Originally Posted by
xooz
There's a few 17K Avios awards JFK-MAD on IB in early June,but the 20K one way award seems standard from US east coast to Europe in my limited checking. I haven't looked much at cash rates, but agree that the fees for a carry-on make finding any bargain difficult.
Interesting. I will look again at Avios. I have actually splurged for biz class seats a couple times in the past few years when they were in the low 30s from MAD on Iberia. Objectively, not really worth the 2x, but it's nice to ride in comfort sometimes.The worse thing about MAD is it's relatively far from the rest of Europe (although Spain itself is a wonderful country to visit in the spring).
EDIT: If you can find them -- they're scarce -- so-called "off peak" Iberia MAD award tickets from the US seem to be 17,000 miles plus about $86. Is that "a deal"? I guess it depends if you want to visit Spain and what other transatlantic airfares you can find.