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Most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to transfer miles from one person to another. You can always book a reward ticket in the name of somebody else; you don’t need to send your miles to them. So, you might not have paid much attention if Iberia Plus e-mailed you with details of a promotion offering a 50% bonus when transferring Avios to somebody else.

If you look at the fine print, however, Iberia Plus are actually offering to sell you Avios for 1 euro cent each (0.85p).

Until 31 December, 2016, you can transfer Avios to another person and that person will receive 50% more Avios than you sent them. For hopefully obvious reasons, transferring/sharing existing Avios costs less than buying them, with the following pricing scale:

• 1,000-6,000 Avios = 30 euros
• 7,000-12,000 Avios = 75 euros
• 13,000-18,000 Avios = 115 euros
• 19,000-24,000 Avios = 160 euros

Counter-intuitively, the best value comes from transferring 6,000 Avios. So, in order to “buy” Avios for 1 euro cent each, you should do the following:

Transfer 6,000 Avios from Person A to Person B. This will cost Person A 30 euros, but Person B will receive 9,000 Avios.

Person B can then transfer 6,000 Avios back to Person A. Again, this will cost Person B 30 euros, and Person A will receive 9,000 Avios.

In total, Person A has paid 30 euros and ends up with an additional 3,000 Avios. Person B has also paid 30 euros and has ends up with an extra 3,000 Avios. So, the maths are incredibly simple for those working in euros… 3,000 Avios for 30 euros…

You are allowed to do this up to an annual maximum of 144,000 Avios per account. All you need to to is log in to your Iberia Plus account and look for “transfer Avios”, which happens to be right above the link for combining Avios I showed in a previous post.

 

A couple of years ago my partner and I participated in this promotion several times at the 6,000 Avios sweet spot, with no problems at all. So go ahead and pretend to be sharing Avios with your partner, when you’re actually just buying them cheap.  I’ve already helped myself to 6,000 of my partner’s Avios and paid for it myself.  Shhhh…