The migration from Avios Travel Rewards Programme to British Airways Executive Club is underway. The first batch of avios.com accounts have already been closed and the rest will be done over the next couple of months.
One common question that comes up is this:
“When my Avios Travel Rewards Programme account is closed, how will I be able to move Avios from British Airways Executive Club to Iberia Plus? ‘Combine My Avios’ appears to be permanently broken when you try to go directly from BA to Iberia or vice versa.”
The good news is that you are not doomed to pay the price for Avios’s IT failure.
If you want to move Avios between BA and Iberia in the future, you will need to open an Aer Lingus Aer Club or Vueling Club account. The reason this works is that both of these schemes use the avios.com IT platform and you can use it as a conduit between British Airways Executive Club and Iberia Plus.
Here is a worked example using Aer Lingus Aer Club, although Vueling Club works the same way:
Visit the Aer Lingus website here and click on ‘Join Aer Club’ under the Aer Club dropdown menu
Fill in your name and email, using the same email address you use for BA Executive Club and Iberia Plus
You will be asked if you have an Avios account. Say ‘No’.
Fill in your address – again, this needs to match your BA and Iberia details
Create a username and password to use on avios.com – use a non-alphanumeric character even though it is not required
(Aer Club and avios.com do not have the same requirements for what must be included in your password. This is despite the fact that you will be logging into both websites using the same details. Your Aer Club password will be rejected by avios.com unless you include a non-alphanumeric character.)
You need to use matching details from your Iberia and BA accounts because that it is the only way to pass the ‘Combine My Avios’ security checks.
So …. my Aer Club account is now happily open:
Off I go to the avios.com website and I log-in by using my new Aer Club details. Under ‘My Account’ it confirms that this is an Aer Club balance:
And I can now do a test transfer. I pull in 1000 Avios from my British Airways Executive Club account using ‘Transfer Avios to / from British Airways or Iberia’ under ‘Your Account’:
…. and then I send them off to Iberia Plus, where they arrived immediately:
I then reversed the process and was able to get the Avios back into my British Airways account without any trouble.
So, good news. Despite the closure of the Avios Travel Rewards Programme, you can still move Avios from British Airways to Iberia by opening an Aer Club or Vueling Club account and logging in to avios.com with those details.
(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
OT. Did anyone else get the ideria email yesterday. 50% back on avois flights to Madrid Inc business
Got it but small print said targeted so I didn’t cover it.
Its now on the front page of the Iberia website.
https://www.iberia.com/gb/news-updates/Recover-Avios/
Yes, is this the same offer?
https://www.iberia.com/web/webPartners.do?service=/web/showOferta.do&language=en&menuId=WPOTRS&idOferta=304587
Interesting…my email has different terms. This offer seems to be for Iberia express, whereas the email offer is for any iberia flight from Heathrow to Madrid booked before 3 June and flight taken before 31 Dec…in any case the link you posted seems to be open to all?
They are two different offers. The one in the link is for any Iberia Express trip to/from one of 8 destinations (from/to Madrid), has to be booked by 31st May and travel by 31st July.
The email offer was limited to Heathrow – Madrid (and/or back), book by 3rd June, fly up to 31st July. I only checked the small print of this after I had found a LGW-MAD-LGW flight I was going to book for August Bank holiday week, so I’m glad I double checked!
KevMc: my flight dates say for flights to Dec 31 (email offer)
@Jackh yes, sorry – typo! 🙂 email offer is 31st December, link offer is 31st July
I asked Avios to transfer my Avios to my BAEC account and they said they couldn’t because I/we had a household account with Avios and separate individual accounts with BAEC. The person I spoke with at Avios told me that BAEC would issue 2 new accounts for my wife and myself when the transfer was carried out and then BAEC would combine each of our 2 accounts into one each. Not expecting this to be done without any problems or am I being over pessimistic?
I asked about this and the CS advisor at avios.com just split our household account into two then and there over the phone. Didn’t even need my OH’s authorisation and he was the head of the account! So from there I just moved all our avios across to BAEC myself.
