How to Redeem American Airlines AAdvantage Miles on Iberia Airlines
Iberia Airlines is a member of oneworld and our American Airlines AAdvantage miles can be used for award tickets on Iberia Airlines. This gives us a lot more space and availability to Europe and within Europe. It’s great to have Iberia as a partner! Unfortunately, the award seats on Iberia does not show up on American Airlines website (except for certain codeshare flights) so we have to use other tools when we search. The American Airlines website will only display award space on flights operated by American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, airberlin, Finnair, Qantas, or British Airways. In this post, I will explain how we can use the Qantas award search website to find your availability and use your American Airlines miles to book the ticket.
You can check out Iberia Airlines’ full list of destinations, but Iberia flies the following routes from North America:
- To Madrid: From Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Juan.
- To Barcelona: From New York and Miami.
Don’t forget! If you live in one of these cities and include one of these direct flights in your itinerary, you can add a free one-way trip from somewhere else in North America.
We can not only use Iberia Airlines to fly to Europe, but we can get to a ton of other places that Iberia flies opening up a new world of possibilities once we know how to find this additional award space we don’t get to see on the American Airlines website.
The Steps to Searching And Booking Award Space on Iberia Airlines
1. Create a Qantas frequent flyer account. Qantas only allows members of its frequent flyer program to use its search engine so you first need to register for an account. It’s free to join (except for Australia and New Zealand residents) and only takes minutes.
2. Search on the Qantas website for award availability for your dates.
3. Book the flight with your American Airlines miles by calling customer service.
Why do we need to search on Qantas? Can’t we just call customer service and have them look?
It is true we can call and ask the American Airlines award booking customer service agent to search for us, but that’s really giving them a lot of trust and power. You’re banking on the fact that (1) they actually know how to search for award availability and (2) they actually know that Iberia is a partner of American Airlines. I’ve seen contradictions to both more times than I care to remember. I’ve also had a few situations where I’ve simply gotten a “no availability” so quickly that it would have actually been physically impossible to check. The lesson of the matter is, perform your own award searching and never ask a phone agent a question you don’t already know the answer to!
Also, Qantas has an easy to use search engine with a calendar view. You can easily see which classes of flights are available for a full month at a time. This is in contrast to the British Airways website where you need to search one day at a time. Higher efficiency and lower frustration is always a plus!
So let’s get to the steps now…
Create a Qantas Frequent Flyer Account
Creating an account with Qantas is easy. You just go to the Qantas main website, click on the Frequent Flyer dropdown and click on Join Now.
You then select your country of residence, fill out your information and submit. You will then get an email with your account number and temporary PIN. You will need this to log into your Qantas frequent flyer account to search for award availability.
Search for Award Availability on the Qantas Website
Once you have your Qantas frequent flyer account set up, you are ready to return to the Qantas website and start searching!
Again, go to the Qantas main website, but this time, click on Using Points.
Next, click on Book Now under Qantas and Partner Classic Awards.
The next page will ask you for your Qantas frequent flyer account login. Enter your account information and you will get to the Award Bookings page.
I am going to try to search from New York to Madrid in August. To make sure I can see the whole month when I look for awards, I am going to check ‘Flexible with dates’.
On the next page, I get a calendar view of the available classes for the time around the date I selected. I can actually check which classes I want showing. I checked all of them and hit ‘Go‘.
We see there is a direct flight leaving that Friday evening on Aug 2 and a direct flight returning on Aug 10. Both on Iberia.
That’s it. You’ve found the flights. Stop there. Don’t book anything, don’t price them on the Qantas website. Just write down the flight numbers and move on to the next step, which is booking the awards with American Airlines miles.
Of course, we don’t have to end in Madrid. Iberia has an extensive network within Europe and we can continue to search for connecting flights anywhere else we want to go… and if we want to use Iberia, we should use the Qantas website, of course!
Booking the Flights with American Airlines AAdvantage Miles
American Airlines:
Of course, since American Airlines does not display award availability online and you can’t book any of these flights on the American Airlines website.
So you have to call customer service at 1-800-882-8880 and ask them to book the award space. Fortunately, you already performed the search and know the exact flight numbers that you need. You can tell those exact flight numbers to the agent and he or she can book them for me. You can actually book your full itinerary over the phone, including connecting flights on other partners. So if you want to fly into Madrid and then use airberlin to connect to Dusseldorf, just book it all at once.
To find out how much the award will cost, you need to use the American Airlines Partner Award chart. American Airlines books all awards as one-way awards and allows a free stopover in the gateway city from which you leave North America. Award pricing from North America to Europe is:
- 20,000 AAdvantage miles each way in Economy during off-peak season (October 15 – May 15).
