The madness continues …. Iberia’s ‘90,000 Avios points for £200’ ends tonight. Let’s do the maths.

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• keith says:

  25 Jun25 June 19:17

  I actually think Iberia should be able to pretty easily figure the vast majority of flights people are clearly not going to take and just oversell the flights. They can really sell most of these seats twice and say just leave 3 out of 10 for people who might actually fly. I think they can get paid twice for most of these seats and end up #winning.

  • luckyjim says:

    25 Jun25 June 19:33

    I expect most of £20 tickets were for flights that never sell out anyway.

    • ADS says:

      26 Jun26 June 00:15

      i booked most of mine on the 9.35pm departure to MAD – can’t imagine it’s ever rammed !

• Alan says:

  25 Jun25 June 21:54

  LOL must be running as one of the most-commented articles 😀 I didn’t opt for it in the end – travels already sorted for rest of the year/start of next year so didn’t want to be stuck with expiring points!

  • CV3V says:

    25 Jun25 June 22:01

    The original Iberia post has 537 comments! remember the old days when the hottest article might get up to 100 comments – 3V cards, deposits for PS4/PS3/Xbox games etc.!

    • Alan says:

      25 Jun25 June 22:20

      Haha yep 😛

      Plus the old compo entries – 6HG

      😀

• W says:

  25 Jun25 June 22:56

  What made me jump in the end was the fact that the last time Iberia did a ‘stupid’ stunt like that (remember when Avis didn’t appear to have a single rental car left in the on the island?) it worked out fine. Without that precedent, I’d have stayed out. WIth it, well, let’s see.

• Michael says:

  26 Jun26 June 00:52

  I missed this promotion by a couple of hours thanks to a long weekend of football which prevented me from checking up on my usual travel blogs.

  So I did a bit of digging and found that I could just book flights with Iberia and have 24 hours to cancel, just like with sister company BA. Little did I realise that unlike BA, Iberia have service fees tacked on to any cancellations regardless of ticket type.

  So without having done enough research on this, I foolishly went ahead and booked 5 separated trips with them in the hope that they’ll honour the promotion even though I missed the deadline by a couple of hours. I thought it wouldn’t be an issue as I could just ring them up to cancel within 24 hours if no dice on the promo.

  Instead I’ve had to cancel 5 separate bookings and pay £15 each in service fees to cancel them. Can anyone advise a better solution?

  • Adam says:

    26 Jun26 June 07:26

    Unfortunately not.

    But this plan was always doomed to failure as it takes up to ten days for the miles to post which would mean the 24 hours will have passed before you knew anyway.

• Mark says:

  26 Jun26 June 14:13

  So. where will my 180,000 avios get two of us next year?

  • the real harry1 says:

    26 Jun26 June 19:08

    you could redeem them on BA, for a start

    or see https://headforpoints.com/2018/01/30/how-to-book-avios-redemptions-on-iberia/

    or google ‘redeeming avios on Iberia’

    some of the points sites have already come up with a few ideas and I guess HFP will throw some meat in the pot in due course

• Lukethetraveller says:

  26 Jun26 June 18:01

  Related to this promo (I am trying to make the most of 90k avios arriving soon) – please advice as I can’t find the answer anywhere – if I book cash+avios discount ticket on my iberia account, is there any way to have tier points added to my BA account instead? I guess all bookings on IB will get IB plus number automatically, but I need tier points credited onto BA account. Many thanks

  • Neil says:

    26 Jun26 June 18:56

    Either try and change the IB number on the qatar or finnair site, and if that doesn’t work ask them to do it for you at airport check in when you travel.

  • Rob says:

    26 Jun26 June 18:57

    Can probably switch at check-in, or perhaps even at bag drop.

• the real harry1 says:

  27 Jun27 June 08:01

  hat tip david_oz on FT

  ‘I was racking my accounting brain about possible reasons why a rational company would engage in a promotion like this. The only reason I could think was an elaborate form of earnings smoothing whereby the cost of the avios is recognized immediately in Q2/Q3, traditionally the strongest quarters for airlines. The revenue from the flights more or less offsets the cost of issuing the avios, making the promotion effectively cost-neutral over the entire life of the promotion and redemptions. However the revenue is recognized (mostly) in Q1 which is seasonally much quieter for the airline industry. Therefore, they have effectively shifted profits from Q2/Q3 into Q1. If the avios are redeemed they don’t care because they already have a liability accrued for it, and if they expire unused that’s a nice little Q4 bonus for them in the form of breakage revenue. Probably none of this is material to Iberia (let alone IAG), and I’d be surprised if the accountants were even aware of the promotion before it happened, let alone consulted about the effect.’

  Thoughts?

  • Rob says:

    27 Jun27 June 09:16

    I think it is load factor. Report a high load factor (which is based on sold and not flown tickets which is why you go above 100% sometimes) and the City is happy.

    • the real harry1 says:

      27 Jun27 June 19:59

      Load factor/ some other measure that looks good publicly for H1/ some internal measure that means mgt meet H1 KPIs – those all look possibles

      None of which would presage IB somehow ‘cheating’ us out of the points; sticking neck on the block, I’d say that’s unlikely – I reckon T&Cs as published will be observed so the opportunity to use the points well is ours.

• Amanda says:

  27 Jun27 June 12:42

  Hi,

  My IB Plus number was input at time of booking and shows in the confirmation email. When I checked My Booking on Iberia.com yesterday, my IB Plus number was not against my booking (which I have now added)

  Does this void the promotion for 9000 avios points per booking since my IB Plus number wasn’t in the My Bookings section? (obviously some Iberia error)

  Thanks

  • the real harry1 says:

    27 Jun27 June 15:28

    I think you’ll be fine as you have the proof (the emails) so could chase it if necessary. But why not contact them if you are worried? 02 036 843 774

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