The Avios CS guy told me I had “missed” the Household Account “splitting” date so it would have to proceed as mentioned in my first post. I hadn’t known there was a cut off date, or even a date for that procedure at all. Still doesn’t instill me with confidence!
Maybe I’m missing something here but I transferred Avios from Iberia to BA directly yesterday via the Iberia website ‘combine avios’ …….it worked fine!
I’m pretty sure the problem is household accounts. If all your accounts are individual you won’t have a problem, but the combine my avios terms and conditions specifically exclude the transfer of avios in some cases:
Members of a Household Account under the Programmes may not use CMA other than (a) from a BA Executive Club Household Account to an individual account under the Avios Programme or the Iberia Plus Programme and (b) from the individual account under the Avios Programme to a Household Account under the BA Executive Programme. Any other Household account transaction will not be permitted under CMA
That means if you have a BA household account you can’t transfer directly from Iberia, but can via avios.com.
Mine have gone missing . Disappeared from the Avis account but not arrived in the ba account. Both are household accounts
Same here using the Avios transfer tool, but also transferred from Iberia to BAEC without any problem using the BAEC tool as my e-rewards go into my Iberia account
I had created an AerClub account but linked it with my Avios.com account. Will it work too? I have a BA Household account so this took is jut very useful! I have an error message this morning on Avios.con when trying to Combine my Avios. I hope it is not linked. Any thoughts Rob? Thanks!!
If, under My Account, is says you are an Aer Club member (like the screenshot I took) then you’re fine and the account won’t be closed.
Thanks Rob but indeed that is the weird thing. It does not show the same “You’re a member of…” though I am sure both accounts are linked because this is the same membership number when I log on AerClub website. Am I missing something here? Thanks for your help!
No idea on that basis! I would sit and wait to see if the Avios account is closed or not, although if you’ve had the emails about the closure then you should assume it will be and so you might need to open another via AerClub.
Ben,
I started a chat on Avios website and asked them to link my Aer Club and Avios accounts. The next day I had my ‘you’re a member of..” badge showing on.
Regards
Thanks a lot Rob and Arcadius I will try a chat tomorrow then! 😉
I took to twitter posing the household account issue when the closure announcement was made. The avios answer was they were aware of the issue and the only way to get the transfer between IB and BA will be to disband the household account, make the transfer and then make another household account. There are no plans to rework the technology to allow an inter-program transfer when part of or head of a household account. Suffice to say I responded that this is a somewhat user unfriendly work around.
What if, like me, you are already a member of Aerclub? Do I have to delete this and start again?
No, you’re fine. That account won’t be closed.
+1
No. If you log in to avios.com using your AerClub details it should show under ‘Your Account’ that you are an AerClub member, which means your account won’t be closed.
Clicking the button ‘Transfer my Avios’ prominently displayed on the Avios home page returns the message that ‘Combine my Avios is not available at this moment.’
|I had that message after I did a transfer from Aerclub to BA, but it worked again after a minute. Keep trying.
Correction, thought it was OK but after I did my transfer it gave me that ‘Combine my Avios is not available at this moment.’ Maybe Rob’s post has flooded them with people doing transfers! Or maybe Avios.com doesn’t like people doing more than one move in 24 hours? I’ll try again later and hope it’s fixed.
Not strictly related, but, with Summer holidays on the horizon, it may be worth some looking to ‘spend’ Avios on FlyItaly….the old Meridiana outfit. I can’t see a way to combine, but they have some interesting routes. You currently have to call them to make a reward booking, and it’s only 60k Avios to upgrade to their Gold Card….but not sure it’s possible without combining or flying a lot with them.
Perhaps when Rob gets a minute, he could take a look and review.
Slightly OT – can someone confirm if the Lloyds Avios upgrade voucher (for spending £7k) is based on “calendar year” or “card membership year” – I can never quite remember and the T&C’s are unclear.
Membership. There are (were?) two inconsistent versions of the T&Cs
I had a bad experience trying to transfer from Iberia to BAEC , they went ‘missing’ . I got an email from Iberia to say that something went wrong and i needed to call them and i should click on the link provided to get a contact number , the link didn’t work ….
