Get £860 business class tickets to anywhere in the US!

I rushed out a post on Monday to flag up the amazingly generous £1,000 Club World that British Airways was making available to certain destinations over Christmas.  This has now been officially launched as a two-day sale, which expires on the 5th, but the best seats have already been taken by HFP readers and others ‘in the know’.

At the same time, Iberia has relaunched what is – frankly – one of the weirdest promotions I have seen in a long time.

Iberia is selling flights (business class) from Paris to North America for €1,000.  This is despite the fact that, obviously, Iberia does not fly to North America from Paris.  Iberia doesn’t fly much to North America from anywhere, frankly.

This is not a ‘published’ fare, which in plain English means that there are no official fare rules.  It is certainly not refundable.

It appears that ticket dates can be changed for a €300 fee (“Modifications autorisées avant le départ du vol avec une pénalité de 300€”).  However, changing the outbound date will reprice the ticket at the cheapest fare available at that time, which will be hugely expensive.  Changing the return date after departure should not involve repricing.

Here are the key details, as far as I can work them out:

To price these deals, you need to visit iberia.com and select ‘France’ from the dropdown country menu at the top.  Note that the website will then be operating in French or Spanish.  However, use Google Chrome as your browser and it will offer to automatically translate for you. (EDIT: comments below suggest that the main Iberia English site is also now showing these fares.)

You need to fly FROM Paris (Orly or Charles De Gualle) to a city in the US.

You need to depart by April 15th

Availability is wide open, every day

Who will I be flying with?

In the vast majority of cases, you will be offered an American Airlines flight from Paris to the US.  You need to remember that these are generally older AA aircraft which do not have fully flat seats in Business Class.

However, if you look for New York you will see some seats offered on the OpenSkies direct service from New York to Paris, and that does offer a fully flat seat.

If you are offered a connection in Madrid and a transfer to Iberia for the long-haul leg, this may also be on a fully flat seat, depending on which Iberia plane you get.

In very rare cases searches will also pull up British Airways flights, connecting in Heathrow.

If you have a domestic connection in the US, this should book into First Class as most American domestic flights have just two classes – first and economy.  In some cases, this does not seem to be happening so keep an eye on what iberia.com is showing you for each leg.

Example please

Here is a typical fare you can find – €1,048 (£868) from Paris to San Francisco in early February.

Outbound is €573 on February 4th and inbound is €476 on February 11th.

Remember that you will earn full British Airways tier points and Avios for these flights as well.

Flights seem to be available for departure dates up to April 15th.  There are some excellent opportunities here, without a doubt.

Is this a fare error?  These flights were available two weeks ago for a few days, disappeared and have now come back.  They are being discussed widely so I feel happy sharing them here.  In any event, it doesn’t matter.  The US Government does not allow airlines to cancel flights which touch US soil if they were mispriced, so you have no risk.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

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There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.