I know there's been some discussions with booking Aer Lingus flights with Avios. If there's anyone who has completed award flights, maybe you could tell me what I did wrong
I just got back from a quick trip to the UK with a weekend in Dublin. For reasons, we flew RT between England and Ireland on Aer Lingus (IATA code "EI" for brevity) . These were short, hour flights and I had a small amount of BA Avios that's just been sitting forever that I was happy to finally find a way to use.
Little background before my observations and Q's -
Flight to DUB in saver economy paid cash for. EI must have an award chart since my
£0 flight was 4500 Avios + £31 tax, so for obvious reasons I chose to save the points and just paid the cash taxes.
The return, DUB to LHR, was the same 4500 Avios + $12 taxes. Since my Avios were in BA to start, and EI and BA code share, I priced it out on the BA site and found the same flight was 6100 Avios
+cash + higher taxes. My recollection was it only discounted the flight about $50 so I spent the time to transfer the Avios to EI and book on the Avios.com site. (FYI the taxes code as "Professional Services" through the avios.com site so no travel category reimbursements/multipliers)
That part all went well and quick. What I didn't put together was that in the PDF doc that is your "ticket" it states that you can't manage the booking online. Did not occur to me that means you
can't check-in online either! The EI website is also maddeningly unhelpful with this as it doesn't throw an error when looking up the reservation, it just spins infinitely. I tried to call to see if they can check-in that way but it was a busy weekend with long hold times and I gave up before being connected. (For flights within Europe you can check-in 48 hrs in advance, so I tried a couple times but ultimately just planned to get to the airport early and check-in there.) It wasn't bad, I ended up in the back of the plane
but got an aisle seat and empty middle so it could have been worse.
So does anyone know if they can do check-in for award flights over the phone?
Another thing that wasn't entirely clear was the baggage allotment. It's booked as a saver flight, but an award ticket evidently comes with a carry-on on the plane rather than a carry-on that gets checked into the hold. I wasted time trying to get a bag tag for my carry-on since the self check kept coming back with an error. When I finally get an agent he looked at the boarding pass and said I should carry it on.
(This "carry on" means you bring your 10kg bag on the plane
)
Now, the PDF did say clearly that I got a piece of checked baggage so I figured either way I could get a bag tag, but with that error coming up at self serve I suspect a full service agent may be advisable if checking a bag. Unless someone knows better? Would being able to check-in in advance have helped?
The website says for Transatlantic flights this 10kg carry-on bag is already included, so people booking the long haul this shouldn't be an issue. But if you're using EI within Europe then FYI, you don't check the 10kg bag.