The madness continues …. Iberia’s ‘90,000 Avios points for £200’ ends tonight. Let’s do the maths.

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In all of the years I’ve been running Head for Points, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a deal get as much attention – globally – as the Iberia ‘90,000 Avios for booking 10 flights you don’t need to fly’ offer this weekend.

We’ve certainly had good Tesco Direct deals in the past which were more generous, such as 2,400 Avios (1,000 Clubcard points) for a £10 printer ink which you could resell on eBay. These were glitches and got no attention outside the UK. This deal is NOT a mistake – Iberia has been keen to tell us that! – and it is getting huge amounts of traction across the world.

You can book the Iberia deal here if you still want to jump in or find out more.

To summarise:

You get 9,000 Avios for every Iberia, Iberia Express or Air Nostrum flight you book by 11pm UK time on Sunday
You can earn up to 90,000 Avios per Iberia Plus account
You must book on iberia.com
Your booking must include your Iberia Plus frequent flyer number
Your 9,000 bonus Avios will arrive within 10 days
Iberia has confirmed that you do not have to take the flights – you won’t lose the Avios if you don’t
One-way flights work fine

So …. if you can find 10 cheap one-way flights on iberia.com for €25 each (Santander to or from Madrid still had availability at that price last night, obviously prices are lowest in Winter) then you are getting 90,000 Avios cheaply.

There are restrictions on using these Avios and I STRONGLY recommend reading my article from yesterday here before booking.

Let’s put the deal in context

I am guessing that between 50,000 and 100,000 seats will be booked under this promotion. If you think that sounds high, remember that it only requires 5,000 to 10,000 people to book their full quota to hit that number. You also need to remember that non-UK frequent flyer sites have been going crazy over this deal too – virtually all of them, I have to say, giving less focus to the potential downside risks than we have.

What would 100,000 booked seats mean?

Iberia Group carries 85,000 passengers per day, so this equates to over one full day of passenger numbers

If you assume all of the bookings are for Q4 2018 and Q1 2019, as that is when fares are cheapest, it will add 0.6% to Iberia’s load factor for those two quarters (management bonuses all round)

If Iberia pays 0.75p per Avios to Avios Group (which is my best guess) then it will have to hand over £6,750,000 to AGL

Assuming an average ticket price of £20, Iberia will therefore lose £4,750,000, albeit IAG overall sees no loss

The promotion seems to have wiped out every single Iberia seat priced at under €20 for the next 12 months, and a large proportion of those priced under €25

Iberia will see a disproportionately high number of ‘no shows’ over the next year which could have a longer term impact on planning as they will lose track of the ‘genuine’ no show rate which is how they decide how much they can oversell a flight

It is all very odd and, frankly, probably beyond anything that Iberia thought would happen. There will be some interesting discussions in Madrid on Monday. Iberia cannot realistically go back on the deal, however, given that it briefed various websites including Head for Points on Friday about how the offer worked.

You can book via the special offer page here if you still want to give it a go before 11pm tonight.

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

Iberia and Iberia Plus

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

Paul says:

25 Jun25 June 10:07

These twitter comments worry me. I dismissed the promotion when Rob first posted on it. However after reading the “Iberia Clarifications” on Saturday re transferring I went ahead and spent around 270 quid on the offer. I took part purely to transfer to BAEC and use for RFS to visit family.
I do feel a fool if the Iberia twitter comments re transfers are correct. The Ts and Cs did not specify this was the case. Is it normal to be able to add to you Ts and Cs after a transaction?
- luckyjim says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 10:25
  
  The Ts and Cs were fairly clear. The avios must be spent before 1 December and transferring out does not count as spending. Preventing transfers out only blocks a potential abuse of the promotion. Can’t really complain about that.
- Rob says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 10:57
  
  To be fair, the RFS difference is usually not huge so you won’t be massively out of pocket if you end up booking those flights off iberia.com.
  - Matt B says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 11:25
    
    I was too tired last night to make much effort so only managed 3 booking before 11pm, but that is enough for a CE out, ET back booking for a holiday next summer somewhere in the Balearics. Did a few dummy bookings and it was around £55 in taxes return from LHR, about a fiver less from LGW, compared to approx £35 if booked as 2 one way RFS so £20 difference is ok with me. Works out the total flight outlay would be £130 compared to cash price of over £400 so I’m happy with that.
  - the real harry1 says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 16:07
    
    Sorry to be lazy as I know I could check this online – but can I book reward flights from IB portal LHR—>place in the sun (it’s just a regular BA European route from London), ie use my IB points for this? Just not get the reduced RFS £17.50 fee, is that it?
    
