Quick comparison Iberia Plus vs. BAEC
 

Hello all,
So I've been a happy member of BAEC for quite a number of years. However due to confluence of events, I've had to reconsider my membership for next membership year. These events have led us to book nice vacation in NZ in Qatar C and as many years previously I expected this to give us BAEC Silver for the coming year. However due to other factors, our outbound segments actually fall on the last date of my membership year. Unfortunately this means that half of the points from our trip would effectively be wasted and we would not be able to retain BAEC Silver. I called BAEC and it appears that rules are rules, and there is no flexibility in that. Ergo we're looking to change FFP.

The whole things seems to boil down to Iberia Plus vs. BAEC. We discarded Finnair Plus(we're finns) since our NZ trip would only get us half way to Finnair Plus Gold/OWS.
Our primary goal is to retain OWS and any of the other benefits are pretty much secondary. Reading through the Iberia Plus program rules, my initial thoughts are that it looks much better than I was expecting.
My quick summary
Pro IBP:
- Until April 1st to qualify (this is naturally specific to our situation)
- No native flight requirement on IBP (4 segments on BAEC) when qualifying with Elite Points.
- Very similar Elite Point earning structure with BAEC. Familiarity is good.
- No exorbitant fees when redeeming miles, compared to BAEC.
- Lower cost for award flights.
Con IBP:
- No oneway awards(?), although I would imagine this is easy fix due to realtime Avios transfers to BAEC.
- IB "service".
- ...?

So what am I missing here? Are "routes" not the same as segments, when calculating EPs? Why is BAEC so popular among non-native flyers when most of the benefits are the same, but IBP seems much easier to qualify for?

-
DJ

I would add that partner awards are basically universally worse than on BA, but as you mentioned, you can just transfer to BA to handle that.

Also, I can't really comment, but I can imagine it would be much harder to deal with if you don't speak Spanish.

Report back to us in 18-24 months when you've realised how much worse IB+ is than BAEC for anything other than redeeming Avios for IB rewards.

But if you think a single trip can earn you 2,250 Elite Points, then by all means go for Gold...

Hello craigthemif,
Aren't the points earned one of the simpler parts of the whole equation? OSL-DOH being +3k miles it should earn 500 EPs and DOH-AKL being way more then 6k miles it should earn 600EPs... and then the same in reverse. This is the same with BAEC. This trip would earn (140+160)x2 earning BAEC Silver after the forementioned four BA segments have been flown.
Why would we not earn these points?
-
DJ

Yes, you should earn 2,200 EPs and come close to IB+ Gold.

However it is a fairly precise combination of a 3,000+ mile Europe to Doha and a 6,000+ mile Doha to NZ that does it for you. Most other QR combinations are better off with BAEC.

Besides the published benefits of Oneworld Sapphire, however, you will find it difficult dealing with IB+ unless you speak Spanish. And most of us only use IB+ for booking Iberia rewards since partner rewards are awful.

I cannot agree more. I started crediting to IB for status as well and regret it. Back at the time the two IB flights were much easier to get for me than the 4 BA flights so I just went with it as I did not care for oneworld too much anyway as I did must flights on skyteam. Now I shifted most of my flying to oneworld and will change to BA. TP earning on IB is worse, the Emerald is more difficult to reach causing me to do some unnecessary mileage runs this year, IB website never works, awards on partners are never available, and their customer service is horrible.

I switched from BAEC to IB+ for exactly the same reason and regret it bitterly. Why? About half of my flights have been credited incorrectly or not at all. IB customer service is dismal, the agents can't do anything but "send a reminder to the responsible department". It took more than 6 months to get all the flights credited and finally attain OW Sapphire again. Add to that not a single word of apology and no compensation whatsoever. I have by now transferred most of my miles back to BAEC - but even this caused a few problems.

While BAEC will not change the start date of your membership year, you might be able to credit the TPs of the first few weeks of your next year to the prior one. This possibility is mentioned somewhere in the BA forum, most likely in the BAEC Guide thread. Unfortunately I only learned about this after switching to IB+.

IB+ makes a lot of sense if you live in Spain but not much elsewhere. Particularly as I mostly fly Y, the earning rates for partners on longhaul is atrocious, but not so bad if on IB metal.

And yeah, it's more a statement of how Spain is, but customer service will be terrible if you can't speak Spanish.

I don't think the customer service will be much better if you speak Spanish - the CC agents are ill-trained and poorly paid (which of course applies to most CC agents). It's not their fault but they simply can't offer good customer service, whether they speak Spanish or English. My impression was that the English-speaking agents, who are probably based in Spain, were a bit more competent than the German-speaking ones who are probably students based in some obscure call-center somewhere in Germany.

I booked a flight from Asia to Europe and back with CX, BA and IB. BAEC shows me that I will earn 23,747 Avios with my flights which, according to their earning rules, seems to be rather correct. For exactly the same booking, IB+ promises me 26,241 Avios although the earning rules are exactly the same as on BAEC. Now I am wondering if I should get the Avios credited on IB+ instead of BAEC, or if the extra Avios that IB+ promises are just due to a faulty programming of their website.

Never trust the IB+ website. Take the sure thing from BAEC.

Thanks for your advise. Indeed, the IB website appears to be rather messed up. Although I am going in Business Class, it doesn't even allow me to access my seat reservations of my IB operated flight segments.

For one of the IB segments, the seat was automatically assigned by BAEC. For the other segment, I reserved my seat through the RJ website. ;)

On IB+, I had a closer look at the miles accumulation table for my booking. HKG-LHR comes to a total distance of 5,981 miles. On BA, in booking class I, that should give me 1.5 times the Avios, namely 8,972.

To my big surprise, IB+ promises 10,205 miles for HKG-LHR on BA in I. The same for LHR-HKG.

I don't hold any status at IB+. I am not even a member of that program. Does anybody have an explanation how they reach that number?