Iberia Plus has launched a new promotion offering an aggressive 40% discount on Avios redemptions on a number of Iberia routes. These include both UK to Spain and ex-Spain long-haul routes.
Both Economy and Business Class flights are included.
You need to book by 29th February. Flights must be taken by 19th June. If you book on Iberia, as opposed to Iberia Express or Iberia Regional, the earliest departure date is 1st March.
Let’s take a look at the deals. The home page for this promotion is here.
Short haul deals
From the UK, you can redeem on the following routes for a 40% discount:
From 3,900 Avios each way – Heathrow to Madrid on Iberia
From 4,500 Avios each way – Birmingham / Edinburgh / London Gatwick / Manchester to Madrid on Iberia Express
A business class return from Heathrow to Madrid is 15,300 Avios plus €92 on off-peak dates. Remember that Iberia runs long-haul planes on some Heathrow rotations so you could get a fully flat bed down to Madrid. Look for services operated by A330 or A340 aircraft.
If you are not based in the UK, there are plenty of other EU departure points. There are also plenty of Spanish domestic routes discounted – see the website for the list.
Long-haul deals
These are the discounted long-haul routes from Madrid:
Lima, Mexico City, Panama, Rio de Janeiro, Santo Domingo, Sao Paulo
For Lima, Mexico City, Panama and Santo Domingo, business class IS included.
Taxes are also very low
Here is an example of pricing.
Madrid to Mexico City
Business Class, return
Off peak dates
51,000 Avios + £175 tax (usually 85,000 Avios)
An Economy return on the same route, booked into Blue Class (Iberia’s cheapest but hardest to find Economy redemption band) is just 25,500 Avios plus £160 of tax.
Remember, these are Iberia Plus deals ONLY
This means:
You can ONLY book these flights on the Iberia website.
You can ONLY book these flights using Avios sitting in Iberia Plus.
Iberia Plus uses a different calendar of peak and off-peak dates to British Airways. The dates for March can be found in this article.
If you don’t already have an Iberia Plus account then you are stuffed, unfortunately (although I have suggested many times that everyone should have one, specifically for promotions like this.) Even if you open an Iberia Plus account today, you cannot transfer Avios across from British Airways Executive Club or avios.com until it has been open for 90 days.
You cannot add a connecting BA flight to the same ticket – and you don’t want to, because it would trigger long-haul Air Passenger Duty
Your connecting flight to / from Madrid should be booked separately or you will see a substantial increase in the taxes charge due to UK Air Passenger Duty being added to the long-haul leg.
You can hopefully find a connecting flight in the sale as well!
Whilst the list of long-haul routes is not hugely exciting, there are some interesting destinations there. If you have time to get away, there are some good opportunities here to see somewhere new at a very low cost.
You must book at iberia.com by 29th February for travel by 19th June.
(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for the latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios from current offers and promotions.)
About Head for Points
51,00 points plus £161.20 for Madrid to Lima in business?
That’s exceptional.
Shame my trip is being lined up for 2017.
OT Iberia PluStore 320 Avios for Amazon-buyvip and Showroomprive have posted today.
Mine too – I thought they were never coming!
Me too. Now I can stop the emails.
Me too! At last 🙂
Oddly, Avios.com’s ‘Combine My Avios’ opiton has vanished.
@AviosUK response to the issue:
“Hi! We’re aware of an issue with ‘Combine my Avios’ and we’re working to fix this as soon as we can. Please try later.”
They’ve fixed it. Sorted
Mine posted and I stopped the emails immediately, took a bit of guesswork to guess the Spanish word for ‘unsubscribe’
Managed to stop showroomprive.es…
how’d you stop the Amazon Buy-VIP?
This is great timing, I need a flight to Panama and was going to book via Iberia anyway.
I think I saw the same offer on Avios.com last night?
If you book from Madrid and then book a separate positioning return from London to Madrid to avoid the UKAPD, can you still check the bags through from London to final destination?
Yes there should be no issue doing this when you check in for your flight from London as long as it is on a OW carrier
Not necessarily with all OW airlines. Did a flight to lima back in September, BA to Miami and then LAN to Lima and it turns out that LAN use a different system to BA so they couldn’t do it. I would have thought flying BA or Iberia to Madrid would be fine though.
You should be fine Nick – I have done exactly the same kind of booking in the past to avoid APD. The BA check-in staff at LHR have had no problem checking my bag through to my final destination on a separate IB ticket.
That’s odd – for direct IB flights to LIM over Easter I’m being offered 125,000 Avios and £161.20 return…
Ah, excludes 18-28 March…
That covers the Easter bank holiday weekend, which I was looking at. Oh well!
After the nightmare I’ve been having trying to get my Groupon purchase sorted (only 1 out of the 5 vouchers I purchased ever exchanged properly on their website and both Groupon and Iberia keep telling me to get the other to sort it out – time to engage my credit card company for the refund me thinks), anything to do with Iberia is now a ‘NO GO’ area for me!
@ Bigglesgirl I’m at 0/5 vouchers.
Iberia and Groupon have been shocking to deal with.
100% will be very cautious with any ‘deals’ in the future
Hi Martin,
Agreed! Now on the third attempt by Groupon to pass the blame onto Iberia. It looked promising about a week ago as I got a response from Groupon saying they had escalated it, but no such luck. Credit card will definitely be getting a call this week before my 90 day purchase protection runs out. Ironically if I had out this through Paypal the resolution procedure would have been a lot easier!
Is it possible on the Iberia website to find out when the account was created?
got all my iberia groupons iberiastore bonus last week. 🙂
everything worked a treat. cant wait for similar offer.
One of the worst websites to look up tickets, mostly because of the instability.
Also for Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro the deal is in economy only, a ploy.
Looking at Iberia for a flight today. Have not found the reduced fare but I did find it interesting that their cash + avios fares are very generous. For the route I was looking at, you could pay the standard 11.2k avios and £16, or as low as 3.4k avios and £56. Iberia are basically selling avios at 5p per avios if you take this last option, which is pretty good.
11,250 Avios + £ 15.90
10,150 Avios + £ 25.90
8,450 Avios + £ 35.90
6,750 Avios + £ 40.90
5,050 Avios + £ 50.90
3,400 Avios + £ 55.90
Good spot, I will look into this
This was an economy avios fare from MAD-LHR. This 5p price point does not seem to come up much elsewhere, e.g. on the “blue” or “business” fare it is mostly 7p an avios and on long haul the same. Not quite clear how Iberia have devised their pricing for this but on some select routes it will make sense to pay avios+cash over full avios.
Mind you 7p an avios is OK too, if you are low on avios..
Maybe a bit dull but do you get ba tier points on an avios plus money booked on Iberia?
If you mean a cash ticket where the price has been reduced using Avios, yes. If you mean a reward ticket where you have added some cash because you didn’t have enough Avios, no.
im shortly travelling from LHR via MAD to SCL (santiago chile) in business plus (lowest fare option) via Iberia and then SCL ro MEndoza via LANout 13/4 back 21/4 . if i try to book via BA site then £400 more expensive than booking via IB site even on sameIB flights. All flights are Operated by IB plus LAN for last SCL/MDZ sector but cheapest to book that separately! So booking via IB is a no brainer but how do I ensure I get BA tier points as this would get me to silver from bronze and also the ba bronze avios bonus. do i have to put in BAEC number into booking or IB plus one..or doesnt it matter? I have joined iberia plus as you suggested but only as a base member. im sure there is a trick here im missing but cant work out what best. any help appreciated!