Wow! Aer Lingus flights now earn Tier Points in the British Airways Executive Club

Update 3 March: Looks like the bug has been fixed. Seems the calculator is back to offering zero Tier Points across the board. Maybe they were testing something? Who knows, but it seems it’s not happening. For now. Original article below.

Aer Lingus and British Airways are owned by the same company and it has been irritating to see little progress on frequent flyer integration. Checking the British Airways online Avios calculator suddenly shows tier points being awarded in the Executive Club for the Irish airline’s flights.

Why is this a big deal? Tier points allow you to move to higher levels in a programme. Not being able to earn them means people actively select airlines and flights where they do earn them. In my case, I’ll often connect over London Heathrow to go somewhere with BA, rather than flying non-stop with Aer Lingus.

Tier Points For Aer Lingus Flights

Checking out the calculator on the British Airways website shows tier points for Aer Lingus flights. These previously would have showed just zero, which is what was awarded before, though you could earn Avios.

Before you get too excited, it’s worth pointing out that a lot of fare buckets are not included here. You’ll need to be paying for some relatively pricey economy class tickets to be earning at all. Also, Aer Lingus do not offer business class within Europe, so those mean nothing.

What about AerSpace? This is “premium economy” (really a quasi-business class) on some European routes. When booking these, you are put into “I” (for India) class, which is not on the list above and will not earn anything.

Of course, on transatlantic services there is business class on Aer Lingus, which is still similar to my last flight in 2015. These will apparently earn tier points per the table of course.

Is It True?

I have heard the online Avios calculator pulls its information from the same system that sends the awards to Executive Club accounts. That would mean that if you happened to be in one of those fare classes, with your BA number in your Aer Lingus booking, it should work as advertised.

That being said, when you check this page on the British Airways website, it still shows Aer Lingus as earning zero tier points. Who knows what the truth is, but the Irish airline is approved to join the transatlantic joint venture with BA, American, Iberia and Finnair, so perhaps this is part of that.

Overall Thoughts

Quite frankly, I will be very happy if this turns out to be true. Being unable to earn tier points on Aer Lingus flights has kept me away from flying non-stop to where I want to go. It’s time consuming to fly via London, not to mention less environmentally friendly.

It has to be said that there are often issues with British Airways IT, so it’s entirely possible this is an error that will be corrected. But let’s hope it’s not, as there are many people who live in Ireland who are part of the Executive Club who would welcome this positive change.

What say you? Is this an error or not? Have you flown recently and has it worked? Would you welcome this change? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Adam Moreira via Wikimedia Commons.