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How to transfer Avios points from Iberia to British Airways Executive Club

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I have covered a few Iberia Plus promotions on Head for Points recently.  This has led to a few emails asking exactly how you can transfer Avios points from Iberia Plus to British Airways Executive Club. The process has got even messier following security ‘improvements’ last year.

This article will act as a reference post and I can direct future queries to it.

The important thing to remember is that there is the ‘proper’ way to do this and there is the ‘fudge when Iberia’s IT goes down the toilet’ way.  I will cover both here.

Here are a few things to remember before moving Avios points out of Iberia Plus:

Your Iberia Plus account must be 90 days old before you can move Avios points out of it

If you want to transfer INTO Iberia Plus, your Iberia account must also have earned at least 1 Avios point.  The easiest way is to do a transfer from American Express Membership Rewards or credit a flight, car rental or hotel stay.

You can transfer your points back and forth, as many times as you like, for free

Transfers are instantaneous

There are two ways to do the transfer.  You will often find that doing it from ba.com fails for technical reasons no-one can understand.  You may have more success doing it from Iberia Plus.  If that fails, there is also a Plan C.

Moving Avios from Iberia Plus to BA British Airways

New security measures

In 2017 Avios introduced improved security measures for people wanting to transfer Avios between their accounts.

The bottom line is that pretty much ALL of your personal data must now match.  Email, date of birth, home address ….. the lot.

If you have combined Avios in the past but are now having problems, it is possible that your accounts do not have the same email address, or you moved house and forgot to update one of them.

There is also another issue.  Because of the Spanish surname system, signing up for Iberia Plus involves you giving your ‘first name’, ‘last name’ and ‘second last name’.  Your English surname should be ‘last name’.  If you enter your middle name as ‘second last name’ then Iberia’s system treats it as part of your surname and cannot match it with your Avios or BA surname.  This cannot be corrected online.

From ba.com:

Go to ba.com and log-in via the top right of the screen

Go to the ‘Manage My Account’ section which is under the ‘Executive Club’ tab

Click on ‘Combine My Avios’ in the left hand margin

However, as I mentioned above, this often fails to work when you try to move Avios points out of Iberia.  This forces you to plan B.

From iberia.com:

This is the one that proves tricky because it is hidden away!

Go to iberia.com and log-in by hovering over the ‘Iberia Plus’ box in the top right of the screen

Hover over ‘Iberia Plus’ again in the top-right corner and select ‘My Avios’ under the ‘My Profile’ menu

From the ‘My Avios’ page, click on ‘Buying or transferring Avios’

At the bottom of that page, headed ‘Buy, give away or transfer Avios’, you will see the line “Don’t forget you can combine your Avios with those of other customer loyalty programmes”.  Click this text.

(Important:  if your Iberia account has not been open for 90 days and has not earned at least 1 Avios point, you will NOT see this line of text because you are not yet able to transfer Avios.  Instead, you will see this:

rsz_iberia_plus_avios_transfer

There is a blank space under the ‘Transfer’ box where the ‘combine’ link should be.)

You will now be on the ‘Combine My Avios’ page.  Follow the instructions to send your points to avios.com or British Airways Executive Club.

And if that still fails to work ….

From avios.com:

For reasons unknown, ba.com and iberia.com will often throw up error messages when you try to transfer between the programmes.

However, using avios.com as an intermediary almost always works perfectly.

If you don’t have an avios.com account you will need to create one.  Then, from inside avios.com using the ‘Combine My Avios’ option under ‘My Account’, do this:

Make a transfer from iberia.com into avios.com

Make a transfer from avios.com to ba.com

This WILL work (most of the time) even when other options fail.


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:

Nectar American Express

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

American Express Platinum card Amex

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 card

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.)

Comments (79)

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

  • Judge says:

    Hi Rob. I wonder if you would consider updating this reference article to advise on what to do if you have HHAs? (I know you said we’re stuffed!) We lost all our Iberia Avios as I couldn’t work our what to do to transfer them to either our BAEC or Avios HHAs. And it wasn’t enough Avios to make it worth splitting the Avios HHA back to individual accounts. If I’d known what to do to keep the (individual) Iberia accounts active without flying, would probably have been best option. But 3 years ce and went too quickly! Also, if you have BAEC and Avios HHAs, can you transfer TO an Iberia account in order to top up for a redemption?

    • Rob says:

      I would close down the Avios HHA. There is no benefit if you have a parallel BA HHA with the same people.

      • Judge says:

        Thanks Rob. May do that but there does seem to be some benefit to pooling miles in Avios HHA as we both have the Lloyds Avios cards and both generate the upgrade voucher (though maybe those days are numbered). So can use both to upgrade one trip for two return. Or just have access to a larger pool of points to make bookings. But maybe my assumptions are flawed here. Are you saying no need as we can easily transfer points from individual Avios accounts to a BAEC HHA and vice versa?

  • Andreas says:

    Recently I have only been able to use avios.com to transfer, both ways. Pretty painless and easy to access.

