Aerlingus AerClub/Avios

They should honour the J seat during rebooking or reinstate the voucher for later use

if you cancel or change yourself it’s voided

Should definitely have a free bag, often it's not shown online and a few times I've had to pay and do a chargeback (flying from France)

Interesting stat in their marketing email today - 21,139 reward flights "taken" ( they may mean booked) to date in 2025. Not sure why I thought it'd be a lot less than that.

Using Avios for EI flights is usually poor value if you manage to find a redemption opportunity at all giving the significant blackout dates. Maybe transatlantic in Business but in Europe you often are better off paying cash.

The best usage is to move them to BA or some other Avios Carrier and use it there.

Points are generally best used for upgrade on a long haul, short flights are generally best paid for.

Meanwhile, a good offer if you live in the US

Apply for an Aer Lingus Visa Signature® Credit Card to earn a limited time Welcome Bonus Offer of 100,000 Avios by spending $7,500 on purchases within the first 6 months of account opening

Got the email about the US credit card

Was nice of them to email me showing what I could have ...

A very Bullseye moment

You think that's bad! Here's what I found.

Few months ago was looking at using 32k avois on flights to US. With the pints they wanted €1300+.

Without using the poibta the flights were €1050. So I was paying 250 more and losing all my points.

The only difference was the flights with points included a check-in bag each way which is like €160. It was a 4 day trip so we had need for a check in bag.

Best to always check the cost with and without avios as its crazy that you can be paying more with points

Avios flights are also cancellable up to 24 hours before travel for a refund of points and charges less a small fee applies, this can be very helpful as you get a checked and carry on bag as well.

Key value is you are flying somewhere were prices has short up, e.g. flying to Berlin week of the marathon at that point points are extremely good value.

Agree, they’re really not much use on Aer Lingus in general unless you use them in the ‘sweet spots’ (usually around the time of events, Canary Islands, and upgrades) or can get loads of them (hundreds of thousands) and use them for business class travel in partner airlines, particularly Qatar Airlines

I think the problem is that these currencies are really most useful in the US, where massive credit card interchange fees subsidise huge giveaways of points and loyalty perks that really can make a difference. If you can get 100k points for signing up, and a few points per dollar spent, plus free baggage etc, this becomes an interesting proposition. If you’re stuck spending €25,000 on an Irish Aer Credit credit to get a mere 6250 points, it’s barely worth the effort

On Aer Lingus, best case scenario I get about 1.6c of value per point, but more typically 1.1c. That means, to me, 6.250 Avios are only worth about 80€. It’s not bad if they're ‘free’. It’s definitely not worth the startling amount of spend to obtain them though, especially when, even when you have the points, it doesn’t guarantee you can use them (upgrades are very restricted, min 60 day purchase window for 99% of tickets, and regular sales mean cash tickets are usually pretty cheap on EI anyway)

if you box clever, stay flexible, plan ahead though, you can get some outsize value, but you’ll always be held back by an inability to earn enough miles here for it to worth getting excited about.

If you cancel a reward flight booking (Avios Points) are you charged anything cancellation fee?

I know you get your points returned and lose taxes paid (€10 in this case) but the email says:

Cancellation/Amend fee for passenger with Id: xxxx €42.50

Service fee for passenger: €15

I won’t be charged €57.50 will I? Do they ever do this?

Just wondering in any of ye have noticed that they the majority of flights for 2026 are coming up as sold out via the Rewards Flights section. Heathrow seems to be the only one available.

Same here. System is probably just shagged like it always is.

they’re now charging £40 in Heathrow to change onto an earlier flight even if you’re Silver/Platinum/Concierge according to a pal of mine who tried this morning. Anyone see where they’ve announced this change or is it a clueless staff member?

Either way Concierge are entitled to both

1. Waive of change fees
2. Travel earlier

Sliver and Platinum does not entitle you to a free change to an earlier flight unless its a plus fare or greater "Standby for earlier flight"

LHR has always been pragmatic about the rules and will fill any available seats to release capacity for later which is key to keeping things moving when delays and misconnects occur