Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

IAG planning ‘consistent elite tiers’ across BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus – what does this mean?

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

Once a year, International Airlines Group – the parent company for British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, LEVEL and Vueling – runs a ‘Capital Markets Day’.

This is aimed at the banks and institutions that hold the debt and bonds issued by the group, but the event has always been shared more widely. It is the single most important piece of information sharing that IAG does all year, with the heads of all of the IAG business units presenting.

To be honest, it probably wishes that it hadn’t bothered. The shares fell by 4% at one point, wiping £300m off the value of the group, as investors failed to be impressed by what they heard.

IAG planning 'consistent elite tiers' across BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus

We will do a separate article this week about the British Airways slides.

What was the Avios news from the Capital Markets Day?

There isn’t a lot in the IAG Loyalty / Avios part which regular readers of HfP won’t already know. You may be intrigued to know that fewer than 40% of Avios are awarded from flying these days.

What is interesting is slide 69 which says that you can expect, at some point:

  • ‘single Avios balance’
  • ‘improved benefits’
  • ‘cross airline recognition’
  • ‘consistent elite tiers’

It isn’t entirely clear what this means, but if we go back 6-7 years there was a plan (foiled by IAG’s IT capabilities) to turn Avios into a Miles & More-style structure.

With Miles & More, there is a single status platform used across Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Brussels etc. You also have a single points balance. All of your status and points activity takes place on miles-and-more.com and not on any of the airline websites.

Moving to a ‘single Avios balance’ would have some benefits. It would save the faff of moving points between BA, Qatar Airways, Finnair, Aer Lingus / Vueling and Iberia for a start. Something which should be simple – such as using your Avios to pay for a Vueling flight on the Vueling website – is currently very messy indeed.

What does ‘consistent elite tiers’ mean?

There are two ways of reading this.

One is that each airline would simply rename its existing tiers so that Aer Lingus and Iberia top tier status is called the same thing as top-tier British Airways status. Everything else, including the different ways of earning status, remains the same.

The more radical approach would be to have a standardised way of earning status across IAG. This would require, for example, each airline to have the same thresholds for Gold, Silver etc and to earn the same number of points per flight. It could also be tied in with a move to earning status based on spending and not flights.

The snag here is that what works for one IAG airline wouldn’t work for another. Aer Lingus has a greater focus on low cost and short haul flights, for example, so any status model which heavily rewarded spending or long haul flying would wipe out their elite base.

The other snag is that, irrespective of what happens across IAG, it cannot force Finnair and Qatar Airways to adopt the same status-earning model. There is little point aligning how you earn status across some Avios-issuing airlines and not others.

Is Aer Lingus going back into oneworld?

‘Cross airline recognition’ is another interesting one. Remember that this presentation was given in the same week that we reported that BA elites would no longer get lounge access in Shannon and Cork when flying Aer Lingus.

‘Cross airline recognition’ would imply that a British Airways Gold member would get the same benefits as an Aer Lingus elite member – including lounge access.

The easiest way of achieving this would be for Aer Lingus to go back into the oneworld alliance, which also solves the issue of BA and Iberia flyers earning status credit when flying on Aer Lingus.

IAG planning 'consistent elite tiers' across BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus

Coming in 2024 ….

The presentation also told us what to expect from IAG Loyalty / Avios in 2024. Look out for:

  • BA allowing you to use ‘part pay with Avios’ to pay for 100% of a flight, as Aer Lingus and Vueling already do, rather than forcing you to pay the taxes and charges element with cash
  • more ‘Avios only’ flights, with the other IAG airlines also trialling it
  • Iberia launching ‘Reward Flight Saver’, which could actually be bad news given how low the taxes and charges on Iberia redemptions are now
  • a ‘new and improved’ hotel and car rental redemption proposition, which will hopefully get you a better deal than 0.5p per Avios

PS. Avios collectors are not rational

What is slightly worrying about the slides is that it shows that many Avios collectors are – how can I put this politely? – not economically rational.

We have written before – and it is confirmed in the slides – that allowing people to use Avios to reduce the cost of a BA Holidays package has been hugely successful. 20% of all bookings are now being part-paid with points. This is despite the fact that this is the worst possible use of Avios (0.44p per point for large volumes), especially compared to using them for a premium cabin flight redemption (1p+ per Avios).

We are also told that 80% of Avios redemptions involve the customer choosing one of the ‘more Avios, less cash’ options. On long haul this makes sense, but on short haul you make a big mistake by choosing the £1 taxes option. The £35 (Economy) or £50 (Business) taxes and charges option is usually the best, often by a large margin, assuming you value an Avios at 1p.

This is why marketing is an art and not a science. If you try to run a business on the boring principles of being better / faster / cheaper than the competition then you won’t necessarily succeed, because people are weird.

PPS. How old do you think Avios collectors are?

Here’s one interesting fact about Avios from the slides. This is the current age split of Avios collectors (and this includes Qatar Airways Privilege Club members, who will skew younger than average due to demographics):

  • 22% are under 34 years old
  • 22% are 34-44 years old
  • 39% are 45-64 years old
  • 17% are over 65 years old

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (February 2025)

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

Get 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

30,000 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

50,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large 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, and the standard card is FREE. Capital on Tap cards also have no FX fees.

