Loyalty programmes
AerClub
AerClub is the loyalty programme of the Irish airline Aer Lingus, with earning in Avios and elite status tiers. Avios is shared with British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Finnair Plus, and Club Vueling, and balances transfer between accounts across those programmes, which changes how the currency behaves.
The record
- Brand
- Aer Lingus
- Category
- Airlines
- Region
- Ireland
- Currency
- Avios
- Tiers
- true
- Confidence
- high
AerClub is the loyalty programme of the Irish airline Aer Lingus, aimed at flyers whose travel runs through Ireland and the routes Aer Lingus serves. Its members earn Avios, and that single fact separates this programme from most of the airline category, because Avios is not an Aer Lingus currency. It is a shared one.
## Avios circulates across six programmes
Our source records the same currency inside British Airways Executive Club, Iberia Plus, Qatar Airways Privilege Club, Finnair Plus, and Club Vueling alongside AerClub, with balances transferable 1:1 between accounts across those programmes. In practice a member's Avios are portable in a way an ordinary airline mile never is. A balance earned here can be consolidated with balances earned elsewhere, and a flyer who drifts between these carriers over the years can keep feeding one pot.
## A shared currency moves some control outside the airline
When an airline owns its miles outright, every decision about the currency, from issuance to devaluation, is made in one building with one member base in mind. Avios does not work that way. Decisions about a pooled currency land on every programme that uses it, which cuts both ways for an AerClub member. The currency is more durable than any single airline relationship, and a balance survives a member's defection to another Avios carrier. The same pooling means the value of what an AerClub member holds can shift because of choices made with a different programme's economics in view, and no amount of loyalty to Aer Lingus insulates against that.
## Tiers are AerClub's own, even though the currency is not
Our source confirms AerClub runs status tiers; their names and thresholds are not recorded, so they are not stated. The distinction worth carrying away is that status and currency separate cleanly in a shared-currency programme. Avios move between accounts. Tier standing does not: it is earned within AerClub and delivers its benefits through Aer Lingus. A flyer can be currency-rich across the whole Avios pool and hold status nowhere in it, and the reverse is just as possible.
## What is not established here
Earn rates and redemption values are omitted across this index because they change constantly. Our source gives no tier names or member count, no founding date, and no detail on transfer conditions beyond the 1:1 note above, so none of that appears. The confirmed record: an Irish airline programme with tiers, denominated in a currency five other programmes share.