a white airplane in the sky

It’s been 10 days, so…

Day 11, we’re still here, but our Avios have not shown up. Just over a week ago, Iberia shocked the world with a promotion that sounded to put it lightly, way too good to be true. For every Iberia flight you booked, even the shortest and cheapest of them all, you got 9,000 points. Even for one ways, and even if you didn’t actually elect to fly on the ticket. The points were due to be credited yesterday, and as of the time of writing – there isn’t a single person whose actually received their points. Here are all the answers we have to your Iberia Avios promotion questions…

a plane with seats and a tableHas Anyone Received Their Bonus Avios Yet?

Not that we know of. Avios were due to be distributed yesterday, but that does not appear to have happened. If it hasn’t happened to you, don’t worry – yet. The IT behind something of such a large scale is undoubtedly complicated, and we know for a fact Iberia is doing a quick audit to ensure no account fraud occurred.

Do We Know If The Promo Was Actually Real?

Yes. It was definitely real. We received a direct communication from Iberia not only confirming the legitimacy of the campaign, but confirming the finer points, such as the need not to actually take the flights, and that one way flights counted. We weren’t even planning to write about it until we received official word. There’s no doubt that the campaign was approved at the highest levels and was in some form marketed by the communications department.

a white airplane in the skyMy Account Has Been Locked, What’s The Story?

Panic, panic – panic! Just kidding. Iberia is clearly about to part ways with Avios well into the 8,9 or 10 figure zone. The company is doing an audit of accounts to ensure that Sparky, Bow Wow and Mr Meow are indeed real people, and not just the names of pets you’ve used to score more than 90,000 Avios in the promotion. If you opened an account for yourself, there’s no reason to think the audit will last more than another day, and the dust will settle.

Do We Know When We’ll Actually Get Our Avios?

Based purely on assumption, it’s fair to assume that this campaign was more successful than Iberia ever could’ve imagined. If our website traffic was any indication, people were extremely excited and motivated. It’s safe to say Iberia got ahead of themselves in the pursuit of awarding full Avios within 10 days of purchase, but customer satisfaction is key to any airline, and we’d be surprised if things weren’t entirely sorted by the end of the week. We’ve reached out to Iberia for official comment.

a bed in a planeCan You Definitely Not Transfer Points To British Airways Avios?

There’s no definite here. It’s hard to imagine IT systems would be able to prevent transfers out of the program, but these transfers would leave anyone with a negative Iberia account balance, after the two month period. Iberia offers fantastic rates for long haul flights, with expanding route options, so we’d definitely advocate to spend within Iberia first – but we don’t think it would be impossible to transfer the points to British Airways. It’s just definitely frowned upon.

We’ve emailed Iberia and look forward to further clarification.

 

Gilbert Ott

Gilbert Ott is an ever curious traveler and one of the world's leading travel experts. His adventures take him all over the globe, often spanning over 200,000 miles a year and his travel exploits are regularly...

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10 Comments

  1. I called Iberia this morning and the agent told me to send an email to classica@iberia.es and include all my confirmation codes. She also asked me to be patient as they are currently processing a high volume of these requests. Since I have had an Iberia Plus account for a few years and I did not open additional accounts for Sunny Salamander or Goldie Goldfish, I hope to see the points hit my account in a few weeks.

  2. Nobil – Interesting. The agent told me the address was “Classic with an a on the end….”

  3. I live in London and did the promotion on its first day. I had an account for over 2 years I think and have now received the 90000 Avios.

  4. I have received my 90,000. I have been unable to transfer IB Plus points to Avios.com (through my Vueling account logins). I managed to transfer 150 points last week through Avios.com from IB Plus and then from Avios.com to BA. Avios.com said today that Iberia had stopped the transfer for some reason. I was on hold to Iberia for an hour and had to hang up. Has anyone managed to do this? The above article just does not address this.

  5. My wife and I just received 18,000 Avios instead of 90,000. Any reason why we wouldn’t get them all the same time? We booked 10 one ways in two days and were both on all 10 tickets. I emailed the reference number to Iberia.

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