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Iberia Plus recently announced changes to the way that it awards Avios for Iberia flights. As a reminder, Iberia Plus intends to award:

• 5 Avios per EURO for base level members (Clasica)
• 6 Avios per EURO for Silver members
• 7 Avios per EURO for Gold members
• 8 Avios per EURO for Platinum members

This change still hasn’t gone live, but Iberia Plus has been emailing members with changes to the basic earning structure.

Madrid / Barcelona Shuttle

The “Puente Aereo” / Air Bridge is a shuttle service operating between Madrid and Barcelona. In essence, you show up at either airport and hop on the next flight.

When you credit those flights to Iberia Plus, you will earn an additional 1 Avios per EURO spent.

Latin America

If you fly between Europe and Latin America – defined as Central America, South America and the Caribbean (except San Juan, Puerto Rico) – you will earn an additional 2 Avios per EURO spent.

Is Mexico City considered by Iberia Plus to be North America or Latin / Central America?  [edit: thanks to gtellez… no, it is considered North America]

Why This is Complete Nonsense

As much as people typically hate revenue-based mileage earning, it does have the advantage of being simple. Iberia Plus has gone and messed that up.

Air Bridge tickets are already expensive – so theoretically the standard 5 Avios earning rate should already reward those passengers with more Avios than the mileage-based system. An extra Avios per EURO… why bother?  High-speed rail has already grabbed the business of anybody heading to / from the city centre…

And Latin America? I can only assume that somebody figured out that Iberia Plus would be awarding far fewer miles for those long flights – and that this would make the airline uncompetitive with the alternatives (Air Europa, Air France, Lufthansa, LATAM, etc.).

Bottom Line

Simplifying Avios earning?  Then making it complicated again?  What a mess…