Rio De Janeiro – June 2026

[harrysjones21]

Morning All,

After our successful trip to Miami and Orlando this year we are planning our next long haul trip.

We would like to explore our options going to Rio De Janeiro in May/June 2026.

Currently the avoid redemptions for tickets seems fairly high even when using a BA 2-4-1 voucher, departing from Heathrow. We would ideally like advice on any work around to bring the avios cost slightly lower.

I have seen posted elsewhere that people often fly from MAD or even DUB into LHR then have their onward flight.

Any tips or suggestions please?

[mzb]

You should absolutely fly on Iberia from/to MAD using your BA 2-4-1. Significantly lower taxes and Avios (even after the recent Iberia devaluation) and I personally like the hard and soft product.

Rio is not a daily destination for Iberia, so may want to also look at Sao Paulo, or if you think you will be spending time in the North East of Brazil, IB is to begin flights to Recife in December. Also GIG is a day flight on the way to Brazil, GRU has both options I think.

If you are just booking MAD-GIG-MAD, easy to do online on ba.com. If you are booking an open-jaw, such as MAD-GIG-MAD-LHR or MAD-GIG//REC-MAD, you’ll need to call BA.

Flights to Madrid need to be on a seperate booking if you want to avoid the APD levied by the UK govt. If you have checked luggage, you will need to check it back in, in Madrid (so go through passport control). That takes a lot of time (Barajas is notoriously slow for luggage delivery), so leave plenty of buffer time or fly the night before.

[Gordon]

@harrysjones21 – just to give you an idea, my booking last year with a 2-4-1, 2 pax MAD-BOG-MAD on IB was 105000 Avios and £446.40 Taxes,

Another booking with two BUV’s 2 pax LHR-GIG-LHR, BA was 200000 plus £1,042.58 taxes.

I carried out a dummy booking yesterday on a 2-4-1 and a BUV booking, to the same destination “KUL” and both came back exactly the same Avios and taxes, both less than an hour apart flight time wise, so you can see the savings using IB from MAD, also you can have your luggage checked through on IB to LHR on your return.

There has been a slight devaluation on IB recently, but it is still a good value redemption vs flying from London.

[harrysjones21]

Thanks both for the suggestions.

I have looked at flying IB from MAD for when we wish to fly next year.

However, I cannot see any Club World availability. Only when flying from MAD to LHR to GRU. Is this often the case with this route?

Given the amount of time in the air, we do wish to be in Club World.

[Gordon]

Edit for above – “both less than an hour apart flight time wise” was a reference to BOG & GIG, not KUL.

[Gordon]

harrysjones21 wrote:

Thanks both for the suggestions.

I have looked at flying IB from MAD for when we wish to fly next year.

However, I cannot see any Club World availability. Only when flying from MAD to LHR to GRU. Is this often the case with this route?

Given the amount of time in the air, we do wish to be in Club World.

I booked -355 days ahead for the IB booking, so can’t answer that, but I would just keep checking.

[mzb]

Brazil is a popular redemption on IB in Business class (side note – “Club World” is what BA calls its own business class cabin), so being flexible helps. Iberia also doesn’t guarantee a minimum of seats available for redemption, so indeed worth keeping an eye on redemptions.

You can also look at redemptions to either Buenos Aires (there’s 3x flights/day, so more seats) or Montevideo (less popular). Both fun destinations for a few days, and you can fly from there to Rio or Sao Paulo (“short” 3 hours flight) and continue your trip in Brazil.