BA vs Iberia exec club

[mpq98]

I’ve just started a role where I will be travelling a lot more internationally in business class. The standard routes have flights with BA and Qatar.
I should get silver status quickly but it is marginal I’ll get gold with BA (especially if I factor in Qatar tier points).
So I was thinking using the Iberia elite club. With them I might just get to their equivalent of BA gold.

However living in the UK when I travel for leisure it is most likely to be with BA. While I know the standard rewards would be the same under Oneworld, I was wondering if people had thoughts or experiences on adhoc benefits/ upgrades etc would differ.

[yonasl]

If you are gold with BA you get a few things you wouldn’t as an IB “gold” equivalent (or any other OW program for that matter). They are not life changing but you may want to check them.

There are also some cases where being gold can get you upgraded to first if you fly the same route a lot and they need to move people around to make space (less of an issue now that club suite is pretty much similar to F).

With silver the benefits are mostly the same across all airlines.

Question is, will you be able to reach gold with BA’s program? IB is 20% easier as it is in EUR vs GBP plus you have bonus TPs when flying business.

You will also want to check how Qatar works with BA. It is some weird table of miles flown x a 25 or 50% factor (but some airlines like Cathay only accrue 12% on the cheapest business fares).

[Matt]

I wouldn’t waste time thinking about upgrades on BA – it doesn’t regularly happen, and isn’t particularly more likely to happen to a gold than a blue member. There’s not a huge difference between BA Gold and Oneworld Emerald (OWE) from a different airline. You’d miss out on the extra economy avios availability, but I can’t think of much else. If you can get to Gold Upgrade vouchers or GGL then BA would be better, but that doesn’t seem like a consideration here.

But more importantly, if you’ll comfortably get OWE on Iberia then go for that – it will be significantly better than Silver with BA, or having to pay money to the SAF fund to make Gold.