Recently, British Airways announced plans to completely overhaul its loyalty program as of April 2025. British Airways Executive Club is being replaced by The British Airways Club, and with these changes, status will be much harder to earn.
Iberia belongs to the same airline group as British Airways (IAG), and also uses Avios as its rewards currency. Not surprisingly, the airline has also announced plans to overhaul its loyalty program, with Club Iberia Plus replacing Iberia Plus. Let’s go over the details… for most people, it’s probably bad news.
Iberia changes how elite status is earned
As of April 1, 2025, Iberia will completely change how elite status is earned through its loyalty program. To go along with this, the program will be rebranded, with the name changing from Iberia Plus to Club Iberia Plus (I hope they didn’t pay consultants too much money to come up with that!).
With the new program, elite status can be earned either based on how many segments you fly, or based on how much many Elite Points you earn, with that metric being based on how much you spend Each euro of airfare spending (minus taxes and fees) earns you one Elite Point.
In addition to that, you’ll earn extra Elite Points for each Iberia flight, based on the class of service and the length of the flight. We’re talking anywhere from 75-600 bonus Elite Points per segment… I find this to all be a rather random and overly complicated combination. I understand the motive, though — clearly it’s to avoid too many arbitrage opportunities for British Airways flyers, by incentivizing travel on Iberia.
So when it comes to elite status tiers, here’s what will be required under the new Club Iberia Plus program:
- Club Iberia Plus Plata (oneworld Ruby) requires 3,500 Elite Points or 20 segments
- Club Iberia Plus Oro (oneworld Sapphire) requires 7,500 Elite Points or 40 segments
- Club Iberia Plus Platino (oneworld Emerald) requires 20,000 Elite Points or 90 segments
- Club Iberia Plus Platino Prime (oneworld Emerald) requires 30,000 Elite Points, and offers status for two years; this is a new elite tier for the program
- Club Iberia Plus Infinita (oneworld Emerald) requires 400,000 Elite Points, and offers lifetime status
- Club Iberia Plus Infinita Prime (oneworld Emerald) requires 640,000 Elite Points, and offers lifetime status
Now, Iberia highlights how for the two entry level elite tiers, the requirements to earn status based on segments is actually decreasing. For Plata and Oro, you’ll need 20 and 40 segments, respectively, compared to 25 and 50 segments under the current program.
However, for those earning status not based on segments, elite status is getting harder to earn, in most situations.
My take on Iberia’s loyalty program changes
I mean, look, I’ve gotta be honest, I don’t really understand what the folks at IAG are thinking? Obviously these changes were decided centrally and forced on Iberia, rather than the airline just independently coming up with this system (just like Iberia adopted revenue based Avios earning shortly after British Airways did).
Okay, in theory (but not really) I can sort of understand where they’re coming from with the British Airways changes, in the sense that London is a very premium market, and there are a lot of high revenue flyers there. I guess I can also understand the need to align requirements a bit bit between British Airways and Iberia, to avoid too many arbitrage opportunities (and that’s why the Iberia Plus program is so heavily incentivizing Iberia travel with these changes, and not travel on partner airlines).
But when you step back and really look at this, these requirements are very high. No disrespect to Spain (which is a great country), Iberia’s home market, but it’s not exactly the world’s most premium or high yield market, in terms of the number of business travelers booking frequent, full fare premium tickets.
If you don’t fly 90 segments, you’ll need the equivalent of €20,000 in spending per year to earn oneworld Emerald status. It’s not like the benefits of the status are that great, beyond the standard oneworld Emerald perks, plus four one-way upgrade vouchers.
One wonders to what extent Iberia’s elite ranks will shrink with these changes. Is the goal to just be left with very few high tier elite members, or what? IAG is definitely being extreme with its loyalty changes, and I’m curious how it works out for the company. I think British Airways was misguided with its changes, and it’s not surprising to see Iberia now aligning requirements a bit.
Bottom line
Iberia is making major changes to its loyalty program as of April 2025. Since Iberia belongs to IAG, obviously these changes are largely intended to match the recent British Airways loyalty changes we’ve seen. While it’s nice that you can continue to earn status based on segments flown for most tiers, the actual spending requirements for unlocking status are very aggressive.
What do you make of these Iberia loyalty program changes?
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