Avios Expiration Issue
 

I had 115,000 Avios expired on me recently that seemed to occur via a technicality. My last Avios activity was in April 2017 and I booked an award flight in the fall of 2019 for September 2020 using 115,000 Avios.

Due to COVID, the award flight was cancelled in late July and the Avios were briefly returned to my account but they were expired shortly thereafter with the expiration backdated to April. I thought booking award flights counted as account activity but obviously a cancelled flight didn't count. Thus 115,000 Avios vanished from my account. I was never given notice of any kind of pending Avios expiration as would occur under normal circumstances. I emailed Iberia Plus on September 1 kindly asking for reinstatement given the extenuating circumstances and have yet to hear a word. I've also spoken to Iberia Plus support in Spain twice and one person said it has to be routed through a specific department and they would get back to me which hasn't happened. Another person told me it can only be handled by email. Iberia Twitter DM gave me a canned response and said it could take up to 21 working days to hear something.

Are there any additional suggestions from the FT community that might help get me a reinstatement of Avios?

It sounds like your situation is being addressed; call centre employees can't make those kinds of decisions so it needs to be routed to somebody with authority. Nobody here on FT has a magic hotline to the CEO though so just be patient.

You might think that a cancelled award is a technicality, but AFAIK it has always worked that way - it simply disappears from your record rather than counting as two activities. (because IB+ has full fare awards that cost nothing to cancel, that would be a simple and free way to extend the life of your Avios - therefore that kind of loophole is not allowed)

There is relatively little sympathy at IB+ for those members who can't manage to earn or spend a single Avios within 3 years. But due to COVID you might get a special reprieve since it obviously wasn't your fault that the award was cancelled. Good luck.

I needed to search for the expiration rules, and found in IB Plus FAQ:

I'm good for over two years, but are points transferred from the Chase and Amex programs "activity" that's valid, or "points transferred" (not valid)? And what about my profile under Clasica saying "Valid until: For life"?

Credit card points is activity. Receiving Avios from BA is NOT.

"For life" isn't your Avios, it's your Classic status. (i.e. no status)

Thanks, and to be clear, this wouldn't be using an IB-branded credit card (I cancelled mine when the annual fee posted) but a transfer from Chase Ultimate Rewards (or Amex).

Did you get anywhere with this? Did you get your Avios back?

Same situation as you
 

I'm in the exact same situation with 140K Avios miles lost. Their emails state that I should have rebooked flights when I had called to cancel the flights. Did you get your miles reinstated?

to be clear, is transferring Chase or Amex points into IB activity?

I went to the Iberia website and their Q&A states " Issuing or receiving Avios transferred to you is not considered to be an activity".

I sent Iberia a Tweet, requesting the reinstatement of my 140K lost miles. Their response was that Twitter is only a social media platform and that I need to email my request to the customer service, which I've already stated that they have rejected my request. Somebody else tweeted that they did get their miles reinstated so it looks like YMMV. Lessons learned the hard way.