I think it goes without saying that there are a lot of people with a lot of Iberia Avios, given the recent promotion for up to 90,000 Iberia Avios.
The Avios expire on December 1, 2018, so you potentially only have a few months left to redeem them. It’s fine if you travel on a later date, but what matters is that you book by then.
If you’re looking for a way to redeem your Avios, Iberia has wide open business class award availability for travel this winter between the US and Madrid. Of course that’s not the ideal time to travel, but this is a great opportunity to plan a getaway with some cheaply acquired Avios. Also keep in mind that Madrid is a gateway to Northern Africa, and that can be a good time of year to travel there.
As a reminder, the Iberia Avios program charges the following number of Avios for transatlantic travel (off-peak and peak):
- 17,000/20,000 Avios for economy or 34,000/50,000 Avios for business class for an itinerary covering 3,000-4,000 miles
- 21,250/25,000 Avios for economy or 42,500/62,500 Avios for business class for an itinerary covering 4,001-5,500 miles
There seems to be wide open business class award availability to/from Chicago between December and April. Every single date in both directions has business class award seats in March, actually (though I imagine that will change shortly).
There’s also pretty good availability out of New York (though it’s not as good).
I’ve reviewed Iberia’s A340 business class, and found the experience to be solid, and I especially like that each seat offers direct aisle access.
Personally I’d recommend using aa.com to search for award availability, and then you can use Iberia’s website to actually book. I only say this because American’s website is much better about displaying availability across weeks at a time, in case that’s how you prefer to search.
The other benefit to redeeming Iberia Avios (rather than British Airways Avios) for travel on Iberia is that they have reasonable surcharges. A roundtrip business class ticket will only cost you about $230 in taxes and carrier imposed surcharges.
68,000 Avios plus $230 in taxes and fees is a heck of a deal, especially given how inexpensively many of us acquired these Avios.
Anyone plan to take advantage of this excellent Iberia award availability?
(Tip of the hat to Monkey Miles)
Anyone else not able to update their personal details (eg address) on the IB Plus profile? The system just logs you out?
Why is no one talking about the fact that you can't book more than TWO business class seats?! I'm super frustrated that I even participated in this promo. If I had known I couldn't fly my family, I wouldn't have even tried. @Tiffany you definitely CANNOT split your family into two. I'm really regretting having bought into the hype of all the travel website. Caveat emptor.
This is truly one of the worst airlines ever. First, I had to fight with them over the promo (and mind you I already had an account) that the Avios were finally awarded LONG after anything reasonable was available before December. Then made the ultimate mistake of trying to move Ultimate rewards over last night in order to take advantage of March; only to find out Iberia makes you wait "15 days" before they are...
This is truly one of the worst airlines ever. First, I had to fight with them over the promo (and mind you I already had an account) that the Avios were finally awarded LONG after anything reasonable was available before December. Then made the ultimate mistake of trying to move Ultimate rewards over last night in order to take advantage of March; only to find out Iberia makes you wait "15 days" before they are available for your use. Now low and behold nothing in business is open anymore after just looking. How convenient Iberia.
@Ran
Thanks for the tip. I appreciate it! Cheers
How do you book premium economy using avios?
@MorSor, I found that, in exploring awards on their web site, if I booked, say, LAX-LHR-MAD or LAX-LHR-BCN in business class on BA flights, IB showed about $450 in fees, but if I switched the LHR-MAD or LHR-BCN from business class to blue class (a restricted coach ticket), it dropped the fees to under $200. On the IB web site, if you search for a route (e.g., LAX-BCN) it will show both IB and BA...
@MorSor, I found that, in exploring awards on their web site, if I booked, say, LAX-LHR-MAD or LAX-LHR-BCN in business class on BA flights, IB showed about $450 in fees, but if I switched the LHR-MAD or LHR-BCN from business class to blue class (a restricted coach ticket), it dropped the fees to under $200. On the IB web site, if you search for a route (e.g., LAX-BCN) it will show both IB and BA flights, with a radio button for each flight to select first (on BA), business, coach, or blue. After selecting all flights, it shows the total Avios and fees below.
I booked a trip for two Monday. Chicago to Madrid May 20 and Dublin to Seattle (Aer Lingus) June 5th all Business Class, all nonstop.
