How to book Buenos Aires on Avios points?

[damboy5]

Could I get some assistance from the community please? I may be doing something incorrect, but if I go to either the BA website or the Iberia website and try and book a business class Avios flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid on Iberia metal, the answer always comes back with flight options only from Buenos Aires to London on BA, and then London – Madrid on Iberia.

How do I get the Buenos Aires to Madrid flights on Iberia? I am trying to take advantage of Iberia being much cheaper to book using Avios than BA, but finding it impossible. The same thing happens when I try Rio De Janeiro, the other place that BA also fly to.

Any advice would be much appreciated?

[Lady London]

book from your Iberiaplus account. Unsure if you’d have to have it open 90 days before you can book from it though. You’d just transfer the needed amount across from BA. Be very wary though as if you have any flights other than BA or IB on an award booking made on IB site, it can be unchangeable/unmodifiable.

You could see if it costs too many avios extra if you build your ticket on BA as a multisegment. Try lon to maf then mad to eze. or better just mad to eze then eze to mad or lon as the return. Then go on a different booking lon to mad the day before and spend some of the APD you save on a hotel and evening out before your mad-eze following day.

[Lady London]

PS if there is actually award space on tbe eze-mad flight you want, if you cant book it online that would give you an excuse to phone BA and get them to book it and they should waive the phone booking fee if the system wouldn’t let you do it online.

Gut feeling your problem is no avios seats on the eze-mad IB flights though.

[JDB]

It may only be showing flights via London because the IB has no business availability. If you start in a Spanish city other than Madrid, you may find better availability. Recent successes for booking flights otherwise full from Madrid to Mexico City, Montevideo and Buenos Aires were A Coruña, Ibiza and Bilbao.

[damboy5]

Thanks everyone. I think as you’ve pointed out, it was not showing due to a lack of availability. I’ll try out some of these suggestions of different start points.

[0 post]

My partner is Brazilian and the last time we travelled to GRU we flew BA Club World return from LHR using our 241 voucher. We are going again for Easter and thought we would give Iberia a try as the redemption was much cheaper in both avios and taxes/surcharges. For the MAD-GRU sectors I searched via ba.com to find the longhaul ability and booked that first as there is only one flight per day. Then I just booked a separate flight for the LON-MAD sectors as there a multiple daily flights from from both LHR and LGW and cash tickets are usually very reasonable if you book well in advance. Conveniently my best friend lives in Madrid so I go there regularly and it is a nice way to see her en route, but even if I had to pay for a hotel for one night, the price and avios difference will definitely make us consider this routing for our future trips. I will write an update once we have flown and let you know how they compare, I’ve heard some mixed reviews but I’m hoping it’s not a huge downgrade from BA…fingers crossed!

[Michael C]

Anonymous wrote:

My partner is Brazilian and the last time we travelled to GRU we flew BA Club World return from LHR using our 241 voucher. We are going again for Easter and thought we would give Iberia a try as the redemption was much cheaper in both avios and taxes/surcharges. For the MAD-GRU sectors I searched via ba.com to find the longhaul ability and booked that first as there is only one flight per day. Then I just booked a separate flight for the LON-MAD sectors as there a multiple daily flights from from both LHR and LGW and cash tickets are usually very reasonable if you book well in advance. Conveniently my best friend lives in Madrid so I go there regularly and it is a nice way to see her en route, but even if I had to pay for a hotel for one night, the price and avios difference will definitely make us consider this routing for our future trips. I will write an update once we have flown and let you know how they compare, I’ve heard some mixed reviews but I’m hoping it’s not a huge downgrade from BA…fingers crossed!

@Ross… (perhpas change user-name, just in case?..) – I’ve also been looking at doing this: did you price up the option of MAD-GRU/GRU-LON? Wonder if the slight increase would compensate for the direct flight on the way back..

[0 post]

@Michael C yes we are going again at Christmas this year and I have booked MAD-GRU-LHR so stopping at my friend’s in Madrid on the way out but coming back home directly with BA. I booked the MAD-GRU Iberia leg online on BA.com with a new srmtyle 241 and then called up the call centre to add the GRU-LHR BA leg when it became available.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough avios to book it as two one way tickets and have them merged (otherwise it would have been an absolute bargain due to low taxes ex-Brazil!) so had to have the return journey added to the outbound. They couldn’t price it up themselves and had to send it get ticketing so approve the fare but then they sent an email the following day to call back to pay for it and it was showing in my BAEC the next day!

The total cost was 172,000 avios and £716.80 for two in business. I still have to add the LON-MAD sector on top but I thought this wasn’t too bad a price for peak Xmas/NY and definitely saved some money flying both sectors with BA!

[Ash]

Anonymous wrote:

@Michael C yes we are going again at Christmas this year and I have booked MAD-GRU-LHR so stopping at my friend’s in Madrid on the way out but coming back home directly with BA. I booked the MAD-GRU Iberia leg online on BA.com with a new srmtyle 241 and then called up the call centre to add the GRU-LHR BA leg when it became available.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough avios to book it as two one way tickets and have them merged (otherwise it would have been an absolute bargain due to low taxes ex-Brazil!) so had to have the return journey added to the outbound. They couldn’t price it up themselves and had to send it get ticketing so approve the fare but then they sent an email the following day to call back to pay for it and it was showing in my BAEC the next day!

The total cost was 172,000 avios and £716.80 for two in business. I still have to add the LON-MAD sector on top but I thought this wasn’t too bad a price for peak Xmas/NY and definitely saved some money flying both sectors with BA!