    Or can I only use the IB Avios on routes to/ from Spain?
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 16:23
      
      Oh right, looks like I can – regular Avios in line with BA (I guess there might even be a 1000 Avios saving vs BA timetable if I check that)
      
      Difference is £32.50 vs RFS £17.50, £15 more
      
      I guess I can live with that if the Avios only cost me 0.3p, would make a peak flight (7500x 0.3p) £22.50 + £32.50 = £55
      
      Shame on deadline as I’ll only need to book 12 flights by 1st December = 90,000
      
      What is the date change fee on IB, anyone?
    - Optimus Prime says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 16:45
      
      @Harry I think it’s £60.
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 17:02
      
      cheers – £60 rules out that one then (European flights, clearly not worth booking now & changing dates to (say) Xmas & Easter)
      
      so my plan A is still to shift the points to BAEC
      
      if I can’t do that, plan B I’ll buy reward flights on my usual route then find a way to use up the remaining points, maybe a nice family jaunt to Salamanca or Santiago de Compostela
      
      has anybody looked up other ways to burn IB points other than flights/ hotels?
- luckyjim says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 11:13
  
  Or think of it as a £500 hotel voucher than only cost you £200.
- David says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 13:15
  
  Stop trying to milk it and play by the rules!
  - Paul says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 14:53
    
    Having read Rob’s clarifacation from Iberia, I thought I was playing by the rules!
    Flooding the Iberia avios market place with Avios for which there may be little availablity reminds me of a certain vacuum cleaner’s promotion from a number of years back..
    - pauldb says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 16:51
      
      Hoping to high-tail the avios out of IB+, and then deliberately leaving a -90k balace for which they can whistle, was never going to be playing by the rules.
  - Mikeact says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 20:52
    
    Total rubbish.
Ian says:

25 Jun25 June 10:43

I got all the emails with the IB number on it. However, I paid with Amex and none of the transactions is showing up, not event as pending. Has anyone had the same problem?
Is it because it was paid in euros?
- DrPositive Snell says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 10:53
  
  Possibly I had one not showing up on Amex card which was paid in euros. Wait a few days and it should appear on your statement.
- guesswho2000 says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 11:00
  
  Yeah, some of mine were in EUR, some in GBP. The GBP ones are pending, the EUR ones nowhere to be seen, but I did get a push notification for each transaction on my iPhone.
- Attila says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 11:00
  
  I can confirm this too. Transaction made in euros will take a couple of days to appear on your statement.
  - Ian says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 11:01
    
    Thanks all for confirming 🙂
    - TripleB says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 23:51
      
      Interestingly the bookings I made with my mastercard debit cards (from two different high street banks) still aren’t showing up (not even in pending transactions) yet the ones I made with my Visa credit (with a 3rd financial institution) hit the transactions list (not the pending transactions list) within a matter of an hour or two. All were euro transactions on UK cards.
Peter says:

25 Jun25 June 13:09

Good luck @all 🙁

https://loyaltylobby.com/2018/06/25/iberia-plus-90000-bonus-avios-promo-drama-in-the-making/
- Rob Mc says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 13:14
  
  Reading the terms and conditions again, nowhere does it state that a flight must be taken. Just the flight needs to be booked. It states the avios will be withdrawn if a refund is taken. You will not earn avios if you do not fly (the earning avios) so perhaps this is where the twitter account could be getting confused.
  - Simon B says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 13:50
    
    Also, if you do what Iberia want you to do, i.e. book some flights, receive AVIOS, spend AVIOS on further flight(s), by the time the original flights are not taken the avios have been used on a booking, or potentially even flown.
- Richard says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 13:54
  
  But as the article states, it is just misinformation from someone who was replying on Twitter. The article goes on
  
  I forwarded the Twitter message above to the Iberia spokesperson with a note that it appears that they are sending incorrect replies and here’s the email that I got back:
  
  You are right, the answer provided on Twitter is not right.
  
  The Avios will be added on our customer’s Iberia Plus accounts within 10 days of the ticket having been bought.
  
  so we will be credited with the points 10 days after booking anyway.
- RIccatti says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 18:24
  
  Another case of broken comms from contacting the airline, now on Twitter.
  
  Consider scenario: all flights have been booked to go after Dec 2nd
B R says:

25 Jun25 June 14:10

Expect a lot of clickbait from blogs wanting to continue high traffic levels by spreading FUD. We’ll know more in 10 days. Patience.
@mkcol says:

25 Jun25 June 14:48

Is this now the most-commented upon thread?
- Claire says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 15:37
  
  If it’s not, it certainly will be in about another 7-8 days!
Jimbob says:

25 Jun25 June 16:55

Would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the Iberia marketing meeting this morning
- the real harry1 says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 18:21
  
  You shouldn’t be working in marketing if you can’t make a promotion like this sound wildly successful – it can be spun as a great success internally in so many ways.
  