  • Melonfarmer says:

    Regarding the having to earn 1 avios on the Iberia account, I have shopped online through Iberia Plus eshopping using eBay.es which allows one to log in to an eBay account registered in the UK (or elsewhere). 1 avios per Euro so easy to tick the box with some cheap electronics from China or second hand book (all that I trust eBay for, but that’s a different matter!). Use Chrome to translate the page if necessary.

  • Lewis says:

    Is it any easier to get status on iberia than ba? My silver just ran out

    • Lumma says:

      I had the ex EU Qatar flights last November to get my BA silver status. Looked at crediting to Iberia for the status but I think it was slightly more difficult than getting it with BA. Of course if you’re getting the tier points a different way it could work out differently

      • Rob says:

        You need to look at other things though …. how long does Iberia status last, and do you get a soft landing?

  • delbert says:

    Touch wood, I haven’t had any problems logging on to Iberia on either my account or my wife’s. In fact I just transferred Avios from Iberia to BA using the Avios website from both accounts without any issues whatsoever.

  • YC says:

    I really want to know how to combine the AerClub points and BA avois.

  • Delbert says:

    OT – my wife and I are heading to Europe this coming Easter weekend from T5 and I would like to take my Bluetooth speaker in my carry on.

    Do I have to take it out of my cabin case like I would a laptop?

    Many thanks in advance.

    • Rob says:

      I thought that had all been stopped now?

      • Delbert says:

        I have never travelled with a laptop anyway, Rob. Anyway, thanks and well noted.

    • John says:

      If you are talking about the security screening of your carry on baggage, then you should take everything that looks electronic out and place it in the trays, so that it doesn’t confuse the person viewing the x-ray who has the power to delay you for a manual search of your hand baggage.

      Within Europe there is no requirement to send any electronics in checked luggage, apart from BA flights in one direction from Istanbul to London.

      • Delbert says:

        Good point and thanks, John. This flight is also a test prior to our long haul flight at the end of April from T5 for which I will also be loading my Bluetooth speaker in my cabin case. Not risking such an expensive item in checked luggage. No big deal, just don’t want to create reasons for a search.

        • Judge says:

          I always take my speaker out. Unless I forget, in which case my bag is retained for searching without fail! Leading to long annoying waits due to my stupidity.

        • Anna says:

          You can’t win with them. Last time I flew the security guy insisted on pulling out and going through my makeup bag because he didn’t believe there were no liquids in it! He was astonished that you can actually obtain most cosmetic and toiletry items you might need in powder form.

      • sunguy says:

        Unfortunately, an awful lot of this relies on the training of the folks operating the scanner.

        Generally, Heathrow (ex BAA) trainied staff are pretty decent at doing the job, though, sometimes you get someone who is over cautious on the scanner…

        However, where the airport has been BAA and is now no longer (LGW, EDI, STN , etc) where they gutted the staff who had knowledge, there is quite a definite difference in the way passengers with electronics in their carryon are treated.

        The difference entirely lies with being able to discerne on the screen what is just cables/generic electronics like speakers, and what needs further inspection.

        If the operator isnt sure (often because they dont have enough experience and they also have set targets for number of bags to scan) then they have to have a manual search done.

        Its basically that cruicial learning point on how to read the scans properly and knowing what you are doing.

        BAA was not that great, some of the “little hitlers” that thought they were pretty much god of the airport were absoultely horrid, but the training by BAA was second to none. Unfortunately that later point cannot be said about the current crop of airport operators.

  • JamesS says:

    A bit O/T, I finally managed to use my first 241 voucher – LHR > JNB in first and CPT > LHR in club (have avidly followed HFP for the last 18 months so thanks to Rob and everyone else for this wealth of knowledge).

    All showing up under the same booking reference, our baggage allowance is showing the 3x32kg checked baggage outbound but then under the outbound I just see the following message:

    ‘One or more of your flights has a lower baggage allowance than the others but you can buy extra baggage allowance for this flight if required. See Extra baggage allowance below for details’

    Then it shows me how much extra luggage costs per piece. I understand the rules whereby the business leg won’t assume the first baggage allowance, but nowhere does it say the entitlement is 2x23kg for the return.
    Is this just poorly laid out / communicated under the booking page, or should I call them to query?

    • Tilly says:

      Should show baggage allowance under MMB. I have same type of booking made to YYZ, outbound F and return in J. In MMB under baggage it shows allowance for each flight. 3 x 32kg outbound and 2 x 32kg return.

      • JamesS says:

        That’s what I was expecting, however it only shows the hand baggage and additional cabin bag allowance. Then straight into:

        Extra baggage charges for flight BA0058

        ‘Cape Town (CPT) to Heathrow (London) (LHR), Thu 14 Mar 2019, 18:45
        Extra baggage1st item of luggage (max 23kg)
        Airport price£65.00
        Pre-airport price*£60.00’

        • Tilly says:

          How odd. I have quite a few bookings at the moment and they all show baggage allowance in MMB, 2 of the return bookings are different classes on outbound and return. Maybe give the system 24 hours to sort itself out (my answer to most tech problems are switch off/pull the plug out, leave for a bit and switch on again).

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