Capital on Tap Visa

NO annual fee, NO FX fees and points worth 1 Avios per £1 Read our full review

Capital on Tap Pro Visa

10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review

There is also a British Airways American Express card for small businesses:

British Airways American Express Accelerating Business

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

50,000 points when you sign-up 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 (112)

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

  • George K says:

    “on short haul you make a big mistake by choosing the £1 taxes option.” – yet the Barclays voucher continues to lock you into that category…

  • shd says:

    I have a completely dormant Iberia Plus account with a negative balance. Should I try and close this, if so, how?

    • MT says:

      I was just wondering the exact same thing!

    • Richard E says:

      I was in the same position as you. If I recall correctly, you can now do this fairly easily in the app (I think, but it may have been the website). I did so at the start of the year for exactly this reason.

    • JDB says:

      @shd – it’s difficult to do this via customer service type routes which also doesn’t necessarily fully close the account, so the easiest way is to exercise your ‘right to be forgotten’ under Data Protection that you should find quite easily in your account.

      • Thegasman says:

        Doesn’t the right to be forgotten come with caveats so they can keep data required for legal & tax purposes? I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the right to keep data relating to a debt as well.

        • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

          Indeed

          I recently closed a couple of hotel accounts I didn’t use. It was usually made clear that they had to keep certain records including those relating to bookings for a certain period.

  • HAM76 says:

    It’s irrational to expect that people behave like an economic model such as the homo economicus when science and many nobel prize winners have proven this theory wrong over and over again in the past sixty years. Just saying…

  • Nick says:

    Some additional context to Rob’s speculation:
    – I suspect you’re overthinking ‘consistent tiers’, it’ll mainly be about ensuring benefits are mapped and applied consistently (e.g. onboard) rather than ‘you need to do exactly the same to earn Sapphire’
    – EI are very opposed to rejoining oneworld. IAG would quite like them to but the complexity (and therefore cost) of doing so is prohibitive so it probably won’t happen
    – BAH has indeed been interesting. It’s a combination of people using small balances that wouldn’t get them much in terms of flights and people who earnt them on work flights using huge balances to get an expensive holiday for next to no cash outlay. Converting to Nectar just doesn’t come into the vast majority of people’s thinking

    • LittleNick says:

      Let’s see, the idea of Iberia introducing RFS could be quite negative. I never read changes as necessarily a good thing when it comes to BA/IAG.

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      The IAG Board could soon make EI to join OW if they so desired and the strategic case could be made for it.

      But that would go against IAG policy that each of the subsidiary airlines has control over it’s day to day activities.

      • Nick says:

        Absolutely. But they would receive a significantly lower profit at the end of the year because someone has to pay for it.

        For all their faults, one thing IAG is very good at is assessing cost/benefit. There’s clearly a benefit to EI joining oneworld… but there’s also an enormous cost – here it pretty much requires adding back all the complexity they stripped out when they went low-cost several years back (ultimately of course what made them so attractive to IAG in the first place).

  • Nick Pike says:

    I’m really not sure about the economic rationality argument. If one takes this to its logical conclusion, you’d never buy anything unless you were certain you’d got it for the lowest price. So by way of example you’d trek round half a dozen supermarkets as opposed to just one.

    I’ve got a million Avios. Do I want to swap them all for Nectar points so I get the next few weeks’ Sainsbury shopping for nothing? Not really. I’d actually sooner spend them on an exotic holiday. Yes, I may get much less value for them but the appeal of a “free” luxury holiday is much greater than not paying for months of supply of toilet rolls…

    • Andrew J says:

      And what is often overlooked with the £1 Avios tickets is that they effectively become fully cancellable (just losing the £1), which needs to be factored into the value applied to the Avios used.

      • Rob says:

        All Avios short haul tickets have been cancellable for £1 for months, irrespective of what you paid. It’s a BA IT ‘feature’. No idea how long until it is fixed.

    • Toppcat says:

      Your supermarket example assumes that you value your time at zero. Which I would argue isn’t entirely rational!

      It’s definitely another issue, albeit people do actually value their time quite differently, particularly dependent on the stage of life they are at.

    • BBbetter says:

      It’s actually rational on their part if people aren’t aware of alternatives. Even if they were aware of nectar option, how many would break their regular shopping habits to go to Sainsbury’s? What if the store is too far?

      Economists love to claim stock markets are rational given the information in public domain. If that was the case, there must be no one buying or selling until the next information is released.

  • rob keane says:

    It depends what “value ” people put on the other options that notionally get you more “value”. As an example if you could discount brussel sprouts at 5p per avios, that is sensational return per avios, but is it as useful or appealling as discounting a holiday that you will be taking and paying cash for otherwise.

  • Ed says:

    The economic irrationality of miles and points, is highlighted above delightfully. The appeal of getting ‘free’ flights worth eg £2k is far greater than using using those same points (or not earning those points) and saving £3k on toilet roll and Brussels sprouts. The rational economic choice would be save the £3k, use £2k to purchase the flights and then have £1k extra spending money.

  • BBbetter says:

    Is there an anti-trust element to EI reluctance to join OW? Will they be forced to join the TATL JV?

    • JDB says:

      Aer Lingus and Aer Lingus UK are already part of the TATL, as is LEVEL. EI strategy is really quite different to that of the full service OW airlines – essentially a low cost airline with some limited additional bells and whistles so it is reluctant to incur the costs and obligations that joining OW entails.

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

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.