Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get £875 Iberia business class return tickets to Rio de Janeiro!

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In response to a KLM fare sale, Iberia has launched an aggressive £875 return business class fare to Rio.

This is a very, very good deal, and makes it worth cancelling any Avios redemption you have booked to Rio in return for an Avios and tier point earning cash ticket.

Here are the rules:

Iberia A330 350

You must book by August 15th

Your outbound flight must be before December 31st

You cannot route on BA flights via London but you can use TAM and potentially other oneworld partners.  You will probably be heading Amsterdam to Madrid to XXXXX.

One free stopover is allowed in each direction – this would allow you to stop in Buenos Aires or Sao Paulo, potentially.

You can book on iberia.com.  If you want to build in stopovers, start with iberia.com and then move on to expedia.co.uk if necessary and try their multi-city tool.  Remember that you MUST start your trip in Amsterdam.

Availability is good in November and tighter at other times.  The available flights clearly show at £400+ each way in the booking engine.

If you ONLY have Iberia flights in your itinerary and book on iberia.com, you can even use ‘part pay with Avios’ to reduce the cash cost further.  An ‘Avios discount’ logo appears next to qualifying flights on the Iberia website.  You need to move Avios into Iberia Plus to do this, which means having an ‘active’ Iberia Plus account over 90 days old.

These flights will earn Avios and tier points as Iberia is a BA partner in oneworld (and, of course, is owned by the same company).  Iberia’s business class product is very good these days and is arguably better than Club World.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

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:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

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

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

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.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

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.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

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.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

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

Comments (32)

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

  • Jay says:

    Thank you so much for flagging this deal. Managed to get return business flights over christmas and new year period for £987. Took a little bit of fiddling with dates and Iberia’s system didn’t allow me to book online – I had to call them to book.

  • Peter Taysum says:

    Am VERY interested by this! 🙂

    Can I ask possibly a silly question?

    If I book on Iberia and use AVIOS to get discount, will I still get Tier points for BA or will it count towards Iberia? I’m now Gold (thank you) and want to maintain this…

    Thanks,
    Peter

    • Rob says:

      Once ticketed, you can change over the number in the booking to a BA one, either by ringing IB or waiting until check-in and doing it then.

  • colm says:

    Thanks for this Raffles. That’s New Year’s Eve sorted!

  • umichguy says:

    Booked it. The AMS-RIO flights via MAD came to £875 and the LON to AMS and back in economy cost £35 +8000 avios through RFS. All booked through BA phone booking.

    Will be my first thanksgiving in Brazil!

    p.s: Yes, I am from the U.S., currently based in London.

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

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