Save £130 (!) by booking short-haul Aer Lingus Avios flights at aerlingus.com

Last March we wrote about the new Avios booking platform that launched at the Aer Lingus website. This replaced the old booking site which was found at avios.com. You can find it here.

This means that there are now two places where you can book Aer Lingus redemption flights: at ba.com or at aerlingus.com. Using the latter involves moving your Avios into an Aer Lingus AerClub account.

There is no price difference between the two if you are booking a long-haul flight.

However, there can be a price difference if you want to book short-haul Aer Lingus redemptions. This applies whether the flights are mainline or on Emerald Airlines franchise services, but weirdly it does not happen on all routes.

Here are a couple of examples.

Let’s try Heathrow to Cork. Here is ba.com redemption pricing:

Yes, the taxes and charges element on this ECONOMY flight is £170 return!

What is going on?

If you head over to aerlingus.com:

…. the taxes and charges are just £40!

British Airways adding £130 of surcharges.

What about other routes?

The bulk of Aer Lingus flights touching the UK at one or both ends are operated by Emerald Airlines under a franchise agreement. These are primarily to/from Belfast City.

If we look at Manchester to Belfast City, for example:

• ba.com wants £66 of taxes and charges
• aerlingus.com wants £66 of taxes and charges

No difference.

However, look at Edinburgh to Belfast City:

• ba.com wants £193 (!!) of taxes and charge
• aerlingus.com wants £63 of taxes and charges

Again, BA is adding a spurious £130.

What about Dublin flights?

There’s something else you need to know about booking Aer Lingus redemptions on short haul from the UK.

There is a bug with ba.com which stops you booking Aer Lingus flights to Dublin from some regional airports. It’s very odd. It either works fine (Manchester and Birmingham for example) or you get:

“British Airways and its partners do not fly this route.”

Alternatively, as happens with Glasgow and Edinburgh, the only options to Dublin are BA flights via Heathrow!

This bug has not been fixed in well over a year. Your only choice when booking such routes is to use aerlingus.com.

Avios flights are better value vs cash than they look

Even if you book via aerlingus.com, the Avios pricing may look a little high compared to using cash, especially if you aim to get our target of 1p per Avios when you redeem.

However, Avios seats on Aer Lingus include checked baggage and a full cabin baggage allowance. You don’t get this on the cheapest Aer Lingus cash tickets. An Avios ticket is also cancellable.

How can you move Avios to Aer Lingus AerClub?

To book on the Aer Lingus website you need to:

• open an Aer Lingus AerClub account at this page of aerlingus.com

• transfer your Avios (free, instant, reversible) from BA to Aer Lingus via this page of ba.com – select ‘Avios Partners’ on the dropdown menu

The ba.com ‘Combine My Avios’ page can be very buggy unfortunately.

PS. Obviously, if you want to use a British Airways American Express 2-4-1 companion voucher on Aer Lingus, you need to book your Avios flight via ba.com. This means that you must pay this £130 surcharge on routes where it is charged. Your best bet is to save your voucher for another trip and book via aerlingus.com instead.