Since I wrote yesterday that Aer Lingus appears poised to accept a third takeover offer from British Airways (and Iberia) parent IAG, I’ve gotten several messages from readers quite concerned.
You wouldn’t expect a mostly US audience to worry over consolidation in the European airline sector, especially when it’s a non-alliance member being acquired. But Aer Lingus is a British Airways partner already, and one of the few ways to redeem British Airways points across the Atlantic without paying big money in addition to miles in the form of high fuel surcharges.
The first thing to know though is that nothing will change right away. The transaction has to be accepted. Then it has to close. The airlines will continue to operate fully independently at first. So I wouldn’t expect to see anything meaningful different over the next year.
We do not know what, if anything, will ultimately change.
There’s very little that British Airways members will look forward to with this acquisition, because BA and Aer Lingus are already partners so you can use BA points for Aer Lingus awards. But here are the things to look out for.
The biggest concern that’s been expressed to me so far is that flying award trips on Aer Lingus will begin to incur fuel surcharges.
in fact, there are fuel surcharges now. They’re just low. The worry is that with the same folks in charge at Aer Lingus as are in charge at British Airways, you could see higher fuel surcharges and so more expensive award tickets.
We’re getting very speculative and way ahead of ourselves, but if that happened it’s certainly plausible that we could see.
So while it’s plausible that British Airways awards on Aer Lingus could get more expensive, as long as we’re speculating there’s a path that even if this happens there still could be ways around it.
British Airways and Iberia, owned by IAG, are members of oneworld. If IAG acquires Aer Lingus, we could see the Irish carrier join that alliance — especially as Aer Lingus has pursued more of a premium strategy (investing in its business class product) than its recent past focus on being more of a low cost carrier.
This doesn’t necessarily follow though. IAG owns Vueling but hasn’t converted it to the Avios program (though you can earn and redeem through Iberia Plus, it has its own independent points program) and it hasn’t joined oneworld.
If Aer Lingus does become part of oneworld, that would be a plus for American AAdvantage members who could then use miles for and earn miles on Aer Lingus flights. They’ll find that Dublin is a great place to connect.
Of course, BA is a much better program to use for redeeming Aer Lingus flights across the Pond — Boston to Dublin and to Shannon costs just 12,500 points each way in economy and 25,000 points each way in business because both are just shy of 3000 miles flown. 50,000 miles for roundtrip transatlantic business class is a pretty good deal!
United and Aer Lingus codeshare and have a lounge access agreement. It’s not impossible that this could continue, especially if Aer Lingus doesn’t join oneworld, but it would be surprising to see if Aer Lingus becomes an alliance member. If Aer Lingus becomes a part of oneworld, we could see it join the transatlantic joint venture with American, British Airways, Iberia, and Finnair. Anti-trust immunity across the Atlantic with those carriers could be consistent with codesharing with others, though I’d just personally be surprised if that would last.
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