Using Iberia miles on oneworld awards

Is British Airways About to Gut Its Short-Haul 4,500 Avios Awards???

ByThe Miles Professor

I just read some breaking new on View from the Wing about potential changes to the British Airways award chart. He learned it from one of our Twitter friends @saianel. What’s happened is that Iberia airlines, which has the exact same award chart as British Airways, has completely changed its award chart. As Gary points out, given that Iberia Avios and British Airways Avios are essentially transferable between each other, it would make no sense for them to have completely different award charts. So the expectation is that British Airways is likely to follow this change as well. Since Gary already gave a thorough analysis on what he expects to go down, I suggest just reading through his view on things.

Overview of Potential Changes

Most frequent flyer programs charge a fixed cost for traveling from one region to another (e.g. 30,000 miles each way in economy from the US to Europe). With British Airways Executive Club Avios, it’s completely different. British Airways has a distance-based award chart where we pay for each segment separately. If your flight is under 650 miles, for example, you pay just 4,500 British Airways miles. The benefit is that we can actually redeem our British Airways miles on American Airlines, US Airways and Alaska Airlines to save a ton of miles when flying to Canada, the Caribbean or within the US for those short-haul flight.

I previously wrote posts with a full rundown of exactly where we can fly in the Caribbean and Canada with British Airways miles:

 

British Airways Award Chart
British Airways Award Chart

Iberia has just released a new award chart and is showing oneworld  awards priced much higher, especially in economy. The following chart does not include American Airlines, but the American Airlines chart is completely similar. A round-trip flight of under 600 miles each way on American Airlines or US Airways will now cost 19,500 miles, which is more than twice the previous amount of 9,000 miles round-trip.

Using Iberia miles on oneworld awards
Using Iberia miles on oneworld awards round-trip

My advice is: Don’t panic. Although it doesn’t look good, we don’t have anything certain right now. Don’t start throwing your miles at random tickets just to find uses for them. However, if you did have an award you’re pretty certain on and were looking to book in the near future, I’d probably move on it quickly, possibly today. I personally booked a few Caribbean tickets I knew I had dates set for so I don’t lose out… but other than that, I await the changes fully prepared.

Anyone trying to redeem their miles for something interesting?

13 Comments

  1. Eegads… that’d be even worse (way worse) than the United partner devaluation (which really made me weep; so much for aspirational business class flights!)

    On the flip side, maybe this is the kick in the pants I needed to join many others in throwing in the towel on the mileage-earning game and put more time into other hobbies. With airlines moving to a revenue based points system, reward charts getting revised very painfully, and so on… it’s becoming both much less fun and much less worth dealing with.

  3. JFK-LAX is about 2600 miles. That would be 36,000 avios in economy or 81,000 avios in business class. That’s completely nuts.
    I expect this change to hurt BA big as every person with a brain would cut his/her BA credit card immediately as Avios became worth less than a regular cash back card.

  4. I just did a Santa Rosa-SEA for 2 for 9k RT for each (thanks HackMyTrip) and then to drain the other miles found a companion pass from IAD-LHR during prime D-Day times May 25-June 9……since was short 22k AMEX transferred easily to top off and done for 120k and a gaudy $2400 for 2 in fees……….that’s the last time they sucker me on the companion pass……..Alaska here I come………..

  5. Pingback: BA about to devalue Avios? | Borderfreetravel

  7. Oh No, this is terrible news as we were planning a big trip next Fall to The Exuma’s! Unfortunately their schedule isn’t open yet so not much I can do about that trip. However, I was going to try and just use my Avios miles for a trip to Cancun in the Spring and am having a big problem with the BA website. I’m wondering if anyone else has had this problem: The BA site only shows partner flights on USAir, NOT American. I double checked on the AA website to make sure there was availability at the correct award level and there is?! Any advice. At this point I’d really like to just burn my Avios miles and be done with them.

    Thanks!

    1. Had the same problem….called and booked an Alaska ticket…….feed them the flight numbers……make sure you have a speaker phone so you can accomplish other things……

  8. Will the new chart still be segment based? For example, an award the was previously two 4500 point short hauls – 18k roundtrip – will be 19500 or 39000 points roundtrip?

  9. If this is what is going to happen it is not just a gutting of the 4,500 mile awards, it is a total gutting of the whole award chart for flights up to 3,999 miles. For distances of 4000 miles + some of there awards are actually cheaper.

Comments are closed.