My wife and I flew Aer Lingus back in 2016 after we spent a month in Europe. It was a fine experience, typical of any economy experience I’ve had. We flew from Dublin to Toronto, which is a reasonably short transatlantic flight, staying overnight before finishing the trek to California the nest day. It broke up the trip nicely. I had no issue finding Aer Lingus award availability for our economy flights.

I’ve been interested in flying the Irish flag carrier again, but this time in business class. They may not offer the most ground-breaking product, but their Airbus A330s offer a staggered 1-2-1 and 2-2-1 layout that looks spacious and comfortable. It’d beat flying 2-2-2 United business on the new nonstop service from SFO to Dublin.

But there is just one problem…

Is There Ever Aer Lingus Award Availability For West Coast Business Class?

After searching literally the entire award calendar for Aer Lingus availability via united.com, I came up completely dry. There is literally not a single seat available. I’m trusting that United’s filters for nonstop only in the award calendar are accurate.

I headed to avios.com to check for space as well, as Aer Lingus may offer a limited inventory to United. Trying to pick the most “off” days during off-peak times, I still came up dry. Spending 20 minutes or more checking different dates yielded the same thing: nothing.

I’ve known that Aer Lingus award availability be especially bad in business class, but I do recall when they made a good number of awards available a couple years ago. It seems that may have been a fluke? No idea. In any case, I won’t be able to score a seat anytime soon from the West Coast to Dublin.

Aer Lingus award availability

This makes me wonder how Aer Lingus award availability to the U.S. West Coast is managed. Is there simply enough business demand that revenue fares fill the cabins most days? Given that Dublin is a tech hub, this would not be too surprising for flights from the West Coast, especially Seattle and San Francisco. But every day? I doubt business travelers are flying out of SFO Wednesday evening.

This is frustrating to say the least. I know there are carriers and routes that are especially bad for award inventory, but this is beyond bad.

United isn’t far behind, though. Their new summer Dublin service also offers zero seats in business. Looks like I’m completely out of luck, although I am more interested in using Avios for an off-peak Aer Lingus award.

Conclusion

I’d love to fly Aer Lingus business class to Dublin, but I really am not interested in connecting to Boston or Washington D.C. to do so. The cross-country flight would likely be in economy, and given how short of a transatlantic flight it is to Ireland, it really wouldn’t be worth spending all the miles on business at that point.

What has your experience been? Have you flown Aer Lingus business class? Have you ever seen space available from the U.S. West Coast?

Feature image courtesy of Eric Salard via Flickr under CC BY 2.0 license