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With my renewed and oddly altered enthusiasm for Avios, I recently did a bit of a stock-take of my stash and decided to put them all in my BA Executive Club account. Given the “Combine My Avios” function and the neat (and instantly updated) little Avios/Nectar point summary on Nectar.com, I thought this was the best storage place for them.

However, I ran into a slight problem. I had a handful of Avios in my Iberia Plus account, and Combine My Avios would only allow me to transfer points into the Iberia Plus account, not out. Needless to say, I immediately used my encyclopaedic knowledge of the Avios loyalty scheme to deal with this point (i.e. I called Joe) and was reminded that if you transfer your Iberia Plus Avios into your Avios.com (or “Avios Partners”, as I believe it’s known) account, you could then transfer them into your BA account.

There are other ways to transfer from Iberia Plus to BA, but they are fraught with caveats and technical difficulty. We strongly recommend that, for the sake of your sanity, you use this slightly more complex but ultimately foolproof option.

How do you do this?

Given my experience and initial barrier, I thought it worth reminding everyone of the exact process here – it is pretty straightforward, once you know how.

First, if you go to the BA “Combine My Avios” function, you can see your BA Avios and Iberia Plus Avios, but you can only transfer into Iberia Plus, not into BA:

So, you need to head to Avios.com, and choose the “Combine My Avios” function in the “Manage My Account” section. It’s here that you’ll be given a two way opportunity, that allows you to transfer Avios OUT of Iberia Plus.

The transfer will happen instantly, and you’ll see the Avios now sitting in your Avios.com account.

Once you’ve transferred your Avios from Iberia Plus to Avios.com, you simply need to go back to your BA Executive Club account, select “Combine My Avios” again, and transfer in the Avios from Avios.com:

So there you have it, in my case a small balance of 750 Avios transferred from Iberia Plus to BA, via Avios.com:

Not the simplest process, but not horribly complex either. It is also a good “training exercise” in combining your Avios (e.g. in anticipation of the lower tax Iberia Plus redemptions) and a neat reminder as to why it’s worthwhile maintaining an account at Avios.com (in addition to it being the loyalty scheme platform for Aer Lingus Aer Club and Vueling Club).  Just remember to keep your Avios.com account independently active.

Anything else?

Note that, regardless of the above, your Iberia Plus account must be at least 90 days old before you can transfer the Avios.