New Avios routes to Madrid from Edinburgh and Manchester with Iberia

Iberia, BA’s sister airline, has announced a number of new UK routes.

The first to arrive will be a service from Edinburgh to Madrid.  This will launch in late March with the start of the Summer timetable.  It will initially operate four times a week but will increase to six flights per week over the Summer.

In September, Iberia is launching Manchester to Madrid.  This will operate four times per week.

Gatwick is also welcoming Iberia next year, in the form of its low(er) cost Iberia Express subsidiary.  There will be two flights per day to Gatwick starting in March.

The existing Heathrow services will continue as before, with up to eight Iberia services to Madrid each day plus a further five BA flights.

Tickets for the Edinburgh services are available for purchase at iberia.com or iberiaexpress.com although I cannot see any Avios seats loaded yet.

One upside for readers near Edinburgh and Manchester will be the ability to book Iberia long-haul redemptions more easily.  Iberia now has fully flat seats in business class and its taxes and charges on long-haul redemptions are usually £300 or so lower than BA.

Flying to the US via Madrid may take a couple of hours longer than flying via Heathrow but the cost saving will easily make up for it – as long as you book the UK to Madrid leg separately to avoid long-haul Air Passenger Duty.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (January 2021)

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

There are two official British Airways American Express cards:

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

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

If you have a small business, we especially recommend Capital On Cap’s Visa card which comes with a generous bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

(Want to earn more Avios?  Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)