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Note: This post was published on November 30, 2018. Card details and benefits may have changed since then.
A quick reminder that if you participated in the Iberia Avios promo from earlier this year, where you could book up to 10 cheap flights and get 9,000 bonus Avios each for around $300 or less, your Avios expire Dec 1st.
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I’m going to assume that will mean Dec 1st at midnight Spain time, so early evening Friday in New York and mid afternoon on the West Coast.
If you haven’t spent them yet, you have three options:
1) Book flights on Iberia.com or with Iberia by phone. This means being stuck with Iberia award rules, for good or for bad (Good if you are booking Iberia flights or BA flights, often less good for booking partners, especially as partners require round trip availability and cannot be changed nor cancelled).
2) Use them to book Hotels in the Iberia Avios site. You will get a poor value for Avios but still more than nothing and also still well more than you paid.
3) This is where it gets tricky. It’s well known that Iberia has said that if you don’t spend your Avios by Dec 1, they will go away. And if you transfer them to BA, then you will have a “negative balance” in your Iberia account. Further, people have heard that Iberia may even repatriate Avios sent over to BA, though at the same time BA agents have said that is not possible. But they do have the same parent company, IAG, so we don’t know for sure.
If you REALLY wanted to be safe, you could transfer to BA and book a ticket with very low taxes. Then you could later cancel that ticket and only lose the taxes and get back the Avios, as that is how BA Avios cancelation rules work.
If you do number 3, you need to be prepared to never be able to use your Iberia Avios account again.
So what is everyone doing? I know we’ve had *plenty* of readers that got in on this deal…
Please let me know here, on Twitter, or in the private MilesTalk Facebook group.
New to all of this? My “introduction to miles and points” book, MilesTalk: Live Your Wildest Travel Dreams Using Miles and Points is available now.