I tried using the AA site for Iberia, but ended up using the BA site to find availability and the Iberia site to book Iberia, then using the United site for availability on Aer Lingus, and BA to book. About $175 total taxes and fees per person total. For us...
I booked a trip for two Monday. Chicago to Madrid May 20 and Dublin to Seattle (Aer Lingus) June 5th all Business Class, all nonstop.
I tried using the AA site for Iberia, but ended up using the BA site to find availability and the Iberia site to book Iberia, then using the United site for availability on Aer Lingus, and BA to book. About $175 total taxes and fees per person total. For us the double open jaws was the feature, the $50 or so savings per person was just the bonus.
@Bk
ORD MAD is a specific exception in their award table. For their own reasons they choose to only charge 34k Avios each way in Business even though by their award chart they "should" charge 42.5k each way.
Iberia has wide open business class as per article but I cannot book 4 business class seats on the same flight. Does anyone know why is this and is there a way to book 4 business seat from NYC-MAD using the Iberia 90,000 avios?
@ SP -- At this point you may have to split the group two and two.
@ Tiffany & MACH81-- Thank you very much. Makes sense now!
@Ran
Can you elaborate how you do that? Im very interested
(Sorry, typo)
By the way, if you want to redeem for BA flights, I found a way to get rid of most of the BA fuel surcharges: book BA u.s.-London in business, and a connection London-Madrid in Blue.
By the way, if you want to redeem for NA flights, I found a way to get rid of most of the BA fuel surcharges: book BA u.s.-London in business, and a connection London-Madrid in Blue.
still wondering why ORD-MAD is 34K since it is over 4K miles...
@AOH, correct they charge per segment.
Does Iberia charge per segment? When searching for a direct flight between Madrid and Boston, the system prices it correctly at 34K Avios + taxes and fees. However, when I search Paris-Boston, the Avios price is much higher. The distance between Paris and Boston is far less than 4K miles. Why is this the case?
@ AOH -- They charge the cumulative distance of the flow segments, so for Paris-Boston you'd pay for Paris-Madrid-Boston, which probably puts you in a higher band.
I'm still waiting to get my AVIOS posted to my account. Getting anyone on the phone is never going to happen. I've emailed, tweeted, FB messenger...only received generic responses. Might have some luck reaching out through FB, someone actually responded with some actual words. Fingers crossed. These 90K avios plus my husbands, which btw posted like clockwork 2 days after the promo ended will be put to good use.
Thanks for the heads up...
I'm still waiting to get my AVIOS posted to my account. Getting anyone on the phone is never going to happen. I've emailed, tweeted, FB messenger...only received generic responses. Might have some luck reaching out through FB, someone actually responded with some actual words. Fingers crossed. These 90K avios plus my husbands, which btw posted like clockwork 2 days after the promo ended will be put to good use.
Thanks for the heads up on availability out of Chicago. I"ve been looking into flying out of Mexico City, lots of availability and a good reason to spend a few days in the DF!
@Luis - seeing zero availability in biz out of LA for the next few months. I would have searched for availability out of SFO but the season ends later this month.
@Luis "Personally I’d recommend using aa.com to search for award availability, and then you can use Iberia’s website to actually book. I only say this because American’s website is much better about displaying availability across weeks at a time, in case that’s how you prefer to search."
Leigh and Kenneth - when searching on AA are you looking at IB flights only? Other partner availability seems to be patchy when trying to book awards on the IB+ site, but it should be showing all the Iberia Airlines flights in all classes that you can see on other sites.
I'm sorry. I'm not seeing ANY correlation between award avail shown on AA and award avail on Iberia.
No problem finding availability, but my roundtrip is pricing out much higher. Roundtrip works out to 96,750 points + $666.01. That's between ORD & MAD, during off-peak dates. What the heck am I doing wrong?
I see availability on AA, but nothing on IB site...
Seeing anything out of LAX?
i'm debating on doing this for a trip to Europe or moving the avios over to BAEC and doing a multicarrier trip to SE Asia via CX, MH, and RJ and hitting a few cities there (HKG, BKK, KUL, PEN, SIN etc.)