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Perhaps the greatest “travel hack’ of 2018 was the Iberia Plus promotion offering 9,000 bonus Avios for booking ANY paid flight on Iberia. Click here if you want to relive the glory days.
I’m still not entirely sure what the benefit to Iberia was of offering such a generous promotion, but they did at least cover themselves in one way, by imposing a strict expiry deadline on the bonus Avios.
The extra promotional Avios not redeemed by 1 December 2018 will be withdrawn from the customer’s account. The redemption terms and conditions are subject to the general terms and conditions of the Iberia Plus programme.
My reading of the above is that you must spend them by midnight tomorrow (Saturday 30th Nov 2018) – and that could well be Madrid time, so to be safe I would suggest 23:00 UK time is the real deadline.
Some Avios collectors have decided that moving those Avios to British Airways Executive Club (or Avios.com / Aer Lingus Aer Club / Vueling Club) will be sufficient to protect the Avios past the expiry date.. I don’t think any of us at InsideFlyer are completely convinced by that argument though, as Craig articulated here.
What should I do with them?
Spend them! On flights via Iberia Plus if at all possible… If you would like a refresher in spending Avios on Iberia reward flights, you can re-read this post.
If you can’t find availability or don’t require flights for any upcoming trips, look at redeeming the Avios for hotel stays. All you have to do is sign into your Iberia Plus account and click through to the correct bit of the site:
In fact, you may be able to use this direct link here.
Once there, it’s easy to search for hotels:
Generally speaking, you should be able to get a little over 0.5p per Avios when booking hotels. It’s not a great rate, but is probably about twice what you paid for the Avios and a lot better nothing!
Conclusion
Please don’t let your Avios go to waste! – at the very least book a hotel for a staycation in the run up to Christmas or something!
What did you spend your bonus Avios on?
Iberia’s computer system was down for a large part of last weekend. When it was finally up it took over an hour to book a simple non-stop domestic return on Qantas (on flights that I knew had availability).
Sure the cents per mile weren’t great but it was far in excess of what I paid for the miles in the first place so I was happy.
Yep, that definitely sounds like the good old Iberia IT system! It seems to hate doing partner redemptions with particular passion (I usually lose patience and go and book elsewhere).
I’m cashing my remaining balances out for hotel stays as I type – as Deal Daddy says, not the greatest redemption in the world, but it’s still effectively saving me 40-50% on hotels considering the price I paid.
Probably too late now… but with my last few Avios I did EDI to LHR in economy [4000 Avios plus nil £], LHR to MAD in biz on Iberia’s A350 [12250 plus £48] , then MAD to Tel Aviv in biz on the A330 [21500 plus £52]. Bit of an indirect route to Tel Aviv from Edinburgh, but a bit of tapas in Madrid is alwys welcome. And why not?!?