MaxVO

I was looking for a program to credit my UA flight, and AerClub unexpectedly came up as an option --
https://www.wheretocredit.com/united-airlines/k
or https://www.wheretocredit.com/united-airlines/w

Were those errors? Can anyone perhaps confirm that it's really possible to earn Avios by flying United?

ROKNA

Aer Lingus and United have had a partnership for a long time so nothing strange here. Its critical to making ORD work for EI

Yes but it will take weeks to appear

Collecting Avios on United Airlines (UA) flights:

Award mile earnings (including fare class bonus)
Business J 100%
Discount Business C, I, D, P 100%
Full Fare Economy Y, B, H 100%
Economy G, K, M, V, F 75%
Discount Economy N, L, Q, S, O 50%
Deep Discount Economy R, W, Z, A, E 25%
No Mileage Credit T, X, U 0%

MaxVO

Thanks for confirming, ROKNA. I'm ok with waiting weeks for credits to post, as long as the table is accurate.
At first I found it strange that United fare class K earned less than L or T with other partners of United, but with AerClub it was the opposite.

irishguy28

It could soon be curtains for this strange long-standing partnership....

https://www.headforpoints.com/2022/0...ng-aer-lingus/

MaxVO

Thanks, at least it won't be a surprise (which I dislike). If anyone spots this change becoming official, please update this thread.

hkcj

I also find this very surprising... I'm tempted to try crediting a flight in K that's coming up - oodles more miles than anyone else including United (since it's a very cheap flight).

irishguy28

While in theory it's all very well to shop around to find, for each ticket you buy, the programme that gives the absolute greatest number of miles (100% earning in program X is better than 50%, 25% or 0% earning in program Y; 750 Avios is better than 100 Mileage Plus miles, etc), do you actually end up in a materially better position?

If Avios is a new programme for you, having an account with 750 Avios in it doesn't really allow you to do anything useful with that total. If you're already a MileagePlus customer, you could probably argue that the 100 UA miles are probably already of greater immediate use (and hence more valuable) than 750 orphaned Avios.

And if you're constantly chasing the greatest numerical return, you are probably topping up a wide arrange of random accounts at very sporadic intervals. In some cases, those miles will expire before you get to a balance where you might actually be able to do something useful with those miles. Or it will cost you a considerable extra amount of money - or require you to divert a considerable amount of credit card points etc - to top up the balance to a usable amount in order to "justify" having opened each of those accounts in the first place.

In short: the best place to put the miles is not necessarily the programme that appears to offer the greatest number of points/miles. It's all very well to have an account sitting there with a single transaction of greater numerical value in it - but that alone gets you nowhere, and will require further miles/points to actually justify having opened that account, or put that transaction into that account, in the first place. You need to consider whether putting those miles/points in that account is actually ever going to allow you to do something better than you could have done with a smaller amount of miles in an account you use regularly (and the account(s) you use regularly should have been chosen, judiciously, based on your travel patterns and what works best for you, considering the overall picture and not evaluated on an extremely narrow (and misleading) snapshot such as - which programme gives me the biggest number of points/miles for this flight)

BrianDromey

I think thats a very good summary. It's also worth thinking about status, if that is important to the OP, AerClub status is not likely to be worth much unless you fly EI a lot and can obtain Concierge status which comes with upgrade certificates that can be pretty easily used. If you are US based I would be wary of the enormous YQ on ex-US redemptions, the US3 seem to have much lower charges.

The only other thing I would add is that Avios is probably one of the more flexible FF currencies out there, particularly if you are based in UK, Ireland or Spain. Aside from EI, BA and IB, Vueling also use the currency and QR have adopted it in the last few months as well. The Avios can be pooled into your 'main' account.

irishguy28

This is indeed a very very useful thing about Avios; the ability to earn in each/any of BA, IB, EI, QR and VY - which each have their own quirks and "strange" partners - and then the ability to transfer Avios freely between each of these programs is a Godsend.

On an upcoming Virgin Australia domestic flight, I will be able to earn 50% Avios in Qatar Airways Privilege Club - which will be the first time I've actually earned any Avios in my QR account (which I have had from the days before it partnered with IAG). Otherwise those miles would have gone to waste, but instead I will be able to consolidate them with my main bunch of Avios held in EI and BA (and freely transferable between both as needed).

BrianDromey

Different programmes have different charges for the very same flight, but also different cancellation policies. I think IB have lower charges on IB metal, for example. EI also seem to have reduced their charges for short haul flights. Still not as cheap as the BA Reward Flight Saver, but much better than they were. Trying to book these flights through the Avios.com portal is a different story...its truly dreadful and more-or-less unusable.

hkcj

I completely agree. In my case I have four reasons for considering this:

1. The first is that I have a spouse and child, so accounts that allow family pooling are interesting to me, so accruing Avios (though not for the baby in this situation - since they can't get an AerClub account) is a reasonable way to make their OW miles useful and get us closer to awards.
2. I am unlikely to get status anytime soon on United, so don't care much about accruing large numbers of miles.
3. I already have a pool of Avios anyway
4. I heavily rely on credit cards for actually getting enough points for the rewards I want, so I can top up either program from Chase

If I didn't have easy access to so many credit cards points (since they're easy to earn here), I would feel differently - and obviously this would require a lot of work. What I'm anticipating doing is really having at most two programs per airline / group: one for me or my wife, and one for the baby with points pooling, so that we can top off their points through our accounts and they don't go to waste.

MaxVO

Flew 2 segments on UA Class K, and credited them to EI. Avios appeared promptly and precisely as expected at 75% of flown miles.
Now I just need to figure out how to move those Avios to BA. For some reason that process hasn't worked as smoothly as in my prior experiences with BA <-> IB.

mccartje

Use IB as an intermediary Avios.com(EI) -> IB -> BA. But in general you are correct the moving avios around is very bug ridden.

MaxVO

Thanks for the tip! It eventually worked almost as you said -- except the IB site didn't work properly, so a pull from BA finished the job.

mccartje

Ah yes that's also how I do it, I should have been clearer in what I meant. You got it sorted anyway so good stuff!