Three ‘buy Avios’ bonuses – are they any good?

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British Airways and avios.com launched their latest ‘buy Avios’ promotions on Monday. Iberia Plus has been running a similar offer for a few days. How do they compare?

British Airways and avios.com

Both ba.com (buy here) and avios.com (buy here, scroll down to the Avios logo) are offering the following deal:

15% bonus when buying 5,000 – 26,000 Avios

25% bonus when buying the annual cap of 27,000 Avios

At the cap, you are paying £447 for 33,350 Avios. That is 1.34p each. This is not bad if you need to top up an account.

This offer is available until 23rd March.

Avios wing 8

Iberia Plus

The Iberia offer is slightly different:

The bonus is a flat 20% on all purchases of 4,000 Avios or more

The Iberia cap is higher than BA’s, at 35,000 Avios per year

At the cap, you are paying €665 for 42,000 Avios. That is 1.32p each. However, if your credit card imposes a surcharge for foreign currency payments, you would end up paying 3% more.

The Iberia offer is only available until 23rd February.

Remember that you cannot transfer Avios from Iberia Plus to ba.com or avios.com until your Iberia Plus account is 90 days old.

If you are interested, the ba.com and avios.com offers are the easiest to use, and will also be the cheapest unless you have an FX-free credit card. Whilst there is a cap, don’t forget that you can in fact buy up the annual cap in all three programmes and then merge the Avios points together using ‘Combine My Avios’ online.

Purchases of Avios points go through your credit card as ‘points.com’ and do not therefore count as a BA purchase. You will not receive bonus Avios on your credit card for BA spending.

How to earn Avios points from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (December 2021)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways BA Amex American Express card

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up, no annual fee and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending ….. Read our full review

British Airways BA Premium Plus American Express Amex credit card

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the UK’s most valuable credit card perk – the 2-4-1 companion voucher Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points, such as:

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & two airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

30,000 points and an unbeatable set of travel benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital On Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios:

Capital On Tap Business Rewards Visa

The most generous Avios Visa or Mastercard for a limited company Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus:

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

(Want to earn more Avios? Click here to visit our home page for our latest articles on earning and spending your Avios points and click here to see how to earn more Avios this month from offers and promotions.)

Category

British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus

This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

James67 says:

12 Feb12 February 06:55

Good morning Rob. When doing these buy miles posts I think it would be a good idea if you remind people they might be better doing the cash and avios option than the buy avios option if they need extra. It also has the advantage of the extra credit card points for amex travel spend or BA spend using Diamond Club cards from MBNA
- Rob says:
  
  12 Feb12 February 08:18
  
  Good point, especially as there is a ‘cash and Avios’ post in the Avios Redemption University series to link to
  - squills says:
    
    12 Feb12 February 09:36
    
    Am I right in thinking that if you even pay the smallest cash option for a [avios + cash] flight ticket, you’ll get the normal avios on the flight as if you had paid 100% cash?
    - Rob says:
      
      12 Feb12 February 11:57
      
      No. It is treated as a reward ticket.
      
      You WILL get Avios if you book a short-haul European ticket for cash and use Avios points to get a few pounds knocked off the fair (that is ‘part pay with Avios’ which is totally different).
      - squills says:
        
        12 Feb12 February 18:47
        
        Ah right – thanks
    - Alan says:
      
      12 Feb12 February 12:22
      
      I wouldn’t have thought so as they book into redemption fare buckets – would love to be proved wrong though!
RogerWilco says:

12 Feb12 February 09:00

If one calculated this to be a good deal, via HHA the cap is 6x in theory.
Gerry says:

12 Feb12 February 16:09

Shouldn’t it be 33,750 at the cap (not 33,350) at 1.32p ?
- Rob says:
  
  12 Feb12 February 20:55
  
  Quite possibly …..!
Asif says:

12 Feb12 February 20:24

If I was purchase the max at £447 for 33,350 Avios, would I not also get the BA Amex points for spending the £447 on my BA Amex card?
- Rob says:
  
  12 Feb12 February 20:53
  
  Only base points, not triple points as your statement will show ‘points.com’ and not ‘ba.com’
EdBee says:

12 Feb12 February 20:54

125% of 27,000 = 33,750, not 33,350. Great blog though.
Gregor says:

21 Feb21 February 13:03

Only slightly off-topic, but I thought I’d take advantage of the bonus offer from Iberia by buying 4000 Avios to “activate” my new (month old) Iberia Plus account. I was unable to do this through the website, just getting the message “We are sorry to inform you that this service is not available. If you have any questions, please consult your service centre. We apologise for the inconvenience.”

After several calls to Iberia the conclusion was that buying Avios was not a valid way to “activate” a new account; it had to be a flight, hotel, car hire, etc. I thought this might be useful for HFP readers to know, in case, like me, it means that the start of the 90 day active period is now somewhat unknown! I guess I’ll have to book my next domestic or European BA flight through Iberia.com, and accept that for that journey my BAEC Silver won’t be recognised (not bothered about the Tier Points as I’ll never make Gold by the rapidly approaching year end). Unless anyone has any other suggestions??
- Rob says:
  
  21 Feb21 February 14:13
  
  Shame you missed the ‘Avios Gym’ promo at Christmas, which was 15 Avios per day simply for logging in.
  
  You don’t need to book a BA flight via Iberia, just credit it to Iberia Plus. If you are flying anyway all you lose is the BA Silver elite bonus and the tier points.
  
  How about transferring a small number of hotel points to Iberia? 10,000 IHG = 2,000 miles, and of course the miles are not wasted as you can transfer them back to BA.
  
  I am not 100% sure that you were correctly advised, to be honest – I am sure I have read of people activating accounts before by purchasing Avios.
  - Gregor says:
    
    21 Feb21 February 16:13
    
    Thanks for the comments Raffles. The IHG points transfer is probably the way to go for me – I hadn’t thought of that.
    
    You’re probably right about the incorrect advice given by Iberia. It may actually have been some kind of IT malfunction which prevented me buying Avios online but they weren’t going to concede that!
Gregor says:

25 Feb25 February 10:04

Hmmm… it would seem that it is not possible to convert IHG points to Iberia Avios (although you can earn the other way). Iberia are not listed as a transfer partner on the Rewards Club website, and when I called to check they confirmed that such a conversion is not possible.