How I Used My Iberia Avios From That Recent Promotion

There was a lot of hype a couple of weeks ago about the Iberia 9,000 Avios point per flight promotion that was going on. You could book an Iberia flight (of any cost) and receive 9,000 Avios, up to 10 times! If you maxed it out, you could get 90,000 Iberia Avios for as little as $140. Late comers to the party could still easily book 10 flights for around $350.

I was offline on a hiking trip for a few days when the promotion launched, so I didn’t find out about it until the last day. At the time, the best price I could find for a single flight was about $33, and I went for it! I booked 10 flights for a total of $330 to earn 90,000 Iberia Avios.

And I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with the Avios if I even got them!

There was some confusion and a lot of doubt as to whether Iberia would honor their promotion, and for the most part it seems that they have. Everyone I know who had or created legitimate Iberia accounts for this promotion has gotten the miles that were due to them.

There are a lot of great options for what you can do with your Iberia Avios, and FTG writer Anya has previously written a great guide to redeeming Iberia Avios in case you need help.

Here’s what I did with my miles and what it would have cost if I had paid cash for these flights.

I already have a flight from Denver to Madrid for April of next year because I want to spend some time learning Spanish. My boyfriend wants to join me, so I booked him on a flight from Chicago to Madrid in Business Class for 34,000 Avios.

I also used my Avios to book our return flights from Madrid to Chicago. I booked myself in Business Class for 34,000 Avios and my boyfriend in Premium Economy for 25,500 Avios. This means I spent 3,500 extra Avios over what I earned from the promotion, but I had some Avios in my British Airways account and transferred those over to Iberia.

The taxes for the Business Class flights were about $130 each and for the Premium Economy flight around $120.

If we had paid cash for these flights, we would have paid $3,783 (total) for the Business Class flights and and about $2,000 for the one-way Premium Economy flight. Of course, we wouldn’t have actually spent that much on our flights, but even if we had purchased Economy Class tickets, it would have cost $994 per person for direct flights on Iberia or $646 per person for connecting flights through Istanbul on Turkish.

All in, it cost us $718 plus 3,500 additional Avios to book these flights. $330 from the Avios promotion and taxes and fees from the flight. For Business Class!

Overall, I’m thrilled with how this promotion turned out and that I was able to get such great deals on flights that I needed to book anyway!

 

Did you participate in the promotion? What are you doing with your 90,000 Iberia Avios?