Redeem Alaska Miles for Aer Lingus?

You Can Now Redeem Alaska Miles for Aer Lingus Business Class to Ireland and Europe, but chances are you won't want to. You can of course also redeem for economy class, but most readers of this site aren't interested in that. Take a look at the Alaska Mileage Plan Award Chart for Aer Lingus:

Alaska Mileage Plan Award Chart for Aer Lingus

As you've noticed, there's an enormous range for Aer Lingus Business Class: 60,000 – 280,000 Mileage Plan miles, each way. And guess what? 60,000 saver level seats, at least at time of writing aren't available. Ever. Only 280,000 miles seats.

Now, you might suspect from the huge range that the 280,000 miles awards are for enhanced award space, when other airlines don't have access to Aer Lingus awards. And that is in fact true; Alaska Mileage Plan displays its 280,000 Aer Lingus Business Class awards even when other Aer Lingus partners such as United MileagePlus don't have any Aer Lingus Business Class awards available.

When asked, Alaska Mileage Plan told me that the 60,000 awards are for Aer Lingus Business Class with fare class U, while the 280,000 awards are for Aer Lingus Business Class with fare class I. The typical lowest Aer Lingus Business Class fare is booking class I, but if you search on United.com, it's possible to find a very few dates with Aer Lingus Business Class award space, which, sure enough, is in fare class U.

Take July 23, when there are 4 Aer Lingus Business Class awards using United MileagePlus miles, for 70,000 miles:

Redeem 70K United Miles for Aer Lingus Business Class

You can then go to Alaska Mileage Plan and find the same Aer Lingus Business Class award for 60,000 miles:

How to Redeem 60K Alaska Miles for Aer Lingus Business Class

While it's always good to have additional choices, I certainly don't recommend frittering away 280,000 Alaska miles on Aer Lingus Business Class, when you could buy a roundtrip ticket on some dates for~$2890–that's less than $1500 each way, making a 280,000 mile redemption worth only half a cent per mile, worse than many Delta Skypesos redemptions. Even the 70K United miles redemption would only come to 2.1 cents per mile, barely worth it vs. paying cash for the ticket.

Don't get me wrong; we enjoyed our Aer Lingus Business Class flight from Dublin to New York JFK, pictured below in our Aer Lingus Business Class Video Review on YouTube. But it's best to redeem other miles for it, not Alaska miles.