Why you should never book Avios flights on Iberia via ba.com

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Because you can book redemption flights on Iberia via ba.com, the vast majority (99%?) of British Airways Executive Club members who want an Iberia long-haul flight do it that way. They are making an expensive mistake.

When you book a long-haul Avios redemption flight on Iberia, you actually have two options:

You can book it via ba.com – Iberia availability shows up alongside BA availability, as both airlines are in the oneworld alliance and you can use your Avios on all oneworld carriers

You can book it via iberia.com

Iberia – which has the same parent company as British Airways – also uses Avios as its loyalty currency. And, if you have an Iberia Plus account, you can freely transfer Avios back and forth from BA to Iberia using ‘Combine My Avios’.

However, there are two conditions:

You can only transfer in or out of Iberia Plus accounts which are 90 days old

You can only transfer in or out of ‘active’ Iberia Plus accounts. This means that the account has ‘earned’ an Avios directly – ie you have credited a flight, hotel or car hire to it, or done some other activity to earn an Avios. If you have an Amex card with Membership Rewards, transferring 1,000 points across may be the easiest way to ‘activate’ your account. Buying Avios via Iberia also counts.

Why would want you want to mess about with all this? Very simple – you do not pay BA’s surcharges on Iberia redemptions when booked via Iberia Plus.

Here is an example, looking at 25th February for a one-way flight from Madrid to Santiago in Chile, a non-BA destination:

Book IB6833 from Madrid to Santiago in Business on ba.com and pay 60,000 Avios and £294 of taxes and charges

Book IB6833 from Madrid to Santiago in Business on iberia.com and pay 60,000 Avios plus £77 of taxes and charges

That is a ludicrous £217 saving – per person! And that is just for a one-way flight.

On ba.com, the charge is mistakenly shown as £156 but when you click through to the payment page it adjusts to £294.

Note that this ONLY applies to booking Iberia flights on iberia.com. If you book a British Airways flight on iberia.com you pay the same fuel surcharges as at ba.com.

(In any event, you should NEVER book a British Airways or oneworld Avios flight at iberia.com, because it is non-refundable. Book at ba.com and you can cancel it for a £35 fee.)

This is why, if you don’t have an Iberia Plus account, you should open one. It will start the 90 day clock ticking before you can transfer in or out of it. You can sign up to e-rewards via Iberia to earn 750 Avios in order to ‘activate’ the account. If you don’t, you won’t be able to get an Iberia account up and running and short notice if you need one.

Category

British Airways and Avios, Iberia and Iberia Plus

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

Myer says:

27 Dec27 December 07:46

Slightly off topic but on the subject of Iberia / BA, I upgraded an economy ticket by using Iberia’s bidding system. I won the “bid” but unlike BA, was not credited with business class tier points, or additional Avios. So let that serve as a warning for anyone trying to achieve a tier point target!
al says:

27 Dec27 December 09:55

Iberia e-rewards link has been inactive for at least a week
Paul osborn says:

27 Dec27 December 09:58

Hi
Slightly OT but, I have a points balance on IB via the economist promo and am struggling to post those back to my Avios as this option is never shown. I can transfer into IB but not away and have attempted via IB and Avios. Admittedly I haven’t tried the 1000 points mentioned above – is that the key to unlocking the account ? Any advice please as I’ve contacted IB several times with no joy.
- Rob says:
  
  27 Dec27 December 10:23
  
  Is your account over 90 days old? That should trigger it.
  
  Have you tried to move them from inside Iberia.com? This article explains how: https://headforpoints.com/2014/09/28/how-to-convert-transfer-iberia-avios-points-to-british-airways-avios-points/
  
  Do all your personal details match between the Iberia and BA accounts including name, email and date of birth? If any of these fields are blank, fill them in.
  
  If all that fails, it may require an email to BA or avios.com (don’t waste your time with Iberia).
- ECR says:
  
  27 Dec27 December 12:49
  
  I had problems with combine my avios and Iberia a year or two ago.
  
  I read somewhere that the problem was Iberia needs the password to be all numerical. I changed my password to just numbers and it has worked without an issue since.
  
  It seems strange but it worked!
Adam says:

27 Dec27 December 15:36

Or just contact avios live help using chat and they can do the transfer for you.
- Paul osborn says:
  
  27 Dec27 December 19:18
  
  Thanks Adam. It turns out that I cannot transfer / combine IB+ with my Avios account as my Avios is a household account. I have used the Avios live chat and they were mist helpful , unlike Iberia who were useless. Fingers crossed that the firm they asked for will delete the hh account.
  Thanks again.
  - Andy says:
    
    28 Dec28 December 15:36
    
    I have this problem sometimes, so what I have done is to open an account on avios.com, and transfer from IB to Avios.com to BA. It’s pretty quick and within 5/10 mins the avios are updated in your BAEC account.
exitcontrol says:

27 Dec27 December 16:41

Bit of a geeky one here (and I suspect Rob has done this on purpose) , that is a mocked up picture of an Iberia plane. It’s got 3 engines!
- RogerC says:
  
  27 Dec27 December 18:24
  
  Is it not a DC-10?
  - Davy says:
    
    27 Dec27 December 20:38
    
    Probaly not a DC10 with the winglets but could be the updated MD11.
    - Dev says:
      
      27 Dec27 December 20:43
      
      It looks like an MD-11 (winglets give it away) but since when did Iberia get a MD-11 in a new livery?
- Rob says:
  
  27 Dec27 December 22:05
  
  No I didn’t. I am trying to refresh some of the images I use and randomly picked that one because it looked decent!
  
  I will switch it over now because if I don’t I will forget it is wrong and it will never be fixed.
Jaime says:

27 Dec27 December 20:33

Well, that is not completely true. I am spanish and I book some Iberia mainland flights (i.e. Jerez de la Frontera – Madrid) sometimes through BA.com cause taxes and charges are cheaper than Iberia.com. That’s quite strange but it’s all about the system, sometimes it is cheaper to buy BA flights through Iberia.com too. The great thing is that we can combine our Avios through our Iberia Plus and Executive Club accounts for free.

And by the way: what an awful picture… the correct one is –> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/10/DC-_10_Iberia.jpg
Flying to Rio in Business - FlyerTalk Forums says:

4 Jan4 January 18:09

[…] to add, if you haven't already you should open an IB Plus account now. See Raffles' guide here for […]
James H says:

6 Jan6 January 16:30

So, I’m looking at booking MAD-LIM-MAD in business using avios.

On BA.com it’s 100k points and £156, and on iberia.com it’s 100k points and £160.30. Am I doing something wrong?
- James H says:
  
  6 Jan6 January 20:03
  
  Ignore me.
  
  Note to self: read article in full next time. It increases to £516 when you go to pay! Just transferred some amex points to get my Iberia account active. Thanks!