Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

How to spend your 90,000 Iberia Plus Avios – as you can’t move them to BA (Part 2)

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This is Part 2 of my article on how to spend your 90,000 Avios from the recent Iberia promotion.  Part 1 is here.

A word about peak and off peak dates

Just to make life even more complex, Iberia has its own list of peak and off-peak dates. This is different from the British Airways list. Here is the Iberia peak dates chart for 2019 (click to enlarge, green is peak):

2018

2019

Iberia Avios off peak calendar 2019

Iberia Avios off peak calendar 2019

Iberia Avios off peak calendar 2019

You can compare it with the British Airways peak and off-peak chart in this HfP article.

October half-term, for example, is a peak week for British Airways redemptions and peak pricing is in force. Iberia does not treat this week as a peak week.  During such periods the price differences can be stark:

  • London to New York, BA Club World, is 120,000 Avios during October half term
  • Madrid to New York, Iberia Business Class, is 68,000 Avios during October half term

And that’s before you factor in the massive difference in taxes ….

Iberia is the home of low taxes

Iberia Plus does not charge the full range of airport taxes and fuel surcharges imposed by ba.com.  This is a BIG thing and the real reason (apart from the better seat and potentially lower number of Avios needed) to consider Iberia seriously.

Let’s look at Madrid to New York in Business Class, return. Iberia, when you book on iberia.com, will charge 68,000 Avios plus £159 return on an off-peak date.

A BA redemption from London to New York (via ba.com on a BA plane) on the same route in Club World costs 100,000 Avios plus £538 on an off-peak date!  That is, by any stretch, a big difference.

More interestingly, if you try to book the Iberia Madrid to New York flight on ba.com using BA Avios, it will charge you £368 of taxes.  This is for the SAME Iberia flight which costs only £159 of tax on iberia.com using Iberia Avios.

Now, of course all is not plain sailing:

  • From the UK, you need to fly to Madrid. However, if you are not based in London you will be taking a connecting flight anyway. And the saving probably justifies not flying direct from London.
  • The London to Madrid flight cannot be booked on the same itinerary as the Madrid to New York flight or you will be obliged to pay UK Air Passenger Duty at the long-haul rate. Since you will have separate tickets, IB is not obliged to look after you if you miss your long-haul flight – although if you fly IB from London, it is very unlikely they would abandon you if the delay was down to them. 
  • A flight from London to Madrid, return, costs 15,000 Avios and £35 in Economy – but that is hardly making a great dent in your £379 per person saving.

Redeeming Avios on other oneworld airlines

You can also redeem Avios on oneworld partner airlines such as American Airlines and Qatar Airways.

For clarity, you need to be very careful before booking these because such redemptions are non-changeable and non-cancelable.  You also need to book return flights – availability will not even show if you only look for a one-way redemption.

Here is the distance-based pricing chart for oneworld partners.  Technically there is a separate chart for redeeming on American Airlines but it is the same as this one:

Iberia oneworld redemption chart

There clearly are some deals here.  If you transfer over 10,000 Avios from BA, or move 10,000 American Express Membership Rewards points into Iberia Plus, you will be at 100,000 Avios.

Using the chart above, that is good for a redemption – using as many oneworld airlines as you wish – of up 8,000 miles.

Redeeming for a cash discount on an Iberia, Iberia Express or Air Nostrum flight

You can use your 90,000 Avios for a cash discount against an Iberia, Iberia Express or Air Nostrum flight booked on iberia.com.  This will get you around 0.55p of value depending on how many you use.  Not being able to use this against a discount on a BA flight does, of course, make this less useful for UK residents.

Redeeming for hotels, tours and attractions

You can book 20,000 hotels and 30,000 tours and attractions via this page of the Iberia website.

We usually don’t recommend using your Avios for non-flight redemptions.  This is because the value you receive is generally poor – around 0.55p per Avios compared with 1p+ for flights.

In this case, however, you may think differently.  If you redeem your 90,000 Iberia Plus Avios for a hotel redemption, you will still be doubling your money compared to what you paid for the points.

There are also tours and attractions which can be booked.  I wouldn’t normally book these via an airport portal but, again, in this scenario it would be a decent result.

The hotels and attractions home page says that bookings using Avios are NOT changeable.  However, for hotels this is contradicted by people who have bookings who say that – if the room itself was advertised as a refundable one – you can cancel up to 72 hours before arrival for a £25 fee.

Conclusion

I hope this has given you some ideas for how to use your 90,000 Avios via Iberia Plus.

Do remember that Iberia Plus is not an area where I spend a lot of time so keep an eye out for any errors and omissions in what I wrote above and do not treat it as gospel.

At the end of the day, even if you end up using your 90,000 Avios for something sub-optimal – such as a hotel redemption – you will still have got an excellent return on the money you spent.


