There is a brand new business class sweet spot in the Aer Lingus AerClub Avios award chart. The airline recently announced flights from Dublin to Montreal and Minneapolis / St. Paul.
Due to the distance this city is from Dublin, it provides a really good value way of using your Avios. It is especially good considering Aer Lingus has an excellent Business Class product across the Atlantic.
Update: A reader has posted this PDF from Aer Lingus which shows they intend to put Montreal into Zone 5. Today (20 September) it is still in the computer with economy class available at Zone 4 levels. Book before they change it, if you intend to.
Avios Award Sweet Spot
Montreal is 2,973 miles from Dublin, which is a Zone 4 award on the Avios chart. This means economy class awards cost you 12,500 Avios in peak times, while business class awards cost 37,500 Avios. Off peak rates are 10,000 and 31,250 respectively.
These are decent rates for a long haul transatlantic service, especially in business class. The reason this is news is because Dublin to Boston should be in this zone as well. However, it is not.
As long as Aer Lingus don’t move the goal posts, Montreal will become the best value transatlantic redemption for Avios. Keep your fingers crossed!
Montreal Flights
Flights will start on 8 August 2019, departing Dublin at 18:50 and arriving in Montreal at 20:50. The return services leave at 22:20 and arrive in Dublin at 09:40 the following day.
Brand new Airbus A321neo aircraft will be operating this route. The current well regarded lie flat business class seats will be on board, which you can see at the top of this post.
Overall Thoughts
Let’s hope Aer Lingus don’t move Montreal a few extra miles away and put it into Zone 5. When it comes to AerClub, this will be one of the best redemptions and a great way to use your points.
At the moment only economy class seats appear to be available, but business class should come in due course. Aer Lingus do have a habit of only making one seat available for award redemptions in business class, so plan on either travelling alone or paying for one ticket with cash.
What do you think of this new redemption? And what do you think of Boston being in a higher grade? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
To never miss a post, follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
All my flight and lounge reviews are indexed here so check them out!
Featured image via Business Traveller.
With thanks to InsideFlyer via Head For Points for the heads up.
Aer Lingus is showing Montreal as Zone 5 – https://www.aerlingus.com/media/pdfs/EI_routes_avios_amounts.pdf
Very good find, it means they intend to move it to Zone 5 even though it should be Zone 4. What is fun is that when you go to book a reward flight, Economy comes up at 12,500, which means it is in Zone 4 at the moment for booking. I wonder how long it will take for them to fix it in the computer? Thanks for the heads up, I’ll update the article!