How to transfer Avios between Aer Lingus & British Airways (A Step By Step Guide)

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Because Aer Lingus is now part of IAG Group (which includes the likes of British Airways and Iberia) the airline uses Avios as its loyalty currency and there are a number of reasons why it can be very useful to know how to transfer Avios between Aer Lingus and the British Airways Executive Club (transfers can go in either direction).

Why transfer Avios?

From Aer Lingus Aer Club to the British Airways Executive Club

• If you’re flying with Aer Lingus you can credit your flights directly to the British Airways Executive Club (if that’s where you prefer to pool your Avios) but if you’re flying an Aer Lingus partner that doesn’t also happen to partner with BA, you’ll have to credit your flights to Aer Lingus’ AerClub and that can leave you with a small and hard to use balance in Aer Club if most of your Avios are held with British Airways. Transferring Avios from Aer Club to the BAEC is a way of making sure you can use up all the Avios you have.
• Qatar Airways also uses Avios as its loyalty currency and Qatar Airways offers award options that Aer Lingus and British Airways do not (e.g. cheaper redemptions and redemptions that incur lower surcharges). As things stand, it’s not possible to transfer Avios directly from Aer Lingus to the Qatar Airways Privilege Club but because Avios held within the BAEC can easily be transferred to the Privilege Club, moving Avios from Aer Club to the BAEC can be just the first step in moving your Avios to a program where you can get the best value.

You may, of course, wish to transfer Avios in the opposite direction…

From the British Airways Executive Club to Aer Lingus Aer Club

• Aer Lingus award bookings made using Avios from a British Airways Executive Club account will almost always incur considerably higher surcharges than the exact same awards booked with  Avios from an Aer Club account (see this post for examples). By moving Avios from the BAEC to Aer Club before booking an Aer Lingus award you could save a considerable amount of money.

In this post, I’ll show how Avios can be transferred between Aer Club and BAEC accounts but because the mechanism for transferring in one direction is pretty much identical to the mechanism for transferring the other way, I’m only going to use one transfer to illustrate how this is done – I’ll do a walkthrough of a transfer from Aer Club to the BAEC.

If you wish to do the opposite transfer, make sure you select “British Airways to Avios Partners” as your transfer option when you get to Step 5 (below).

Move Avios from Aer Lingus to British Airways

Step 1

Ignore both the Aer Lingus and the British Airways websites and head over to Avios.com.

Once there, sign in to Avios.com using the credentials you would normally use to sign in to your Aer Lingus Aer Club account. You may simply be asked to enter your login details or you may see a page like this when you first click the sign-in link:

If you see a page like in the image above, simply click on the link under AerClub and log in normally.

Step 2

Now that you’re logged in, you should see your Avios balance displayed prominently at the top of your screen:

From here, click on “Manage my account” that you’ll see in the bottom right corner of the box displaying your Avios balance.

A drop-down menu will now open up and you should see the “Combine my Avios” option on the screen.

Click on the “Combine my Avios” link.

Step 3

You should now find yourself on the Combine My Avios page which will look something like this:

Click on the “select program” drop-down menu and select “British Airways” (you can select Iberia Plus if that’s where you prefer to pool your points).

Step 4

In the fields that have now appeared, enter your British Airways Executive Club login details.

Now click “log in & continue”.

Step 5

The screen that you’re now presented with should be showing your Aer Lingus Avios balance alongside your British Airways Executive Club Balance and there are two key things that you need to do here.

1. Under the heading “Which way do you want to transfer Avios?”, select “Avios Partners to British Airways” (it is at this point that you would select the opposite option if you wanted to move Avios from BA to use with Aer Lingus).
2. In the box that will now have opened up to the right, enter how many Avios you’d like to transfer.

Now click on “Review My Transfer”

Step 6

The screen should now be showing you a summary of what you have just entered (the direction of the transfer and the number of Avios to be transferred).

If anything is incorrect, click “go back a step” (on the very left of the box that also holds the confirm transfer bottom) and make any necessary changes. If all looks in order, click “confirm transfer”.

That’s It!

Avios.com will now display a confirmation that your transfer has been processed together with your new AerClub and British Airways Executive Club balances…

…you’ll receive a confirmation email from Avios.com showing what transfer took place…

…and if you head over to the British Airways Executive Club you’ll find your updated Avios balance waiting for you and the transaction recorded in your account.

Bottom Line

Transferring Avios from Aer Lingus to British Airways (or Iberia) is remarkably simple once you know that the best place to start is Avios.com and that you should log in to Avios.com using your Aer Lingus credentials. As you will have noted if you were following the steps above, Avios.com can be used to move Avios from Iberia or British Airways to Aer Lingus as well, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of transfers will be going the other way.

Related Reading: This Is Why Avios Collectors Should Have An Iberia Plus Account