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 (114)

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

  • Matt says:

    Iberia being part the Avios program and stooping transfers to other Avios members in the scheme is a breach of membership quide lines.

    I am sure there will senior members of BAEC and AerClub or Avios.com won’t be happy with his either.

    Also the people buying after reading HFP original article won’t be happy either and some will blame
    HFP even that is NOT HFP fault.

    Now Iberia have my money I should be able to use my Avios when and where I see fit within the Avios program

    • Doug M says:

      Not when, it was clearly stated by 1st December or lose them.

    • marcw says:

      I invite you to read the Combine my Avios T&C.

  • Frenzie says:

    Is my understanding correct that you can not currently top up Iberia Avios balance from BA Exec or Avios.com account either ?

    • Matt says:

      Correct Fenzie all combine my Avios sites are down at moment.

      Avios is saying it is a technical glitch but it all started going to hell when Iberia Avios reward points got posted to Iberia account holders.

    • Janne Ohtonen says:

      It works with Windows machine and Internet Explorer or Edge browsers. Mac and Chrome give an error on all CMA sites.

  • Steve R says:

    Still no Avios received – email fired off with copy of passport

    Was planning to move to BAEC to could amalgamate for one way flight MIA to BGI this time next year, in business saving on luggage costs. as previously suggested by Rob

    With one way redemptions not an option on IB kinda stuffed

    Suggestions welcome

  • Doug M says:

    I’m finding all this very entertaining. I wonder how many people intended to transfer out the 90K in an attempt to avoid the 1st Dec deadline, and how many intended to use them in another program by 1st Dec. The legal opinions are fun too, so many experts.
    IAG’s IT is really very poor, this promo would have worked so much better were they able to tag blocks of Avios with an expiry date, rather than an account. Given the normal unreliability of the whole moving Avios malarkey, you have to suspect they’ve tried to implement changes which have further messed things up. With IAG you never know for sure what was intended, and what just happened as a result of more poorly implemented changes.
    I’m sure it’ll end with a lot of dissatisfaction, but then Iberia won’t care, it’s either worked financially for them or it hasn’t, my guess is we’ll never know.
    I got 90K for £212 which I’ll happily use through Iberia.
    The digs at Rob are pointless, I feel he was completely open and honest about Iberia, and their history of contempt for handling problems with offers made. He then reported Iberia’s feedback from this.
    For my own interest I’d love to know the thought process used here by Iberia, whether they think it’s worked, and what benefit comes from it. It seems they’ve sold a load of Avios really cheaply, undone bits of the general program to try and reduce opportunity to spend said Avios, and created thousands of bookings that won’t be flown. I’m not sure they can ID the likely flights not to be flown, since IT is clearly an issue for them, surely this could mess with their revenue and load calculations for months.

  • _nate says:

    I’d like to thank Rob for drawing our attention to this promotion.

    I was incredibly busy on the days it ran, but I mulled it over, and realised how much I would regret missing out if I didn’t take a punt. When I realised that the partner rewards chart is even better than I first thought, I decided to go for it, and booked 10 random flights in the last hour of the promotion.

    It has paid off. It would have been great to have been able to plan a route flying out to and around Spain, but they were adamant that these flights did not need to be taken, so fair’s fair.

    I don’t think we will see a deal like this again for a long time. So thank you!

  • koroleon says:

    For non-IB/BA redemptions how is distance calculated? Taking a random example, does LHR-DOH-MLE-DOH-LHR count as 10,631 miles? Also, are open-jaws allowed? Say for example BRU-DOH-MLE-DOH-LHR?

    • Rob says:

      Use Great Circle Mapper online, this gives accurate distances. Tot up each leg separately. Don’t see why open jaw would be an issue but there may be arcane rules like BAEC has.

    • Marcw says:

      Distance is from LHR to DOH and DOH to MLE. And the same for the return.
      No, strictly returns. You have to return to your departure point. This is in their T&Cs

    • koroleon says:

      Thank you both for your replies. So this is similar to BA then? For this 4 segment trip where each segment is in the 2000-4000 miles range you’d need 4x46k Avios (in business) rather than 150k Avios (for the 8000-12400 miles range)?

      • Marcw says:

        For IbPlus is the total distance (outbound and inbound) that matters, independently of how many connections you have. In this case (partner redemptions) the table is not based on the distance of the individual segments. Rather, the whole distance.

  • Cristian rivera says:

    I booked a reward return flight on iberia, would I be able to cancel the outbound flight and keep the inbound? Thank you

    • ParselT says:

      If they are on the same ticket then almost certainly the return would be cancelled as you didn’t take the first “leg” i.e. the outound.

  • Simon says:

    Is the deadline to spend these bonus Avios December 1?

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

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