Read below about the greatest points hack of all time – Iberia Avios Points Promotion which took place in June 2018.
As a frequent flyer and avid points collector, I’m always on the look-out for a good deal. Unfortunately, being based in The Netherlands, we don’t have the lucrative Airline/Hotel credit cards which come with incredible sign-on bonuses and huge point collecting opportunities.
We do have the AMEX KLM Credit Card and even though this does come with some opportunities to collect Flying Blue miles, it pales in comparison with the US Credit Card offerings.
Getting lucrative points offers for Europe based customers don’t come around very often so when Iberia announced a promotion back in June 2018 which was too good to be true, the internet blew up.
Iberia 9000 Avios Points Promotion
What happened? Iberia announced the promotion on Thursday June 21st, 2018. It stated that for every booked flight between then and Sunday June 24th, 2018, you would receive 9000 Avios points with a maximum of 10 flight. The points would be posted to your account within 10 days, and you would have to spend them by December 1st. The T&Cs of the promotion were not very extensive – this is an understatement – so this promotion raised a lot of questions.
Could you really get 9000 Avios points by just booking a flight while not even flying (yes)? Did you already have to be a member of Iberia’s frequent flyer program to participate (no)? With these questions out of the way, it was time to figure out how good a deal this really was. It didn’t take long for people to figure out that the cheapest flight to book was the Santander to Madrid flight. The cheapest fare for this flight was around 25Euro. That meant that if you were able to find 10 flights like that, you could get 90,000 Avios miles for 250Euro. To put things in perspective, you now need to pay roughly 1,900Euro if you would want to buy 90,000 Avios miles without a promotion.
As an example of what you could do with 90,000 Iberia Avios; an off-peak Chicago-Madrid business class round trip costs 68,000 points…. So best case, this promotion could give you an intercontinental business class ticket for roughly 250 Euro. Not a bad deal at all!
Going all in!
I convinced my wife to also participate so we could get 180,000 points for roughly 500Euro. And I was not the only one who convinced family members to participate. In fact, I read stories about multiple Iberia frequent flyers accounts created under one name. Or Iberia frequent flyer accounts created using dummy accounts, etc.…. All this meant, that during this specific weekend, the Iberia website was having great difficulties coping with all the traffic. Especially getting an Iberia frequent flyer account successfully created was a challenge in itself. But we finally managed to get through and book our 20 flights Santander – Madrid.
During this time, I really wondered how many flights Santander – Madrid were booked. I actually felt sorry for the poor sods that really needed to fly on the Santander – Madrid route. People not into this scheme must be wondering why the route Santander – Madrid was getting so popular and it was fully booked for months in a row. On top of that, it must be worse when coming to the airport anticipating a fully booked flight but not seeing a single person at the gate.
With the absolute chaos this promotion caused, of course the points were never posted within 10 days. Iberia was busy trying to filter out the dummy and fake accounts and simply dealing with the avalanche of submissions. People on the various internet blogs kept each other posted whether points were getting posted. Quite some people, including myself, thought Iberia would cancel the whole promotion and give people their money back. But this didn’t happen. Finally after 1 or 2 months the points were posted, after contacting their helpdesk several times and sending several emails.
Points Redemption!
When I finally saw the 90,000 Avios points appearing on my brand-new Iberia account I was surprised, shocked and amazed. But this was only part 1 of the Iberia Avios adventure. It was now time to start and find the best redemption for these points. Knowing that I had thousands of other competitors looking to do the same thing! In principle, the Avios points could be used for Iberia One World partners as well. But that proved almost impossible. Back then, the Iberia points redemption website was an absolute nightmare and finding partner flights was almost impossible. I soon discovered that it was best to restrict myself to Iberia flights. In the end, I managed to book some flights including one business class flight from Beijing to Madrid.
I sometimes think back about this crazy promotion and then wonder what Iberia was thinking when they were launching this. Was there some personal incentive and bonus plan from Iberia management to increase the number of Iberia frequent flyer members? Maybe a cunning plan by the Iberia IT team to do a stress test of the Iberia website? Was there an urgent need to increase the cash flow before end of June? I don’t think we will ever get an answer to these questions. But if anyone has more inside information on this promotion, I’m happy to read it in the comments. Also, if you participated, please share your experiences.
Sometimes Iberia launches a promotion to buy Avios. These could still be an interesting deal if you already have a certain destination in mind. But realise, this crazy 90,000 Avios points promotion will probably never come back!
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