How to transfer Avios points from Iberia to British Airways Executive Club

I have covered a few Iberia Plus promotions on Head for Points recently.  This has led to a few emails asking exactly how you can transfer Avios points from Iberia Plus to British Airways Executive Club. The process has got even messier following security ‘improvements’ last year.

This article will act as a reference post and I can direct future queries to it.

The important thing to remember is that there is the ‘proper’ way to do this and there is the ‘fudge when Iberia’s IT goes down the toilet’ way.  I will cover both here.

Here are a few things to remember before moving Avios points out of Iberia Plus:

Your Iberia Plus account must be 90 days old before you can move Avios points out of it

If you want to transfer INTO Iberia Plus, your Iberia account must also have earned at least 1 Avios point.  The easiest way is to do a transfer from American Express Membership Rewards or credit a flight, car rental or hotel stay.

You can transfer your points back and forth, as many times as you like, for free

Transfers are instantaneous

There are two ways to do the transfer.  You will often find that doing it from ba.com fails for technical reasons no-one can understand.  You may have more success doing it from Iberia Plus.  If that fails, there is also a Plan C.

New security measures

In 2017 Avios introduced improved security measures for people wanting to transfer Avios between their accounts.

The bottom line is that pretty much ALL of your personal data must now match.  Email, date of birth, home address ….. the lot.

If you have combined Avios in the past but are now having problems, it is possible that your accounts do not have the same email address, or you moved house and forgot to update one of them.

There is also another issue.  Because of the Spanish surname system, signing up for Iberia Plus involves you giving your ‘first name’, ‘last name’ and ‘second last name’.  Your English surname should be ‘last name’.  If you enter your middle name as ‘second last name’ then Iberia’s system treats it as part of your surname and cannot match it with your Avios or BA surname.  This cannot be corrected online.

From ba.com:

Go to ba.com and log-in via the top right of the screen

Go to the ‘Manage My Account’ section which is under the ‘Executive Club’ tab

Click on ‘Combine My Avios’ in the left hand margin

However, as I mentioned above, this often fails to work when you try to move Avios points out of Iberia.  This forces you to plan B.

From iberia.com:

This is the one that proves tricky because it is hidden away!

Go to iberia.com and log-in by hovering over the ‘Iberia Plus’ box in the top right of the screen

Hover over ‘Iberia Plus’ again in the top-right corner and select ‘My Avios’ under the ‘My Profile’ menu

From the ‘My Avios’ page, click on ‘Buying or transferring Avios’

At the bottom of that page, headed ‘Buy, give away or transfer Avios’, you will see the line “Don’t forget you can combine your Avios with those of other customer loyalty programmes”.  Click this text.

(Important:  if your Iberia account has not been open for 90 days and has not earned at least 1 Avios point, you will NOT see this line of text because you are not yet able to transfer Avios.  Instead, you will see this:

There is a blank space under the ‘Transfer’ box where the ‘combine’ link should be.)

You will now be on the ‘Combine My Avios’ page.  Follow the instructions to send your points to avios.com or British Airways Executive Club.

And if that still fails to work ….

From avios.com:

For reasons unknown, ba.com and iberia.com will often throw up error messages when you try to transfer between the programmes.

However, using avios.com as an intermediary almost always works perfectly.

If you don’t have an avios.com account you will need to create one.  Then, from inside avios.com using the ‘Combine My Avios’ option under ‘My Account’, do this:

Make a transfer from iberia.com into avios.com

Make a transfer from avios.com to ba.com

This WILL work (most of the time) even when other options fail.

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How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (October 2023)

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:

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

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

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.

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.

EDIT: Applications for this card are temporarily suspended due to IT issues with the British Airways On Business SME loyalty scheme.

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.

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