Granite64

Iberia says: 'For example, if a customer purchases tickets on Iberia.com for three people to fly from Seville to Madrid and two of the people are identified as Iberia Plus members during the purchase process, 9,000 Avios will be credited to both of these people within 10 days of the purchase. These two people must have redeemed at least 9,000 Avios by 1 December 2018, or this same amount of Avios will be withdrawn from their account.'

So we should be safe.

UnitedFTW

I made 10 reservations yesterday, with each reservation having 5 passengers. I logged into my account and selcted the "I'm flying" which automatically entered in my Iberia account number. However, for the remaning 4 passengers, I had to type in their Iberia number manually for each reservation.

Will all 5 of us each receive the 9k bonus points for each booking?

Wondering about this because of this quote above: "ALL bookings done on iberia.com with being logged into the IB+ account should qualify for the promotion."

SightseeMC

I've only been dealing with IB for a year, but had only small issues (most of which were solved by using Explorer and not Chrome when visiting the site). As for AA, well:

IB ORD - MAD: 68K to Europe + $237 r/t off-peak, unless it's a sale like earlier this year where it's 51K. Position to ORD is affordable; in my case from PHX it was $330 but you could use Avios instead. If all 90K were used for positioning and TATL, that's about $300 for flights plus, say, $200 for 2 other positioning r/t tickets. $740 for a typical award booking (economy positions, J TATL) seems...a good deal?

AA PHX - MAD: 115K + $11 r/t. 47,000 AA miles (115K - 68K) on sale at 2 cents each is $940. That $940-$740 = $200. That's assuming you earned the other 68K AA miles organically and have them on hand. if you were to buy all the AA miles for a similar experience (hey, you *might* get domestic first class, or you might not) that would cost you $2,300 on sale, $2035 on ultra-sale. That's a bit more than 10% costlier than the current IB deal.

Earlier this year I flew myself and my wife r/t Chicago to Portugal (ORD - MAD in J) for 5,000 miles and $550 more than it would have cost for just one AA ticket. Zero issues on getting the promo Avios, zero issues booking awards during the sale frenzy (though this one will be exponentially worse), zero issues with the flights and lounges. IB may be more difficult than AA, but they aren't a disaster in my experience. ~$750 for lie-flat to Europe is easily worth the risk IMHO, and definitely more than 10% cheaper than AA.

ExpatSomchai

Don't shoot the messenger

https://thepointsguy.com/news/critic...p-iberia-deal/

Woodbinerich

Does anyone with another OW status account see an issue with switching to that after the bonus points have landed.
I'm thinking it might take the sting out of multiple IB express trips actually flown, with lounge access etc.
I don't see any problem with doing this, but interested if I've missed something.

danam

That's what I'll be doing. I'll probably spend the IB Avios before putting my BA number in the bookings.

JBG89

Yikes this is worrisome,

A workaround could be to change your passport number so you can set up a new account when the promotional account goes negative?

bisonrav

It's rubbish. The Iberia statement explains very clearly that Avios will be issued with or without the flights being taken, and that the risk of negative avios is following a transfer to BAEC. You can't cite the general terms and conditions for redemption (very specific situation) with the t&c of a promotion, and the rules of the promotion haven't been altered during its course. They only have 45 minutes or so to do that, so I'm quite confident it won't happen.

A cynic might say that a naysaying piece at the end of a promo would be bound to get a lot of page views, but his arguments don't hold water. Yes, there are some risks around strict t&c being applied, yes there is a problem with a herd mentality when people pile in and go large, but the points he's arguing are non sequiturs.

Incidentally, if non-flown sectors cause a reclaim of the bonus, you'll know fairly soon. Just don't spend the avios before that and you won't go negative. Someone will hit that situation fairly soon I should think and will report.

Repooc17

I had purchased 10 tickets equivalent of 5 roundtrips, so I would be able to fly them over 2 days and in sequence.

criced

Remember this is a 😈 company that dont care about their passengers... Always starts boarding before plane is ready, sold me an upgrade but no business meal loaded onboard, flies A330-200 to desinations so far away that they cant load all bags becouse of weight restrictions etc...

bisonrav

The Iberia piece was really really clear about allowing non-flown segments to qualify for a bonus. I was amazed how explicit they were on this point. The "negative balance" comment was only if you transfer them out to BAEC and the deadline expires without the Avios being spent. There are some interesting IT issues here about distinguishing the "leprechaun gold" avios from anything else in the account on an IT basis, but I guess the idea is that any spend between the issue and the December 1st deadline comes from the bonus amount if there's any balance.

I'm sure there's more to come on this promo - Monday will be interesting as it's the first opportunity after the weekend to take a temperature reading of the state of the IB perspective on all of this. I'm sure we'll hear more next week.

Perversely, the promo might actually open up more last minute availability. In terms of the cost to IB, flights will be the least expensive option to offer. There is usually spare capacity on flights, and filling otherwise empty seats costs IB less than paying a third party for a hotel room for someone taking that route to spend the Avios. I wouldn't expect them to welch on the deal, that would be very difficult, but as I've said, I wouldn't be comfortable if I hadn't followed strict T&Cs.

yb90

Just booked 5 flights so lets see what comes of it, I do plan on moving the points to BA from IB, iv'e had a IB card for years but have never made a booking directly with them anyway.

inY

It's past midnight in CET and the banner has been taken down.

nk15

No it hasn't in the USA

Mitz9060

Must have just taken it down. I don't see it anymore and I was seeing it about 15 minutes after midnight Madrid time.