American AAdvantage miles can now be used to book Aer Lingus awards

Aer Lingus is a bit of a strange airline. It’s part of the Avios group of currencies, but it is the only major airline (sorry, Loganair) among them that isn’t a part of the oneworld alliance. It’s a partner of oneworld members Alaska and American, but also JetBlue and Star Alliance members United and Air Canada Aeroplan.

Its partnership with American has been weird in and of itself. It started with codeshares in 2022, reciprocal mileage earning in 2023, and reciprocal elite benefits in 2024. However, although you could earn AA miles when flying Aer Lingus, there has been no way to actually use those miles to book an Aer Lingus flight.

Until this week, that is. Aer Lingus awards are finally live and bookable through AA.

Quick Thoughts

It’s bizarre that it’s taken this long for Aer Lingus awards to go live on AA, especially given that the airlines have offered reciprocal earning and elite benefits for a couple of years now.

Aer Lingus isn’t going to blow anybody away with their in-flight product, but it’s a perfectly acceptable way to get across the pond, given the decent-ish award availability and numerous departure airports in the US:

AA still has a set partner award chart and charges 22.5K-30K miles each way in economy and 57.5K in business to fly Aer Lingus between the US and anywhere in Europe:

Fees are blessedly minimal: $5.60 from the US and ~$45-50 from Dublin.

It’s worth noting that the vast majority of Aer Lingus business award availability will be to/from the US Northeast. In those cases, Atmos Rewards will usually have the same awards for only 45K each-way, as we see with that flight from Philadelphia:

There is an additional $12.50 partner booking fee (waived for Atmos Summit cardholders), but the 12,500-point savings more than make up for it. Atmos also charges 55K points for flights between 3,500 and 5,000 miles, including flights to cities like Seattle, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and Denver.

The only two non-stop Aer Lingus destinations where AA is cheaper than Atmos are San Francisco and Los Angeles. Atmos will charge 70K each way to/from both of them:

Meanwhile, AA is the same 57.5K (although interestingly without the four economy seats that Atmos seems to have access to):

AAdvantage will also often be cheaper when connecting itineraries lengthen the trip to the next Atmos distance band, as is the case with many Continental European cities. That said, we’ve found that Atmos doesn’t always push connecting itineraries into the next distance band, so it’s worth comparing anyway.

Regardless of whether AAdvantage or Atmos is cheaper, AA miles are much easier for most folks to obtain, thanks to the airline’s massive credit card portfolio and its new transfer partnership with Citi ThankYou Rewards. Because of that, this new option to use the AAdvantage program to get to Europe will undoubtedly be a welcome addition for many US-based travelers, not just those in California.