Aer Lingus Gets Sandals For Caribbean Holidays

Aer Lingus recently announced new scheduled flights from Manchester to Barbados, opening up new flight options for Avios reward flight seekers.

Now Unique Caribbean Holidays Ltd, the UK operator for Sandals and Beaches Resorts, is offering this route, for departures from October 20th 2021, within its newly announced range of all-inclusive packages.

Flight-inclusive holidays will be offered at Sandals Barbados or the adjacent Sandals Royal Barbados with a £175 deposit and the full balance due 71-days before departure.

Package prices, using Aer Lingus flights from Manchester, start at £2,265 per person for seven nights between November 3 and December 8 including a 40% discount for bookings made by June 30.

Aer Lingus will initially run twice-weekly direct flights on Wednesdays and Saturdays from Manchester airport. Friday departures will be added from November 3, with flights then operating on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays to Barbados until March 2022. Both economy and business class will be available for bookings, including seats featuring the Aer Lingus 6ft 5inch fully flat-bed seats in business class. Regional connections will also be available, including via the Belfast to Manchester route.

Autumn/Winter bookings to Caribbean destinations are soaring at the moment. This is being driven by over-45-year-olds from the UK, confident they will have full vaccine protection and that UK travel restrictions will have eased further, by the end of the summer.

Can I Use Avios To Book Flights On Aer Lingus?

For those not looking for an all-inclusive Sandals package, booking Aer Lingus with Avios is a great way to redeem airline points for reward flights.

Reward flights are airline tickets you book with loyalty points instead of cash, you only have to pay the taxes and any service fees or surcharges. Whilst passengers will have to pay UK Air Passenger Duty on the new Manchester-Barbados route, the taxes payable on Aer Lingus reward flights from Ireland are typically far lower than those charged for BA flights from the United Kingdom. Aer Lingus also has a strong route network, particularly to North America. For example, you can fly Dublin to Philadelphia in a flat-bed business class seat for just £122 in taxes and 50,000 Avios points. Flights from Dublin to the US east coast can cost as little as £75 in taxes and fees, after Avios redemption.

For clarity, if you are starting your journey in the UK, you will need to book a cheap flight to Dublin on a separate booking to your transatlantic leg. If you book travel to the US, via Ireland, on your Avios reward flight ticket, you will also need to pay UK Air Passenger Duty at the prevailing rate for a long-haul flight.

Booking two separate tickets dramatically reduce the taxes, but it means your connecting flight definitely won’t be held for you, so you must build in enough time and flexibility to ensure you don’t miss your connection.

One other bonus, flying Aer Lingus to the US, you can normally clear US Customs and Immigration in Ireland and arrive in the States as a domestic passenger. This avoids the immigration queues that often build up at US airports.

How Do I Use Avios To Book Flights On Aer Lingus?

You can’t book a reward flight directly on the Aer Lingus website or by logging directly into an account with the airline’s loyalty programme, Aer Club. Aer Lingus Reward Flight redemptions can’t be booked on BA.com either, in most instances.

BA Executive Club members can phone British Airways to book a reward flight on Aer Lingus, but this can be a hassle, particularly since call waiting times have increased since the coronavirus pandemic.

So the easiest thing to do, for anyone who isn’t already an Aer Lingus AerClub member, is to open a free AerClub account. Then, you can use your AerClub

credentials to sign in on Avios.com where you can transfer Avios from BA to your AerClub account and book your reward flights.

Booking Aer Lingus with Avios might sound complicated, but in reality, it isn’t too difficult and the tax savings can be significant.

What are the cancellation rules on Aer Lingus flights booked with Avios?

Flexibility is king right now. Luckily the cancellation and change fee rules are the same for Aer Lingus reward flights as with a BA Avios reward flight. You can cancel or rebook your flight up to 24 hours before departure, either online or by calling customer services.

If you cancel, 100% of your Avios will be refunded, your taxes and charges payment will also be refunded. You may have to pay a £35 cancellation fee per person, depending on the policy in force at the time you cancel, but if the taxes and charges you incurred were less than £35 per person, this charge won’t apply.

For more help and advice, sign up for Reward Flight Finder.

Original Source: https://rewardflightfinder.com/news-and-advice/aer-lingus-gets-sandals-for-caribbean-holidays