That’s a great price. Give yourself a back slap!

How would you book two singles (to benefit from low Brazil taxes) with a 241? Or should I read that as booking to singles solely with Avios, no 241 in play?

[rosco85]

@MichaelC If I had a high enough avios balance I could have booked the return journey for two pax GRU-LHR on a separate booking which would have been 220k without the voucher and I would have paid the low ex-Brazil taxes. Then I could have called BA and have the two bookings linked and they would have refunded half the avios (as a 241 was used on the outbound) but the sectors would have remained as two one way tickets with separate booking numbers. As I didn’t have a high enough avios balance for this, BA added the return journey on to my outbound ticket, turning it into a return journey with one booking number and then just charged me the extra 110k avios and taxes required for the GRU-LHR sector. If you read the article about using a BA 241 on the main HFP it explains this in more detail.

[louie]

rosco85 wrote:

….I would have paid the low ex-Brazil taxes…..

Just curious – are there still low “taxes” ex-Brazil following the long-haul RFS changes in December?

[rosco85]

Absolutely! From what I can remember when I did a search before I think the headline price one way GRU-LHR was 110k avios and £16.40 with the availability to choose ‘fewer avios more cash’ options of you wanted. If I’d had enough avios to book it as two one way tickets and have them linked I think I could have got the total flight MAD-GRU-LHR with Iberia/BA for 172,500 avios and £217.40!

[marks7389]

louie wrote:

Just curious – are there still low “taxes” ex-Brazil following the long-haul RFS changes in December?

As with Hong Kong, the very low taxes and fees charge still applies on the highest Avios rate, the difference now is that the Avios required to pay that rate is much higher, and the cash element for a one-way trip in that band (were it a one-way from the UK or another country) lower. As a result there is still a saving for one-way bookings from Brazil, but somewhat lower than it used to be.

[Michael C]

marks7389 wrote:

louie wrote:

Just curious – are there still low “taxes” ex-Brazil following the long-haul RFS changes in December?

As with Hong Kong, the very low taxes and fees charge still applies on the highest Avios rate, the difference now is that the Avios required to pay that rate is much higher, and the cash element for a one-way trip in that band (were it a one-way from the UK or another country) lower. As a result there is still a saving for one-way bookings from Brazil, but somewhat lower than it used to be.

Exactly – and with thanks to the other posters about Brazil, I *think* the sweet spot for redemption/convenience from the UK is now a 241 MAD-GRU/GRU-LHR.

[Sprout]

Thank you for the informative comments above – very though provoking!
Are there any further sweet spots in terms of low “taxes”? I have tried googling but it’s difficult to get any specific info.
I have looked at HKG to Lon flights and there seems to be plenty of economy and Prem economy availability but no Business. Am I doing something wrong or is it just that they have all been booked up?

[Omegaman]

JDB wrote:

It may only be showing flights via London because the IB has no business availability. If you start in a Spanish city other than Madrid, you may find better availability. Recent successes for booking flights otherwise full from Madrid to Mexico City, Montevideo and Buenos Aires were A Coruña, Ibiza and Bilbao.

Is there an easy way to find availability ?

[JDB]

Omegaman wrote:

JDB wrote:

It may only be showing flights via London because the IB has no business availability. If you start in a Spanish city other than Madrid, you may find better availability. Recent successes for booking flights otherwise full from Madrid to Mexico City, Montevideo and Buenos Aires were A Coruña, Ibiza and Bilbao.

Is there an easy way to find availability ?

Unfortunately not, you just need to try lots of combinations, but it definitely works. If you struggle with B.A. it’s worth considering Montevideo as a gateway – it’s three hours to B.A. on the ferry which arrives close to downtown, except that ferry is enclosed so an alternative is a bus to Colonia del Sacramento (a UNESCO world heritage site) then 1½ hour ferry to B.A. There are also flights but less fun and probably not much quicker overall.

[damboy5]

Thanks for the info on this thread. I have given up on Buenos Aires this time (I tried for June/July) as there was no availability both ways from Madrid. I’ll have to save that for another time, although I have no more 2-4-1s to burn.

I have instead booked for Rio De Janeiro (still a great deal on Iberia from Madrid) and have two weeks in early July. Very excited and will try and take in a few different locations in Brazil.

[No Longer Entitled]

So did you book MAD-GIG and then GIG-LHR on a 2-4-1, via ba.com or was it more complicated than that?

[damboy5]

Hi No longer Entitled. I only booked the return to Madrid as I booked through the BA website and a return GIG to LHR was not possible. A return to London would have been much better for me. To do this I would have had to call BA to price it up. Frankly I didn’t bother. Would a return to London have cost any additional Avios over and above a return to Madrid?

Another question, can you cancel Iberia flights booked on BA for the £35 fee BA charges on their own flights?

[rosco85]

@damboy Yes, a return direct to LHR with BA would probably have cost you almost 50k more avios! I booked GRU-LHR with BA for my return sector and the cost was 110k avios compared with the 62k avios I paid MAD-GRU with Iberia for the outbound sector.

To answer your second question, yes. As long as you booked it via ba.com then it is treated as a BA booking, even though your flights are operated by Iberia, and can be cancelled for the £35pp fee.

[damboy5]

Thanks Rosco85. That’s ok then, for a moment I thought I’d made a silly error in not booking this correctly. It’s very handy to know the fare is cancellable with a £35 pp fee