Redeeming for flights should never be easier with a different airline than the one you’re flying. But Alaska can do things on Aer Lingus that it cannot.
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Annual Trip To Europe
We skipped our annual trip to Manchester and various additional cities in Europe last year and have been in withdrawals since another cancelled trip in July. Making our way to England often features a stop in London since the pandemic when US carriers abandoned the greatest city in Northwest England. This year, that comes with an added bonus and a short stay at the long awaited Park Hyatt Thames.
While normally I’d prefer to burn the fewest number of points, I had 160,000 with United and it doesn’t make sense for me to keep one roundtrip on a carrier my family can’t join on the same PNR. For this occasion, it made sense to transfer 80,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards Points and completely drain my United account on three one-ways in business class.
Coming home would be another story.
Alaska Provides Great Value (With Caveats)
For a very long time, Alaska Airlines has provided some of the best redemption values in the industry – especially in premium cabins. Since joining oneworld, some of those values have opened up even more doors.
Using PointsYeah.com (not an affiliate, I just love the site), I found an interesting quirk. The UK’s Air Passenger Duty is a tax that penalizes visitors to England upon their departure based on the distance and class of service. For business class, long haul, with three full tickets and a child, it’s often far cheaper to position in a closer European city and then start the long-haul journey home.
While other partners start departing flights from $500-$1,000 in APD and “fuel surcharges” we found an Alaska result on oneworld partner, Aer Lingus, for just 45,000 points and $325-351 in taxes. That’s enough of a difference to not inconvenience ourselves.
However, Alaska Airlines has two major quirks with its award system. First, travelers cannot combine partners (to be resolved before the end of 2025.) That’s okay for this route, it’s entirely operated by Aer Lingus. The second caveat is that for lap infants, they still have to charge for a full seat. This is particularly wasteful because my not quite two-year-old son will not sit in the seat on his own.
What Alaska Airlines did in this case was birddog a flight with Aer Lingus that worked for our party, and though the points would be slightly more expensive than Alaska for three passengers, it would still be less expensive to use Aer Lingus than to pay for four passengers.
Aer Lingus Can’t Hack It
For the flag carrier of Ireland, and a member of oneworld, the website has some obvious technical deficiencies.
- On some browsers, searching for cities starts from behind a button.
- Customer support lists WhatsApp as an option, but it doesn’t connect guests with humans (just a chatbot), and can’t perform key functions
- The search results page simply says there are no flight options because it first pulls the MAN-JFK nonstop flight
When I knew the space was there, and then individually confirmed flight by flight on Aer Lingus’ site directly, I knew I had to reach out. It would have been helpful if it explained why it couldn’t find any flights available even though I already knew both of the connections were, in fact, properly displaying on the same site.
I tried customer support via Whatsapp but they can’t take payment (or apparently send a payment link) so that was out. I then called support and after a few minutes on hold had to explain that I knew the nonstop flight was booked, I was looking at a connecting redemption. It was about 10-15 minutes into the call before she indicated that reward flights booked with Avios had to be booked separately, one for Manchester to Dublin and one for Dublin to New York.
They had to have two different PNRs though they could be linked. Regardless, we would have to clear customs into Ireland, claim our bags, return to check-in, drop our bags again, clear security, then clear US customs all before boarding the flight. The connection time would be 1 hour and 50 minutes. On a single PNR as a simple connection, there’s more than enough time, but with all of the hassle in such a short amount of time it just doesn’t make sense.
Conclusion
It’s embarrassing that Aer Club which adopted British Airways’ Avios as its currency can’t overcome a hurdle as fundamental and basic as a connection on a reward flight. I don’t mind paying something more for that connection, but it’s beyond ridiculous that I can book any Aer Lingus easier with Alaska Airlines. It’s even more embrassing when Avios has solved all of these problems over the years, and British Airways parent company (IAG) owns them both and should be able to execute this with a keystroke. But then I guess it’s a little like the display issue for booking flights, you’d have to care about it to get it changed.
What do you think?
Aer Lingus is not a Oneworld carrier.
Sure, not a oneworld carrier but owned by a oneworld group, it’s oneworld adjacent and partners with most major oneworld carriers. But you’re right, not officially a oneworld airline yet.
The separate PNRs/tickets was how you were able to avoid the expensive long haul UK APD. If you had booked it as a single PNR the system would charge you the premium long haul APD even with a connection in Dublin. The APD charged is based on the ticket originating in the UK (other than the Scottish Highlands) and it calculates based on the final destination of the ticket.
This is how every Avios currency works. Nobody reasonably books connecting itineraries using BA Avios. This isn’t a limitation of Aer Club, it’s just how Avios (of all types) generally work. AA/AS would always be a cheaper and easier way to book BRU-LHR-JFK entirely on BA metal.
Also, you really should remove the language about EI being in Oneworld. I understand that they’re owned by IAG (as is Vueling), and you seem to think they may join one day, but as of now, they’re not a member of Oneworld. Not at all. Simply put, you don’t get Oneworld benefits when you fly EI. It’s a pretty important distinction.