Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Get 40% off Avios redemptions – economy and business – on 50 Iberia routes

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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.

Iberia new 2

Let’s take a look at the deals.  The home page for this promotion is here.

Short haul Iberia 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 Iberia 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.


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 (33)

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

  • Peaceful Waters says:

    51,00 points plus £161.20 for Madrid to Lima in business?

    That’s exceptional.

    Shame my trip is being lined up for 2017.

  • Johnnycl says:

    OT Iberia PluStore 320 Avios for Amazon-buyvip and Showroomprive have posted today.

  • Sebastian says:

    This is great timing, I need a flight to Panama and was going to book via Iberia anyway.

  • ringingup says:

    I think I saw the same offer on Avios.com last night?

  • Nick says:

    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?

    • Jamie P says:

      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

      • Scallder says:

        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.

        • James T says:

          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.

  • Lochlann says:

    That’s odd – for direct IB flights to LIM over Easter I’m being offered 125,000 Avios and £161.20 return…

  • Bigglesgirl says:

    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!

    • Martin says:

      @ 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

      • Bigglesgirl says:

        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!

  • TomTom says:

    Is it possible on the Iberia website to find out when the account was created?

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

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