I've booked MUC-MAD-NRT in J next March for cherry blossom.

Booked MEX-MAD rt for 85,000 Avios. Wanted LAX or ORD flights, but availability dried up by the time my Avios posted for the dates I was looking at. I have some alerts set with Expert Flyer - any idea how often Iberia releases award space? Not much availability at the moment.

Need to call (currently anyway - website is erroring ) and you may need to HUCA - I got it booked on my fourth attempt - call +442036843774 and say "Iberia plus bookings" and tell the agent you want to use your Iberia plus avios to book on BA

Hi KARFA - yep - seems like for this latest batch of 90k new accounts it has been accidently or purposfully restricted online. My "seasoned" account had no issue but my partners new account it wouldn't work without calling

Finally
 

ORD-MAD round trip in biz

Will also need to do a positioning flight to ORD when I can book partners

MAD-GRU, GIG-MAD for Easter 2019

We have also booked Havana, for next February at very similar pricing.
From London there is no direct flight anyway, and changing in Madrid is more appealing than in Miami.

I found the exact flights I wanted on the exact dates I wanted. However, there is only 1 Biz seat on each flight and I need 2. I found that odd.
I am booking them as one ways because they are "open jaw" I tried calling and I was on hold for 15 + minutes, trying to ask if there are more seats and finally got disconnected before anything was answered.

These flights are in May/June of next year. I checked the flights as revenue flights and there's only 1 seat reserved so far.

Not sure if the open jaw is the issue or not.

"No one ever said it was going to be easy" said everyone.

This is very common and calling will not change it. Your only change is adding some extra segment (e.g., JFK-MAD-LCG instead of just JFK-MAD), which sometimes (but not often) opens up more seats.

I was trying for non-stop which were Iberia flights. There are others with a stop but they include BA and I can't get those to work; keep getting error message.

Yes, what I mean is that Iberia has married segment availability. Sometimes if you add an extra flight on IB metal beyond MAD more seats appear.

I was so chuffed when my wife's and my 90,000 points landed!

I spent 1.5 hrs on the phone and finally managed to book 5 business class tickets from LHR to Milan for my family on August 5th. It worked out at 460 Euros plus 83,000 points. We're very happy as we will visit Lake Como and Venice. Hopefully we can book some accommodation with the remaining 90,000.

SoCal-based, got 180000 Avios total for myself and on behalf of my SO, who's not big on flying even in comfort but is always happy to help my cause. :)

I opened both accounts solely for the promo and got the various e-mail messages of doom (which I replied to with relevant info); the Avios all posted yesterday and I made both bookings today:

(1) LAX-JFK-LAX in F on AA metal, 96000 Avios plus ~$20 (transferred Chase points to round it out), h/t to Ben from the One Mile at a Time blog for cluing me in to this possibility. A phone agent was able to book this for me today, but I did have to HUCA several times.

(2) LAX-MAD-LAX in J on IB metal, 85000 Avios plus ~$240. Planning to tack on paid LCC flights to get to/from Paris.

(Edited to add details)