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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Charlie Weston is with us, the personal finance editor of the Irish Independent. Now, this is really interesting because I'd imagine there's a lot of listeners who might be customers of Aer Lingus and who might be in one of their loyalty schemes. But you have an interesting story as to why it is some customers claim that it's very difficult to redeem free flights that they say are owed to them under the loyalty scheme. What gives?
Yeah, Aer Lingus have, on paper, a very good loyalty scheme. It's called Air Club. You can take out a credit card, an AER credit card.
What is the Aer Lingus Air Club credit card and how do Avios points work?
And the card is in partnership with Bank of Ireland. And if you spend €5,000 on that card, you can redeem it for free flights. You can also get fast priority boarding tickets. two Aer Lingus lounge passes, etc. But the flights are the big ones, I suppose, you know. You spend €5,000 on the card, redeem these flights.
Sorry, that's not all in the month transaction, that's cumulative.
Cumulatively, yeah. You hit this figure, hit the €5,000 figure and then go in into this Avios, it's called points, they're called Avios points.
Yeah. You can also get those points by... You don't get it off your normal Bank of Ireland credit card, do you? No. It has to be a special
Air credit card it's called you know it's a special Aer Lingus credit card so it's a partnership between Bank of Ireland and Aer Lingus now Bank of Ireland don't have a lot to do with it it's a scheme run by Aer Lingus and these Avios points you can get them through spending in Tesco and Adidas and Skechers and things like that but The problem is, Matt, a lot of people, a lot of people, not everybody, because I've got others on to me saying it works fine for me. A lot of people are saying, this is just so difficult to redeem these flights. Some people have described it as laughably difficult. Others have said, look, I just gave up on frustration. I just got rid of the credit card. It didn't work for me.
Because there's a restricted number of flights. There's two seats per flight. And unless you go in there 11 months in advance and book the flights, it's very, very difficult to reclaim these flights. And Aer Lingus acknowledge that and they say they are improving it. Bank of Ireland, you know, who are not directly involved, but they're getting a lot of complaints from customers as well because it's a Bank of Ireland card. They're saying, look, we've produced a special brochure on what's the best way to redeem these flights and you're probably best if you get in 11 months before. But, you know, like I had one person on to me saying, look, it's almost impossible to book these free flights given the way they have it set up.
It's just not very customer friendly. And people are very experienced in these loyalty schemes for airlines. Say, look, I use other, those Avios ones are redeemable for other airlines as well. They say, look, it works far better with other airlines. The way airlines have set this up, it's quite restrictive. It's not easy to use. And Air Lings, to be fair to them, acknowledge, yes, there is a problem here. They are trying to improve it. And they said they recently enhanced what they call their flight request process, but they are going to make more changes to it. So, you know, and they're saying, look, 23,000 return flights have been booked.
Is that all? Because... But internationally, particularly in the United States, these loyalty club schemes for the airlines, in some case, if you were to split them out, I've heard from aviation analysts, they'd be worth more than the actual airline itself. They're massive businesses run by the airlines in conjunction with airlines. banks. And people very much show loyalty to particular airlines because they're able to amass all the points on their cards and get the type of things that you have described readily and easily. But what's the point if you try to book on a flight, say, you want to go to, say, to Faro in Portugal and you're trying to book it four months out and they tell you, oh, we've already sold the only two seats available under the scheme to somebody else or given them to somebody else.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:49
2
What is the Aer Lingus Air Club credit card and how do Avios points work?
0:49–7:23
3
Why are customers finding it difficult to redeem free flights with Aer Lingus?
7:23–8:10
4
How limited availability (two seats per flight) affects Air Club redemptions?
8:10–10:12
Speakers
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