP.

  • SBIre says:

    20 Nov20 November 15:13

    Yep – Cork takes PP

• William says:

  20 Nov20 November 06:58

  Does BA allow EI elites lounge access at t5 if connecting from EI to BA at LHR

  • Blair Waldorf Salad says:

    20 Nov20 November 20:50

    No

• Alan Joss says:

  20 Nov20 November 07:34

  Do you get into the BA lounges if flying on Aer Lingus from Aberdeen, Edinburgh or Glasgow?

  • Rob says:

    20 Nov20 November 08:37

    No, AFAIK

• Tracey says:

  20 Nov20 November 07:49

  Similar nonsensical rules flying Vueling from LGW

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    20 Nov20 November 09:13

    They aren’t in OW either.

    • LittleNick says:

      20 Nov20 November 09:18

      But all in IAG, you’d thought they’d try and streamline the rules and offer some consistency?

      • Nick says:

        20 Nov20 November 09:49

        VY don’t have lounge access anywhere, it’s not their customer proposition. BA has decided to offer its own lounge at LGW (and entirely at their own cost) for customers who book VY through them. It’s a gesture of goodwill, not ‘nonsensical’, but if you want to whinge it can very easily be taken away to make it ‘consistent’…

        • Londonsteve says:

          20 Nov20 November 19:25

          I see your perspective but most members of the public wouldn’t. As far as they’re concerned, BA sold them a ticket on BA.com, and while it was transparent this was to fly on Vueling, they wouldn’t think too hard about the background to this and status holders would expect their usual status privileges to be honoured. The better informed would assume it’s the common case of codesharing (even if a BA flight number never appears on the booking). I can understand the rationale for not extending some (or all) of these usual OW perks, but in the event a status holder is undertaking the booking, this should be made clear at the point of purchase.

      • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

        20 Nov20 November 10:01

        One of the decisions taken when IAG was created was that each individual airline (only BA and IB at the time) would maintain its own identify and could have different policies and offers.

        IAG as a group really only looks after functions best taken at group level such as plane purchases. It does not control the individual airlines on a day to day level.

        • LittleNick says:

          20 Nov20 November 10:47

          Ok makes sense, thanks

      • Lady London says:

        20 Nov20 November 16:53

        Why doesn’t IAG think out of the box and go the whole hog, buy a Star Aliance airline and leave it in Star Alliance?

        Methinks this lounge decision is an indicator/harbinger : to unload the lounges (EI) and possibly ease budget (BA) shorthaul passengers are having access privileges removed.

        • LittleNick says:

          20 Nov20 November 18:26

          Well they might buy TAP which is a *Alliance airline, would be interested to see what happens with that

        • Londonsteve says:

          20 Nov20 November 19:31

          Us Silvers might, a few years from now, look back with nostalgia at visiting lounges while in possession of short haul ticket. Course, the absence of lounge access will alter the value perception of Silver status and indeed, drive business away from BA, so it’s up to the airline where they wish to draw the line.

• MarkC says:

  20 Nov20 November 10:09

  In my experience, Aer Lingus do not give BA Silver access to their lounge in Dublin for London-bound BA flights either. I know because I’ve been that person sent to the PACKED and horrible T1 lounge. And they aren’t polite about it.

  • polly says:

    20 Nov20 November 11:20

    Agree, l was turned away too, but went into the less packed T2 DAA lounge just down the corridor. Food in EI lounge awful, basically sandwiches… people can’t be bothered with the long walk to T2, so the T1 is always packed.

• Kevin says:

  20 Nov20 November 11:22

  MarkC is correct.

  I’m Gold, wife silver. We booked DUB-LHR-JFK in Club World on BA website. Rocked up to EI lounge in Dublin and my wife was denied entry. She was gobsmacked at how this could be the case given we booked a cash business class ticket, her silver status, my guest as a Gold member, nor her Amex Platinum could get her in.

  I went on in and it’s an embarrassment. She wasn’t missing much. She went over to T1 Lounge and enjoyed 2 Gin & Tonics. Not 3. Just 2. The bar man said 2 was the limit!

  Talking of embarrassing lounges. BHD Aspire was awful until its recent renovation. It’s much better now. No Al Mourjan but big improvement in terms of size, choice, ambiance etc. Since Reece’s review last year its cash entry price has gone up from £25.99 to £36.99. I would love to know the exact numbers paying this. Traditionally, the BHD lounge has catered for the regular Belfast-London commuters who would have status anyway.

