Your 100 free Iberia Avios points have arrived …. this is how to transfer them to British Airways

Two weeks ago we told you how to earn 100 free Avios in Iberia Plus by entering a competition.

Our article is here – you can still enter and get your 100 Avios if you haven’t already, as the closing date is 4th December.

If you entered on the day we wrote about it, your 100 Avios should now be in your Iberia Plus account.

This is a good excuse to remind you how to transfer Avios points from Iberia Plus to British Airways Executive Club.

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 (or, of course, via this competition).

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.

Plan C (using avios.com) is your ONLY option if you have a British Airways Executive Club household account.

Security measures can cause you problems

To ensure that you can’t transfer Avios to or from accounts which are not yours, pretty much ALL of your personal data must now match between your British Airways and Iberia accounts.  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.

Moving Avios using the BA website:

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:

Moving Avios using the Iberia website:

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

Click on the arrow by your name in the top-right corner and select ‘My Avios’

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” – see below.  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.  There is a blank space under the ‘Transfer’ box where the ‘combine’ link should be.  Instead, you will see this:

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

And if that still fails to work:

Moving Avios between BA and Iberia using avios.com:

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

Some readers have found that capitalising your Iberia password (even if you set it up in lower case) or using the Firefox browser can help.  I have no personal experience either way with this.

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

If you don’t have an account which operates via avios.com you will need to create one.  Since the Flybe and Avios Travel Rewards Programmes were closed, there are only two loyalty schemes which allow you to log in at avios.com:

Vueling Club

Aer Lingus AerClub

If you sign up for either of these schemes via the respective airline websites, you will be allocated a ‘3081xxxxxxxxxx’ membership number which will let you access avios.com

Inside avios.com the ‘Combine My Avios’ option is under ‘My Account’.  When you’ve found it:

Make a transfer from iberia.com into avios.com, and then

Make a transfer from avios.com to ba.com

This WILL work (most of the time) even when other options fail.  You should now have your Avios where you want them.

If you want to learn more about how to redeem Avios points via Iberia Plus, to save a fortune on taxes and charges, take a look at this article in our ‘Avios Redemption University’ series.

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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:

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. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

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.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

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.

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.