- 30,000 AAdvantage miles each way in Economy during peak season.
- 50,000 AAdvantage miles each way in Business Class
- 62,500 AAdvantage miles each way in First Class
Warning: There is an occasional, though rare, inconsistency between what is actually available and what Qantas shows. This has been known to happen a few times Iberia so do be mindful of that. Just, if you’re planning to transfer miles into American Airlines, make sure to call the agent first and make sure the availability you’re seeing really is there.
Update: nsx from FlyerTalk pointed out to me that you can actually open an Iberia Plus frequent flyer account and verify award space on their search engine. It is free to open one, though a new one does not become fully activated and you are limited to how many award searches you can perform. This is a good way to verify award space availability before calling American Airlines customer service.
Of course, if you are going to be using American Airlines on international awards, make sure you optimize your miles by adding free one-ways:
How to Add Free One-Way Trips on American Airlines Awards
Or even better than free one-ways! I wrote about how you can add one-way trips within North America (including Mexico, the Caribbean, Canada and Hawaii) before your a peak season summer trip to Europe to save 10,000 miles on your economy ticket:
From Caribbean in Winter + to Europe in Summer for 20,000 American Airlines miles TOTAL!
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Great step by step article. We want to go to Barcelona or Madrid and on AA economy the flights were 20+ hours from Ord but Iberia looks much better. The article referred back to Aruba to Europe for 20,000 miles which was great for you but not from the midwest (I think?). Besides the 20,000 we would have to spend 20 – 30,000 to get to Aruba in Feb and then another 12,500 to get to New York later in the year. The only real advantage is getting to Europe during prime season unless I am missing something. If you do this any special tips to maximize miles on the return from Europe? Thanks
The free stopover on American Airlines is best for those who live in gateway cities as they don’t need to spend extra miles getting to and from their home cities to their stopover cities. I don’t know your departure city, but if you live close to Chicago and can get there easily, you can use Chicago as a gateway city as well. It doesn’t have to be New York. In fact, Iberia does fly from Chicago directly as well. Again, I don’t know where you are coming from, but don’t forget British Airways only charges 4,500 miles each way for award flights on American Airlines under 650 miles.
In terms of what you are actually saving, it’s best to think of it this way: If you decide you want to go to Europe in summer, the round trip will cost 60,000 miles. Then you look at how many additional miles it takes to also go to say, the Caribbean. If you add on the Caribbean in Winter, the one-way back from the Caribbean plus the trip to Europe will cost 50,000 miles. Then an additional 17,500 miles to fly to the Caribbean, which is 67,500 miles total. So the Caribbean round trip is only 7,500 miles additional over what one would already spend flying to Europe.
In terms of maximizing miles on the return, you can similarly try to add on a free one-way within North America after your return trip. But again, this is provided you can get to and from a gateway city easily.
Hope this answers the question!
Thanks for quick answer, We are near enough to Chicago to drive or use Avios from MLI. I ran thru some test trips and it is true we could start the journey is Seattle or Cancun to Chicago and the total multi city would be 20,000 miles, including a later trip to Paris one way during off peak. In theory could this be done on Iberia starting from Mexico or Caribean? Also, and forgive a very rookie question, we allways fly economy. But if we did splurge at least one way AA to Europe (lots of flights to Paris) how good is business compared to first class on AA?
I actually never tried the adding one-way in the off-peak period with Iberia and don’t know if this only works on the website. I doubt the off-peak pricing is intended to work this way so I am not completely certain it will price the same way when a person is involved. I should try to do some testing and verify.
In terms of business vs. economy, I tend to try to fly business when I am flying overnight to a vacation and want to sleep on the way there and try to fly business if I get a flat bed that reclines 180 degrees; that way, it makes a big difference in adjusting and improves my vacation quite a bit. On the way back from Europe, it’s not that important when it’s a day flight. For oneworld business class to Europe, I know Iberia and air berlin are so so. British Airways charges hundreds of dollars in fuel surcharges on top of award miles so you don’t want to fly them. American Airlines has actually been busy revamping their business class seats to Europe and I can’t give a fair opinion as I haven’t flown the new one. However, both Lucky from One Mile at a Time wrote a report of his experience and Gary from View from the Wing did as well. Their experience may be helpful. Keep in mind, though, they flew JFK to London and not all routes may have the new planes.
I am planning to book JFK-MAD-IBZ on Iberia using AA miles. The Qantas search says that IBZ can only be booked using Classic Awards. I do not know what it means. Can these Classic Awards be booked with AA miles? thanks
Yes. Pay no attention to anything on the Qantas website except award availability. The AA miles have nothing to do with Qantas’ pricing scheme. Just find your flights, call AA and book :)