Avios from the Iberia ‘90,000 Avios’ points promo CAN be transferred to British Airways

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• Brian W says:

  28 Jul28 July 18:13

  Hi Rob,

  You mentioned on FT that you have it in writing Iberia are now blocking hotel redemption with these promo Avios. The hotel bookings redemption route via my Iberia Plus account (which is a few years old and well used) was always my plan to spend these points and there was certainly no mention of this in version 1 (or 2) of the T & C’s for this offer. Can you elaborate on this at all? Who has notified you if this change? I’ll be pretty upset with them now if they are blocking non-flight redemption! Thanks in advance.

  • Jenni says:

    28 Jul28 July 18:25

    I’m also interested in this. I bought mine with the intention of using them for hotel bookings for September 2019 so i havent been able to book yet. Original T&C’s said nothing about only being able to redeem for flights.

    • Rob says:

      28 Jul28 July 19:09

      Over the last few days hotel booking has not been working and Iberia agents have been telling those who enquired that these bonus Avios cannot be used against hotels. I have seen written correspondence confirming this. HOWEVER I do not fully trust the IB call centre and it may have been a temporary IT issue, although when I did a hotel booking yesterday via IB using non-promo Avios (2000 for a hostel!) it went through OK.

      • Brian W says:

        28 Jul28 July 19:28

        Thanks Rob,

        Hopefully it is just an IT blip! However, If they are caving in on the transfer of Avios from IB to BA on the back of media interest, then I’d also like to think they will quickly back track on the non use of hotel redemption too, if indeed this is their intention. I’ve checked the original terms and conditions again and there certainly is nothing in there that IB could use to say this limitation was stipulated within the offer.

      • FlyingChris says:

        28 Jul28 July 22:14

        Having seen this I’ve just decided to transfer my Avios to BA where I’ll leave them until this all figures itself out. Hopefully they’ll be safe there for the moment and can decide what to do with them later

        I was prepared to play by the rules of the game / spirit of the promotion and keep them in IB+ and use them for a hotel redemption to avoid a negative balance, but if there’s the chance they’re blocking that route out as well (without a hint in the original T&C’s) – then might have to take the risk for whatever comes in December. If it’s nothing / an IT glitch will probably put them back.

• Sergey says:

  28 Jul28 July 18:14

  “Used for flights you should have been able to get £1,000 of value if used smartly.”

  I have booked return F from HKG to HND on CX, which is sold for 4000+ USD and still have 20k Avios left.

  • Callum says:

    28 Jul28 July 22:28

    That’s a 4 hour flight, you’d have to be beyond insane (or filthy rich) to consider spending anything close to $4k on that!

    • Cat says:

      29 Jul29 July 17:48

      True, but CX F is absolutely incredible…

• Thomas Howard says:

  28 Jul28 July 18:56

  Any news on what Iberia plan on doing to new IB+ customers that still haven’t received their Avios?

  • Rob says:

    28 Jul28 July 19:07

    People who keep badgering away are getting them, I get new reports every day.

    • Crafty says:

      29 Jul29 July 22:29

      One of the “exec” email addresses has now been deleted out of their system. Must have been getting so many s/he couldn’t actually do his/her job!

  • Jimbob says:

    28 Jul28 July 19:12

    Email the CEOs, got my Avios within a couple of days

• James says:

  28 Jul28 July 19:00

  I joined on the day and received the full 90k 2 weeks ago. There was a number of emails back and forth before they gave in.

• Graham Walsh says:

  28 Jul28 July 19:11

  I used mine on IB for business class flights to Malaga next year. Works out I’m better off and points used up and flying business rather than economy.

• Rob MC says:

  28 Jul28 July 19:36

  Has anyone emailed Iberia to let them know they will not be attending any flights out of courtesy?

  • Rob says:

    28 Jul28 July 19:38

    Like all airlines, they will oversell anyway and know that % don’t turn up so it isn’t necessary.

    • the real harry1 says:

      29 Jul29 July 07:50

      They’ll quickly work out a new weighting to the tools they use to assess likely no-shows resulting from this promo. People were earlier saying it’s highly immoral to book 10 flights we had no intention of flying, deny flight capacity to other users and not very environment-friendly to let planes fly with empty seats. I had to laugh 🙂

• Ali says:

  28 Jul28 July 20:24

  Does anyone have any advice regarding which long haul routes ex MAD have good avios availability?

  • Bagoly says:

    29 Jul29 July 11:00

    Havana in early 2019 (we’re going, and I see still immediate availability on random dates I chose in Febuary)
    One can’t fly direct there from London, so changing in Madrid is no downside.

  • Cat says:

    29 Jul29 July 18:17

    The Central American destinations seem to have good availability…

• Yusef says:

  28 Jul28 July 20:48

  I have two questions:

  1) If it is transferred out and you are negative 90k in Iberia – is there any way they can ask for that back in some way?

  2) Does the 1st December deadline still apply if it is transferred to BA? I.e. can you lose the 90k from your BA account?

  • Rob says:

    28 Jul28 July 21:53

    1) It depends. I would imagine the Avios T&C say that your points have no cash value.

    2) We don’t know.

    • Callum says:

      29 Jul29 July 04:08

      Did they not say at the time that your account would go negative? The assumption being, when it’s merged with Avios/BA the deficit will wipe out any Avios you have with BA etc.

      I could live with never redeeming via Iberia Plus again, but not with being blocked from Executive Club too.

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