While many European co-branded credit cards have become less appealing over the last few years due to lowered interchange fees between banks, rewarding offers seem still to be possible, as Aer Lingus demonstrates.

The program is relaunching its Mastercard, issued by Bank of Ireland, on October 23. The base earn rate is still weak with 1 mile per 3 EUR spent (but an improvement from the current 1 per 4). This earn rate is though dramatically improved by an annual bonus of 40,000 miles for spending 10,000 EUR.

Combined with the low base earn rate and the limited other benefits, the strategy for that card should hence clearly be to reach the annual 10,000-EUR threshold, without though going beyond it.