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Aer Lingus is the national airline of Ireland, and is currently served by the Gold Circle frequent flier program.  This program is not particularly useful to residents of the US – instead, US residents typically will use British Airways Avios to fly on Aer Lingus, as I did a few months ago.  I used 25,000 Avios to fly business class from Boston to Dublin, except then my flight was canceled whilie I was sitting on the tarmac 🙁

(SEE ALSO: 3 mistakes I made when my flight was canceled)

(SEE ALSO: 5 things I did right when my flight was canceled)

Aer Lingus changing loyalty programs

A few months ago, IAG, the parent company of British Airways and Iberia was approved to buy a controlling stake of Aer Lingus.  As part of that transition, they will be retiring the GoldCircle loyalty program and creating a new loyalty program called AerClub

It’s not clear how these Avios will relate to British Airways Avios or Iberia Avios, or if you’ll be able to transfer Avios between the programs.

(SEE ALSO: How you can still book short haul flights with IBERIA Avios)

My guess is that they will probably have a different award chart and that you will be able to transfer between the programs, similar to how you can already transfer between British Airways and Iberia Avios, but that is just speculation

(SEE ALSO: Why Aer Lingus is paying me $1306)

How to get 250 free Avios for signing up for AerClub

In any case, per Head for Points, you can get 250 free Avios for pre-registering for AerClub.  The new AerClub loyalty program is scheduled to start in July 2016, but as long as you pre-register before June 30, 2016, you will get 250 Avios.

aer-lingus-aer-club

You can pre-register at aerlingus.com/aerclub.  It takes about 2 seconds as all you need to enter are your name and email address

One nice thing about this would be that British Airways Avios have the concept of a family account, where you can combine your points.  So if, say, you have 8 people in your family (like me!) this might turn into 2000 points.

In any case, free points is free points!


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