Spanish Airline Iberia is offering a discount on certain routes booked with Avios – they are including long hauls from North America, with cities including New York, Miami and Chicago. I flew Iberia from JFK-MAD last year in Business Class and it was an excellent product, with lie flat beds and decent food and beverage options.
This deal isn’t showing up yet on their deals page, but if you price a booking it comes up with the deal price I found Business Class space a little harder to find, but lots of room in Coach.Please note, that according to the Raffles at Headforpoints the terms state Travel must be booked by Tuesday Jan 7th and completed by April 7th.
Pricing reduced to just 20,000 Avios
The regular price from NYC-MAD in Business Class is 40,000 Avios each way, the discounted price is just 20,000 Avios. That’s amazing value. For the more frugally minded you can fly that same route in Coach for 10,000 Avios each way!
About Iberia Avios
Iberia Avios is a different program to British Airways Avios, but the two allow transfers providing that your Iberia Account is open for 90 days. Also, the Iberia account needs to have at least 1 mile in it to be considered active, and if you haven’t flown Iberia that is a dilemma – the best solution is to find a social media campaign that offers a small Avios reward – I did this to earn 125 Avios in the past.
If you don’t already own an active Iberia account to transfer British Airways Avios into then you can also open up an account and immediately fund with transfers from either American Express Membership Rewards or SPG, both offer a 1:1 exchange ratio and SPG offers that 5000 mile bonus if you transfer a block of 20,000 SPG (you would receive 25000 Iberia Avios).
Note, I have never transferred into Iberia from Membership Rewards or SPG, but when I have used these two transfer programs in the past I found Membership Rewards to be instantaneous and SPG to take around a week to transfer – the delay on SPG could mean that you end up making the transfer and by the time the points hit your account the award space has evaporated.
In addition to this amazing discounted pricing currently on offer, Iberia Avios do offer better value than British Airways Avios when booking award travel, they price the same number of Avios for each program but taxes and fees collected are by and large much lower using Iberia’s version of the program than British Airways. There is also a third version of Avios that has different pros and cons too, if you want to read more about that check out this post on ‘5 Good Reasons to Transfer British Airways Avios to the other other avios’.
My Take
This is a fantastic deal – but if you don’t have Iberia Avios in the account I would only attempt to transfer from British Airways avios (into an activated Iberia Account) or from Membership Rewards directly to your Iberia account – I wouldn’t risk SPG because I think they will be too slow and you will miss the booking window of Tuesday. If this deal is not for you I recommend opening up an Iberia account ready for the next one.
Thanks. Your message made me take a look, but have not committed yet.
Gotta move fast- you only have til Tuesday to book, and if you need to transfer then you have to pull the trigger asap. Good luck with your decision!
I’m on their site, and when trying to book 2 people for JFK-MAD-JFK, with dates 2/14-2/17, I get 60k Avios plus $414.72
Eh?
Mixed Biz/Coach?
You need to choose Blue Class if you’re searching for economy seats.
Good point Michael, I selected blue class in this example and didn’t note it.
This deal is useless for those that have little or no Avios in their Iberia account cause you can’t transfer from BA and from Membership Rewards.
Hey Maury,
I am not following you… if you have ‘little’ Avios in your Iberia account it is perfect for transferring BA Avios, you need at least 1 Iberia Avios to activate the account (and 90 days history) for transfer. Membership rewards doesn’t matter about little or none, just transfer.
It is probably useless for people with only SPG since they transfer slower.