Has IAG suspended 'Combine My Avios'?
 

I have a legacy account with Iberia and I successfully combined Avios in the past.

I also have a legacy balance (read: points acquired before 22 June) and I tried to combine my Avios shifting these legacy miles to British Airways. Unfortunately, the transaction did not go through.

I realized that IB might not be able to differentiate old and new miles and might just play some tricks. As I can redeem tickets out of my Iberia account, I then thought about just shifting my BA Avios to Iberia.

The story gets interesting when I received an e-mail from British Airways (!) that this service is currently "unavailable". Really? How do they know? And have a prepared message for me?

Looks like IB and BA agreed to suspend this for the time being so that there won't be any discussion whether IB's retroactive "special T&C" can exclude 'combine my Avios' or not.

Given that IAG owns both airlines I am pretty sure that this got WW's blessing and is an absolute poor show of Alex Cruz.

I thought they just suspended this function for everyone at the moment. I tried to topup my ib account by transferring avios from BA in order to redeem some premium class tix (instead of out from ib to ba which most ppl want to do), the transaction was failed. I tried to call BA cs and they help me to do so on their terminals, also failed (which seems surprised them as well). I even tried to do the transfers between ba/ib accounts owned by my elder bro (whom hasnt involve in any promotion, simply flew ba and ib in the past), same negative result.

Can confirm I have the same problem, I really need to transfer some extra Avios from BAEC -> BA to top up my account and make the redemption I was planning on.

I'm now weighing up whether to empty out my AMEX MR account into IB+ instead - I really don't want to do this because I have plenty of Avios in BAEC and was planning on keeping my MR points for transfers to non-IAG airlines. In particular I was planning a MR-SPG-Alaska transfer soon...

Ah wait, I just managed to successfully transfer from Avios.com -> IB+, looks like that should be a workaround...

Edit: Wait, the avios haven't actually transferred despite a confirmation message...

Edit 2: Patience is a virtue. After a 30min wait, they have finally disappeared from Avios.com and appeared in my IB+ account...

I mentioned in the big IB bonus thread that I thought it was likely they'd turn off any transfer out of Avios and suggested moving any legacy balances you might want to use outside IB before the 90K arrived (so the mystery IHG 500 avios got shifted out sharpish when I saw it), it's a very predictable step. It's a blunt instrument that might be refined over time, possibly that's why avios is now allowing transfers in now.

I managed to move 500 avios that credited from SPG 9 months late today but couldn't move the 9,000 from the deal. I guess they have to be used on Iberia flights, just hope there's availablity for the ones I want!

I just posted in the other thread but thought it worth a mention: there appears to be a max limit for combining Avios from Iberia that is based on what your balance was prior to the bonus getting credited.

I'd appreciate someone confirming this: try to move above yesterday's opening balance and then try to move on or below that balance. It definitely reacted that way for me. I've moved everything over in very small, individual transactions.

That's interesting. With hindsight I would have bought 1,000 avios yesterday, but with a 0 balance I can't move anything.

Shouldn't have moved those 500 it seems :(

Don't have to be used on IB flights, just used with IB+. Partner bookings (though be aware of the conditions as they are non refundable for anyone but BA), hotels, etc...

So I just had some points in my legacy IB account leftover from CC spend, I tried moving over the full amount of points from IB to BA and it failed, then I tried a smaller amount, it also failed. Then finally I tried moving over my leftover CC points and it worked. I'm going to say that these points cannot be moved over, at least not currently.

Can you try the same successful amount again? I was able to transfer the same legacy amount over multiple times.

Yes, yes I can, a workaround, excellent thought. Bad news on my end, the successful amount is 308 miles. I know what I'll be doing most of the day.

I think this therefore confirms that those with pre-existing accounts have a transfer limit capped at their previous, pre-bonus, Avios balance (but can make unlimited transfers of this value). Anyone with a new account will not be able to transfer, as this will be set at zero.

Lookup process automation tools - see if you can get your computer to do the leg work for you. I have a Mac and used the in-built Automator to run through this a couple of hundred times. [My threshold was slightly higher but I didn't go for the full 90k]

Thanks, just tried using that using the record me function and it went all over the place. Never bothered using it before.