Fighting to "Combine my Avios"
Avios is the currency of now 4 international airlines - British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia and the latest, Qatar Airways. It is possible to theoretically possible to transfer Avios between these airlines giving it the character of a semi-transferable currency, but the transfers don't come easy.
The following are ways to transfer avios between these airlines
Ways to transfer (In order of ease)
From Qatar Airways, you can only transfer to British Airway's Executive Club. In this sense, this only links the biggest two Avios airlines but you only have to link them once. Once linked, Qatar airways provides the most seamless experience of all four airlines as you can see your total balance from your dashboard and also book an award using the total Avios available across the two programs.
From britishairways.com, you can transfer to Iberia Plus and Qatar Airways Privilege Club. The interface is easy enough for Qatar Airways requiring you to link the two programs only once, but it is quite old and convoluted for Iberia Plus. You need to provide your Iberia Plus login details each time you wish to make a transfer.
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| Combine my Avios from britishairways.com |
3. Iberia.com
From Iberia.com, you can transfer to British Airways Executive Club, Veuling Club and AerClub. Veuling Club is some low-cost Spanish airline and doesn't look too interesting. For the rest, the process is quite tedious requiring you to login each time you need to make a transfer.
4. avios.com
To use avios.com, you need either AerClub or Vueling Club membership. Once you have a login, you can then transfer to either British Airways or Iberia. This is a good backup option in case you are running into issues via the other methods.
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| Transfer points to and from British Airways and Iberia using avios.com |
Conditions of transfer
There are many conditions around ability to transfer that you need to be aware of. Some of the important ones are as below:
1. The accounts must be registered under the same name.
2. Accounts must have valid and same date of birth and email address.
3. You cannot transfer Avios within 90 days of joining Iberia Plus.
4. You cannot transfer from Iberia Plus to a British Airways Executive Club Household Account.
Here are the complete Combine My Avios terms.
In addition to this you need some activity in your iberia plus account to be able to transfer to and from it. A simple credit card points transfer can get you around that limitation.
both accounts match
Troubleshooting Errors
Even after following all the conditions you might still run into issues transferring the points.
If that is the case, try the following solutions.
1. Make sure your name matches exactly in the two programs including middle name.
2. Make sure your Iberia Plus account is at least 90 days old and has had some activity.
3. If details like date of birth, email address, and mailing address are missing from one of your program profiles then add them and retry.
4. Try one of the other options to combine Avios listed above.
5. Try a different browser :)
Hopefully one of those methods will work for you and you are able to move your hard earned Avios to the program you want. Cheers!
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