• Jack says:

  20 Nov20 November 11:33

  As Aer Lingus is not a member of one world it doesn’t seem a surprise that lounge access has now been stopped. I would not call it a cost cutting measure either purely just reflecting on the fact that it is not a one world airline

  • Rob says:

    20 Nov20 November 11:35

    Of course it’s cost cutting. There was no need for BA to offer it in the first place, but removing it is clearly done to save money.

    The joke is that, at Shannon, it is simply moving money from one IAG airline to another.

    • Jack says:

      20 Nov20 November 12:18

      Indeed as you say there was no need for BA to offer it to begin with when BA do not operate flights to either airport . Whether it’s cost cutting or not can be argued however aer lingus is not a one world carrier

      • Tristan Casson-Rennie says:

        20 Nov20 November 14:04

        BA offered Silver/Gold Lounge Access as grandfathered rights for a couple of interesting reasons… dating back to the acquisition in 1999 of failing AB Airlines (Who I worked for as a youngster at Shannon) when they obtained valuable LGW slots, and then after flying existing routes as BA for a short period, closed the routes down. Some of you may remember the emergence of Virgin Express at that point (a Shannon based start-up).

        BA had to work hard to placate the business community, who were furious that they had been duped, and lost an important interline route to LGW. Pax were thrown a lifeline of a daily “CityFlyer” route to Manchester to connect with then regional US/Caribbean services, and for several years had been enticed across from Aer Lingus’ TAB programme (which was awful) to the BA Executive Club. So there began the cooperation on lounge access.

        Of course Aer Lingus were in OneWorld from, you guessed it, 1999 until 2007, and operated their own lounge at Shannon – so it was an easy fix to keep the business community happy. We have “enjoyed” grandfathered rights from BA since 1999, however I guess the one of the catalyst for change was Aer Lingus off-loading the Shannon Lounge to the Airport, who in turn sub-contract Bidvest Noonan to operate it for them.

        My best guess is that someone in BA who is far too young to understand or even know about the complex relationship history at Shannon decided to look good by saving a few pounds on the balance sheet. There are several hundred of us Silver/Gold members living in the Shannon / Cork airport catchments. All of us regularly travel & interline for business trips and depend on Aer Lingus / BA’s very loose yet complicated relationship.

        For example, EI380/381 has J class (real Biz Seats) when operated by A321-LR, but booking on BA does not allow you to book SNN-LHR-anywhere in Biz. BA do not recognise EI’s J fares to earn/burn or book with cash! So we either have to book Y or T/W fares and fly Aer Lingus economy between SNN/LHR to get interlined baggage/tier points/avios; or book two separate tickets, one with EI in J, and the other with BA in R/I class. This means collecting bags and rechecking, as EI refuse to interline on two separate itineraries. It drives me to distraction! Honestly the two airlines just need to speak to each other and us passengers and sort this complex relationship out!

      • David says:

        20 Nov20 November 15:51

        BA do sell flights from both airports though, albeit EI-operated with BA flight numbers. They also advertise lounge access to their BA Silver and Gold card status holders. To me, its unrealated to oneworld, instead, just BA removing a benefit that has a associated cost.

      • Mark Palmer says:

        21 Nov21 November 04:06

        It’s clearly cost cutting. IAG own both airlines and if they valued customer experience then they would extend and harmonize lounge privileges across their services the same way Qantas does with Jetstar. Just because BA is one world and EI is not is irrelevant.

    • LittleNick says:

      20 Nov20 November 13:46

      But if Shannon lounge is not operated by EI, then there would be third party payments being made to lounge operator every time a BA guest enters so BA didn’t want to pay any more? Different if it was EI operated, it’s all within IAG group but might not be case here?

• Bernard says:

  20 Nov20 November 12:29

  Mystery why anyone flies aer lingus instead of Ryanair for anywhere apart from Heathrow.
  But you’re right. Yet another example of the total dysfunction of IAG, and what a miserable airline Aer Lingus is.

  • SBIre says:

    20 Nov20 November 15:34

    No airline is perfect, but I’ve flown Aer Lingus around 100 times and miserable is one of the few words you cannot use about them. On average their staff seem to have / allowed to show more personality, especially in the air, and often go above and beyond. Flying LHR to ORK a few months ago one of my party forgot her passport, as had someone else, and the Aer Lingus staff member rang Cork border control and got approval to let them fly!

    • lumma says:

      20 Nov20 November 15:44

      I used to regularly turn up at Dublin without a passport before Ryanair insisted on it. I thought you just got sent to immigration from the UK as they didn’t have space for a separate CTA arrival area. Has something changed?

      • SBIre says:

        20 Nov20 November 17:22

        Neither were UK or Irish citizens, which was the key complication.

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