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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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Category

American Airlines and AAdvantage, British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus

Comments (55)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • MoonMan says:
    4 Dec4 December 07:50

    Does not quite seem like anywhere in the US, it won’t let me fly Paris to Hawaii (which is perhaps not a surprise given the extra distance and the fact that you would probably have to make 2 connections). If anyone is able to find a similar sort of price for Hawaii let me know!

    Excellent deal though, I would jump right on that if I hadn’t been to california this year. Had a quick look and was very surprised by the ample availability (at the moment).

  • Calchas says:
    4 Dec4 December 08:40

    You don’t need to book via the French site (at least, not if this is the same sale as three weeks ago); just put your origin on Iberia.com as PAR and the pricing will be in Euros with the ex-France fare rules.
    Some have had luck starting in other French cities as well. Booking on Iberia.com instead of expedia.com allows you to get AA transcons coded on AA in First instead of IB codeshares in business (same cabin), this way you can get 210 tier points instead of 140 for those sectors.

    • KARFA says:
      4 Dec4 December 08:48

      Agree with this entirely. You can book by just going to iberia.com, no need to select FR or ES (I think it defaults to the UK site).

      Don’t try and use the muli-stop tool as it doesn’t give the reduced fare for some reason.

      Also, the selection of flights offered on the IB site does not tend to list any routings via LHR ( I have seen it once only). However, if you book via expedia.fr, opodo.fr, or ebookers.fr you can get routings via LHR and on to the US on BA/AA. For these French sites you will need to use google chrome to do the translation – or not if you “parle Français”.

  • Mikee says:
    4 Dec4 December 10:17

    Some availability showing LAX-LHR-ORY on a BA A380 (18th Apr dep LAX).

    I presume you could ask for bags to be tagged to LHR and not take the onward connection to Paris?

    -Mikee-

    • Rob says:
      4 Dec4 December 10:34

      You can ask, but they may refuse. Not sure if a multi-stop booking would let you take the last leg a day or so later, which gives you an excuse for getting your bags back.

      • Mikee says:
        4 Dec4 December 10:51

        Tried a multi-stop booking but can’t achieve the same fare unfortunately.

        I guess you could also “decline” to take the onward flight to ORY on arrival at LHR if they didn’t tag bags (not ideal as this might delay the flight as they looked for the bags) but I have asked for no-onward tagging before without a problem although that was a while ago and with a different airline – check-in just re-tagged the bag and reminded me that I would need to re-check-in with the bags after going through immigration.

  • Tony says:
    4 Dec4 December 10:43

    I’m seeing the via-LHR option come up on flights to Austin (which makes sense). Nothing for the Gatwick-Florida routes.

    Need to decide if I rebook the family from Paris to Florida next Easter. Will lose the £1000 deposit I’ve already paid but stand to save around £3000. Questioning whether it’s worth the hassle with three kids, especially since there are no ‘via London’ options coming back for the return…

  • Peter says:
    4 Dec4 December 11:01

    Is it possible to add a 2-3day leg in New York? Cant seem to price that. Want to go to SFO or LAX or ORD but want to have at least 3 nights in New York. Trying for first week to mid week april 2014, cheers for the help.

    • Rob says:
      4 Dec4 December 11:15

      Doesn’t seem possible, unfortunately. Must be a ‘no stopovers’ clause in the (unpublished) fare rules.

    • Brian says:
      4 Dec4 December 13:09

      But you can book multi-leg flights – I’ve just tried Paris-New York and then return from San Francisco to Paris, for example. So that would be one way of having stopovers – you’d just have to organise separate flights within the US.

      • Rob says:
        4 Dec4 December 13:22

        Good point, it would only be a modest Avios redemption for a coast-to-coast US flight, and fundamentally no tax.

  • Dan says:
    4 Dec4 December 11:45

    If you’re after tier points, this actually works from almost any french airport, e.g. TLS – LAX will give you the extra 80 TPs for the internal flights (usually via MAD).

  • Nathan says:
    4 Dec4 December 12:59

    So what would be the best way to do this for New York in March? I would want my avios to go into my BA account and the tier points. Wouldn’t mind a night in Paris before flying to New York, anyone got the best suggestion?

    • Rob says:
      4 Dec4 December 13:21

      If you can get the seat, the OpenSkies direct flight from Paris to New York should give you a flat bed. The direct American flight from Paris is on a sloping seat. If you go Paris – Madrid – New York then you may or may not get a flat bed, depending on what plane Iberia puts on.

      You will get your BA Avios and tier points whichever option you take.

  • Felixstowe Flyer says:
    4 Dec4 December 13:06

    I am looking at possibles for April and keen to get tier points. Without more than say 1 flight change, what might I get for a flight from Paris to New York or Chicago? My ultimate aim is to try to get silver by November and I am at 70TP so far.

    • Rob says:
      4 Dec4 December 13:19

      The key point is 2000 miles, at which point a flight counts as long haul.

      A bog-standard Paris to New York non-stop would be 280 points (140 x 2). However, Paris to New York via Madrid would be 40 + 140 + 140 + 20 = 320, although you are still short.

      What you want to do, for mega TP benefits, is to fly to the US West Coast with a plane change on the East Coast. All four legs would then be over 2,000 miles so you would earn 560 tier points for Paris – New York – San Francisco and back. Not sure if New York to Miami would be over 2000 miles?

      • Peter says:
        4 Dec4 December 14:27

        should be 640, no?

        110+210+210+110=640 (domestic legs in F, so 210)

        • Brendan says:
          4 Dec4 December 15:45

          PAR-NYC-SFO//SFO-NYC-PAR should be
          140 + 210 + 210 + 140 = 700 if you make sure the domestic US legs are in F. Should be the flights with both an AA flight number and on AA metal

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