  The math can be made to stack up; think about recruitment costs of new consumers (getting people to buy IB for the first time); decent % of points will be clawed back come Dec 1st; a good load factor analyst will be working out which flights can safely be judged to have a high no-show factor so increase the over-sell total; say you used 90K points for a flight in First [‘One idea is that 96,000 Avios will get you a roundtrip ticket in American’s A321 first class between Los Angeles and New York.] – what’s the real variable cost to IB – is it much different to the £250 paid for the 90,000 Avios?
  
  etc etc
  - Jimbob says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 18:29
    
    As long as they can buy Avios for less than 0.3p, then I’m sure the maths will work out for Iberia.
    Someone must know the wholesale price
    - Rob says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 18:34
      
      0.75p I think. Iberia loses a lot of money, Avios Group makes a lot of money, and it may or may not net out for IAG depending on whether people redeem for flights or third-party redemptions like hotels.
  - CV3V says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 21:38
    
    @ Harry
    
    On that article, its all just a lot of speculation about speculation, none of the arguments stand up against any kind of real world test. I dont want to break it down point by point, not enough space. This IB promo has attracted massive worldwide interest, inexperienced points collectors jumping in and now second guessing themselves combined with websites keeping their site visits up by keeping the speculation going. Makes me hark back to the good old days of 3V cards and NS&I saving account, or Tesco veg (bought individually) – it all seemed so simple back then!
    
    The veterans on here know not to listen to customer services, especially on twitter, stick to the published Ts and Cs. See what happens in less than 10 days, and then again in December.
  - Thomas Howard says:
    
    26 Jun26 June 15:47
    
    The big unknown is the extent that they devalue the Avios before anyone can use them.
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      26 Jun26 June 16:17
      
      That’s very much a small unknown in my books 🙂
      
      If you’re going to worry yourself silly about something, choose something more likely to have a big impact on your Avios enjoyment, eg
      – can’t move Avios to BAEC
      – change T&Cs, such as no points awarded if flights not flown
      – ditto points only awarded after flight dates
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      26 Jun26 June 19:01
      
      – move points to BAEC leaving -90K @ IB, IB force you to buy the points back to zero the a/c
      – IB & BAEC join platforms in a few months and the points are made one total, ie they net off the -90K
the real harry1 says:

25 Jun25 June 18:05

I believe I opened my IB a/c on my old passport number; my wife has 2 passports…simple enough to cancel the -90,000 IB a/cs and open new ones 🙂
- CV3V says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 21:47
  
  Thing is, unless someone is actually planning on flying with Iberia then people could use any old number for their passport number, perhaps thats how those in the US were able to open multiple accounts. There are a few other tricks now that i think about it. Cant imagine IB are validating passport numbers with the issuing authorities across the world for a loyalty scheme.
  
  That said, i genuinely have to renew my passport this year, which may be interesting.
  - Andy says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 22:46
    
    They could ask for a scan of the passport/ID card to verify the account I suppose…
    - CV3V says:
      
      26 Jun26 June 08:38
      
      In which case someone would raise security issues with email etc. They could ask, but point is that they dont.
EvilGazebo says:

25 Jun25 June 18:21

Related question: assuming this all works as described I’m going to need to get an extra 10k into wife’s new IB account for the redemption we want.

She is a member of my BA HHA but has little or no avios in her BA account. No balances anywhere else either (very remiss).

Options appear to be either

a) buy the avios from either IB or BA
b) refer her for a new Amex Gold and try and spend the £2k to get the bonus sharpish.

Any other bright ideas I’m missing?
- the real harry1 says:
  
  25 Jun25 June 18:23
  
  which card would you be referring her from?
  - EvilGazebo says:
    
    25 Jun25 June 18:39
    
    Currently PR Gold but looking to upgrade to Plat soon so either.
    - the real harry1 says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 18:51
      
      simple, upgrade to Plat for 20K points on £1000 spend (just use PayPoint to pay off your council tax, you’d get the 20K points in a couple of days)
      https://www.americanexpress.com/uk/content/platinum-charge/upgrade/
      
      Only then refer her (from Plat) for 18,000 referral points for you the referrer – she gets 22K points once she hits the spend target
      
      60,000 points, easy as 🙂
    - EvilGazebo says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 19:24
      
      Can’t reply to your comment below for some reason Harry. Anyway, yes that has always been the plan. But I’m more concerned about the speed of getting the 10k avios for her to secure the seats I’ve clocked. No clever ways I can transfer my AMEX or BA points to her?
    - EvilGazebo says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 19:25
      
      Or rather comment above. No good with threading me.
    - luckyjim says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 19:31
      
      You don’t have any clubcard points? Would only need £40 or so.
    - EvilGazebo says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 20:23
      
      No, clubcard balance has rather withered and died of late.
    - Genghis says:
      
      25 Jun25 June 21:04
      
      Amex points have been known to slip through to someone else’s IB acct (my wife, same surname a few years ago).
    - EvilGazebo says:
      
      26 Jun26 June 07:24
      
      Thanks, I did wonder if that might be worth a shot.
- pauldb says:
  
  26 Jun26 June 13:27
  
  Does the redemption you want maybe have an avios&money option?
  
  Have you tried pairing your Amex MR account with her IB account … you never know.