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If you are a regular reader of sites like InsideFlyer, you probably already know quite a bit about Avios, but here’s a little Avios trick you might not have clocked: the excellent value offered by Iberia Plus ‘Avios & Money’ awards.

As you can see below (the example flight is Madrid to Chicago in Economy, ‘Blue Class’ award, off peak), you can effectively buy Avios for well under 1p each:

In this case you would be paying £105 more in order to save 12,750 Avios, which works out as paying ~0.82p per Avios, but you can do substantially better sometimes – about 0.6p per Avios isn’t uncommon.

This can work out particularly well if you need to book a ‘full’ Economy award because there isn’t any Blue Class award space available. In the example below, you can see that if you were using the maximum amount of Avios, an ‘Economy’ award from Madrid to Chicago would require 5,000 more Avios than the same seat booked as a ‘Blue Class’ award – 22,000 rather than 17,000:

If you opted for Avios & Money though, you’d only pay 150 more Avios + £15 more in cash. In ‘value’ terms, I’d say 5,000 Avios is worth about £50, but with Avios & Money, you’d only be paying the equivalent of £16.50.

The same situation applies to Premium Economy too, which can lead to very good deals:

In this example, you’d be trading £130 for 20,400 Avios, which is effectively buying Avios for 0.637p each.

Unfortunately, Avios & Money is far less generous for Business Class redemptions, with the price per Avios usually considerably higher than 1p each:

British Airways Executive Club offers a similar option too of course and the value there can be good, but it’s rarely quite as good Iberia Plus. The examples below are for the exact same flight (BA Economy from Madrid to London Heathrow.

Iberia Plus:

 British Airways Executive Club:

Iberia Plus lets you effectively buy 4,850 Avios for £30 (~0.61p per Avios), whereas with BA Executive Club it would be a maximum of 4,350 Avios for £35 (~0.8p per Avios). In other words, you’d be paying about a third more per Avios with BAEC.

Bottom line

Always remember to have a quick glance at the Avios & Money options when booking, they can work out better value than you might think!

Did you know about this Avios trick? What’s your favourite Avios ‘hack’?