I then phoned the number that is on the Iberia plus website , they then said that they could only deal with bookings and not missing Avios problems …….?
Tried some numbers i found on the internet , still didn’t get through to anyone that could help , sent a few emails , got no reply , tried there twitter account and they gave me a different number and i spoke to a guy on the phone who sounded like he half knew what he was talking about . He said he would give me a call in a few days as he had to try and find the missing avios , he never called back ….
After about a week , the Avios showed up !
A great deal of stress
Slightly OT and this may have been mentioned but why is there a difference when booking flights with avios on the avios website compared with booking on BA website?
I just looked at a return flight from EDI-LON which is 8,000 avios + £35 on avios. website and 8,000 avios and £54.24 on BA website – exact same flights and times. Almost £20 more in taxes, fees and carrier charges.
You have not earned 1 Avios in BAEC in the last 12 months and so do not qualify for Reward Flight Saver pricing.
That’s weird. Were you booking BA flight as a redemption or part-paying with Avios? I thought BA reward saver payment was £35 if it’s economy?
Sorry, Rob just beat me to a reply. As always, it’s much more insightful.
Bit confused… created the Aerclub account and don’t seem to have a username, just a membership number starting 3081… but this doesn’t seem to work for the login to Avios.com. Should it?
You had to create a username during the Aer Club sign-up process – or at least you do now, not sure if you joined earlier. Your 3081 number should work on avios.com – I assume it works on Aer Club?
Ah so I did, sorry it was my failing memory. Now that I’m logged in to my Aer Club account on Avios.com, whenever I try to combine my Avios it tells me my session has expired. Pretty sure it’s just a bit of a temporary IT issue because I managed to do a transfer from my old, non-Aer-Club Avios.com account to BAEC this morning. I’ll keep trying. Thanks a lot for the help.
I’m terribly confused!
My aerclub is linked to my avios account.
I have a household BAEC account.
I have an Iberia account too.
At the moment, I can transfer via avios.com from IB to BA in two stages.
There doesn’t appear to be a CMA functionality via AerClub.
Is the avios.com website (platform?) going to continue? I.e. the only thing that will change is I will not have a stand-alone avios account, but if I want to transfer from IB to BA I will be able to log in through avios and do a two-stage shuffle?
Sorry if this is answered elsewhere!
i’m exactly in the same boat and have no idea (and called Dave too)
answers on a postcard – I guess I will try once all this has passed a couple of months worth of
customer service overload and see what happens….
Hi,
1) is still mandatory to register in BA executive club and Aer Club with a UK address in order to create an account?
1.1) avíos.com may have a different address than Aer Club and BA Executive Club?
2) have to use the same (non alphanumeric) password to the Aer Club and avíos.com account?
Thanks for your post and help.
Only avios.com has a UK requirement. AerClub and BA have no requirements.
1.1 – your Aer Club and BA accounts must match addresses in order to do transfers (avios.com doesn’t matter as that is being closed)
2 – seems so, yes (only 1 character must be non-alphanumeric)
I previously created an Aer Club acct (after the uk avios closure announcement) and selected yes to having an avios acct and used my avios number to link accts.
I log into my Aer acct and it shows my avios total etc but if I log in to avios it doesnt show any indication of it being linked to Aer. Trying to login to the /ie/en_ie avios page just redirects to the uk page with the standard this is closing etc msg.
For an Aer avios acct to be linked properly, does it need to have the youre a member of aer club graphic on it and does it work through the gb url or does it normally go to the ie site?
Just wait til your IB+ account gets locked as they think you’ve entered the wrong (saved on my browser) security answers too many times. The hoops you have to jump through are beyond bonkers.
Slightly OT but I’ve been using avios.com to redeem seasonal flights in Flybe. Any idea how I will be able to do that in the future?
Will be ok via ba.com and if availability is different (which they swear not) open an Aer Club account and redeem from there.
Thanks. Will definitely try though Aer Lingus. Never seen those Flybe flights on ba.com