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If you have ever tried to use your Avios to book an award seat using Avios on one of Iberia’s (many) partner airlines via the Iberia Plus website, you probably discovered a problem pretty quickly: it’s only possible to book partner redemptions as a return – one ways aren’t allowed.

This is completely different to how British Airways Executive Club works and seems needlessly restrictive. Late last year (when working out how best to use 90,000 Iberia Avios…), I was spending more time looking for award space on the Iberia Plus site than usual and noticed something (potentially) interesting.

Iberia one way ‘hack’?

If you search for one way award space between two cities that are only linked by a partner airline rather than Iberia itself, you’ll see something like the following error message (regardless of whether there actually is award space on that route or not):

Add a return date to your search and (if there is availability) you’ll get a positive result, which you could book if you wanted to:

So far, that make perfect sense.

What is interesting though is that the one way ‘rule’ doesn’t seem to actually be the whole story. If your one way partner award search involves a leg on Iberia (ie. a connecting flight to/from the main flight), it is at least sometimes possible to book it:

The example above shows a one way redemption from Madrid to Shanghai, where only the MAD-LHR leg is on Iberia – the rest is on Cathay Pacific and Hong Kong Airlines.

Bottom line

I haven’t done enough experimenting to reach any firm conclusions on the precise circumstances when these partner one ways are permitted. At this stage, it’s really just something I noticed that I thought readers might find interesting. Hopefully some of you can shed some more light on this in the comments!

Have you ever booked one of these awards?