Just by being here – you’re on top of the miles game. British Airways and Iberia use “Avios” as their airline miles currency – but the two programs are not equal. While there are occasions when using British Airways makes more sense – there are many times when moving points into the Iberia Plus Avios program can save both miles and money. Anyone can link the two programs together, moving points back and forth at will. We’re going to show you how to link British Airways Executive Club with Iberia Plus in minutes.
First things first. You need the name on your Iberia Plus and British Airways Executive Club accounts to match perfectly. If you have any funny initials or suffixes, be sure to duplicate them on both accounts exactly the same. If you’ve already created an account and they are not identical, try creating a new account with the program where you do not yet have any points.
Matching Email
Just in case you once had a clever email address you no longer use – the email address on both accounts must also match. You can quickly create an Iberia or British Airways account for free, if you don’t already have one. Here’s the link to British Airways and to Iberia.
Account Activity
You can’t move Avios points between Iberia Plus and British Airways Executive Club until you’ve earned at least one point in the Iberia Plus Avios program. This can be accomplished quickly and easily by transferring American Express Membership Rewards Points, Chase Ultimate Rewards Points, Starwood Preferred Guest points. You can also do this by purchasing Iberia Avios from a Groupon sale. Any of these activities will activate your Iberia account. Of course, actually flying Iberia or their partners would do the trick too.
People seem to run into issues moving points out of British Airways. But there’s a workaround. Create a free Avios.com account. Once you have an account here, you can link both your Iberia and British Airways accounts. This allows you to move points between any of the three programs from one central location. So if you’re struggling to move them from British Airways or Iberia, try pulling the points from Avios.com instead.
Moving The Points
Login to your British Airways Executive Club account. Next, find the “Manage My Account” drop down menu. From there, scroll down to “Combine My Avios“. Since you’ve taken care of all the dirty work in the steps above, moving the points back and forth will be a breeze. Points transfers are instant, and there’s no limit to how many you can move. You can also move British Airways and Iberia Avios back and forth at will. Enjoy!
For the alst month or so “Combine My Avios” has been unavailable for me> Is this something universal?
Well rehearsed but why would you fly on either when lower cost, higher quality alternatives are on offer, IF LHR is the issue just try Schipol or CDG for a pleasant change.
To spend the Avios you have! And then never again!!
I think this article is missing a critical point: I can’t seem to get Combine my Avios to work (similar to V&B above) on neither BA nor IB so I always use avios.com in the middle and that works very well, I can get Avios between BA and IB or vice versa in a matter of minutes.
I think you should also point out that your account has to be at least 3 months old before you can transfer points. At least that’s true for the IB account which has caught me out 🙁
How do I sign up for an Avios account. I have BA and IB accts, but Avios won’t let me sign up online…. it says “join with partners” and the redirects to the partner. What am I missing?
Nice post — BUT, bit too condescending on a critical foul-up point hitting most of us. You write:
“People seem to run into issues moving points out of British Airways. But there’s a workaround. Create a free Avios.com account”
Have you tried this link from the US? Have a hunch your link and presumption is now dated. It’s now taking us to a link that tells us to join British Air, Iberia, and/or Aer Lingus versions of Avios. I’m not seeing ANY simple plain option for creating a generic Avios account.
ps, yes, I do have activity in my long held Iberia account — managed to buy points for it 6 months ago. (2k in it, and I want to transfer a lot more BA Avios into it….) But what a miserable, oh-soooo British mess.
I already had BA and IB accounts so I created a AL account which also created the Avios account. But before trying to use the new Avios account to transfer I found the method to pull from IB see comment below.
I wasn’t able to push points from BA to Iberia even though info appeared the match. But I was able to pull from BA when logged into Iberia. Google it.
I chatted with Avios.com, today. They said BA is rethinking their FFP with a view to discontinuing the IB-BA cooperation. They (BA) werr explained to have removed the combine option but haven’t cleaned up all web links to it although BA avios rules still contain it. So irbid not a glitch but policy and still inclear.