What I’d Do With 100,000 Iberia Avios – Maximizing the Chase Iberia Card
The next card in our series of maximizing credit card offers is the Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card – what are its key perks and benefits? What’s the best way to spend those 100,000 Iberia Avios? In this article, we’ll take a deep dive on the Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card to look at what it offers to the consumer. After learning about the card, I’ll show you how I would go about maximizing the Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card and the Avios earned from the welcome offer.
RELATED: Ranking The Three Avios Earning Chase Cards, Which One Reigns Supreme?
Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card Benefits
The Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card doesn’t get much attention. It gets much less attention than the Chase British Airways Visa, which we covered here. However, a closer comparison showed that the Iberia version of the card actually offers a better financial return to cardholders. It offers numerous consumer protections and ongoing benefits for a low annual fee. It also has a massive welcome offer that comes in 2 tiers. Here are the important details of the welcome offer:
- Type of card: personal
- Card issuer: Chase
- Application rules to follow: cannot open this card if you have opened more than 5 credit cards in the last 24 months, no more than 2 credit cards in 30 days from Chase (see more here)
- Spending requirements: tiered – $3,000 in 3 months and $20,000 in the first year
- Welcome offer: tiered – 50,000 and then another 50,000 Iberia Avios
- Annual fee: $95
- Learn More
Chase British Airways Visa Benefits
- 3X Points on spend with British Airways, Iberia, or Aer Lingus.
- 2X Points at hotels.
- 1X Points on everything else.
Other Benefits
- $1,000 discount voucher for 2 tickets on the same flight for each year after you make purchases of $30,000 on your card.
- 10% discount on paid tickets when using the card and booking via iberia.com/Chase10.
- Additional cards at no additional cost.
- Additional protections like trip insurance, extended warranty, purchase protection, and rental car insurance.
- No foreign transaction fees.
- Learn More
What I Would Do With 100,000 Iberia Avios
Now that we know what perks and protections the Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card offers, it’s time to dream. The 2-tiered welcome offer has a juicy 100,000 Avios offer. After spending $20,000 on the card to earn those Avios, we’ll have a minimum of 120,000 Avios. I’ll use this number for today’s purposes. What can we do with 120k Iberia Avios? Ian previously talked about some great deals to extend the value of your Avios. Building on that, here’s what I’d do for economy, business, or first class trip ideas with 120,000 Iberia Avios. (Until August 30, Iberia has a promotion for 50% off award bookings, but I’m using the regular pricing)
Economy – Family Spring Break in Mexico
Iberia is a member of oneworld alliance, so those partners are all available to us. Since Iberia uses a distance-based chart for awards, you use more miles to fly more miles. They also have separate award charts for their own flights vs partners. We’ll use their partner award chart to take a family of 4 to Mexico for Spring Break 2021. Hang out on the beach, eat some great food, and even go to some amazing Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza — one of the 7 Wonders of the World!
Assuming you have a family of 4, 2 adults and 2 children can fly non-stop on American Airlines to Cancun in March next year for 23,000 miles per person. There are also $85.29 in taxes and fees per person. The total required is 92,000 Avios and $341.16 for the whole family. That’s round-trip. Prices are higher during peak periods, such as summer breaks and winter holidays.
But what if you don’t live near a hub city?
Since we’ve used only 92,000 miles, we have some left in case you don’t live near a hub. You can add really cheap domestic flights in the U.S. on American Airlines using your Iberia Avios. However, you MUST book round-trip on AA flights when using Iberia Avios. The number of miles needed is based on distance.
Round-trip or multi-city flights on American Airlines start at 11,000 Avios per person. If your family is in St. Louis and needs to connect to Chicago for the flights to Cancun, you could cover the 2 adults with your remaining miles. You’ve now used 114,000 miles and just need to buy tickets for your kids to Chicago and back.
Business Class – European Adventure
Flying on Iberia flights to Europe is hands-down the best use of Iberia Avios. From Chicago, DC, Boston, New York, or Miami, you can fly one-way in Iberia business class to Madrid for only 34,000 miles. 68,000 round-trip business class to Europe is a deal.
From the West Coast of the U.S., the price is 51,000 round-trip to Madrid. However, we can add another flight to that and maximize the full distance of how far we can go on our 120,000 Iberia Avios. From Los Angeles or San Francisco to Madrid and then to any city inside this red circle is possible for a round-trip business class award in our price range.
We can take a direct flight from LAX to Madrid MAD airport and then connect to numerous European cities. For me, I’ll go back to Rome. It’s one of the greatest cities in the world. Looking for a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with home cooking that will blow your mind? Go eat dinner at Rifugio Romano near Termini train station (the main station).
You’ll pay 86,250 Avios + $267.44 in taxes and fees for this trip. The cool thing about Iberia Avios bookings is that you can also choose different cabins for different flights. This is a way to save your miles by flying in a nicer cabin for trans-oceanic flights and then taking the short flight in economy, if you want.
First Class
I’ll be blunt that the Iberia award booking site isn’t the most user friendly. There are flights that I know exist but won’t show up on the Avios search engine on Iberia’s site. I can find tons of availability on flights for Cathay Pacific or JAL first class using search engines on AA or BA websites. However, Iberia isn’t showing these seats.
Booking first class on American Airlines flights requires round-trip bookings, and search results are iffy, though they at least show up on the website. Your best bet to find first class awards on oneworld partners is to search on American or British and then call 800-772-4642 if Iberia’s site won’t show you these flights. Flight options include round-trip between Boston or New York and London using American Airlines or British Airways first class in off-peak periods. Additionally, you should be able to book American Airlines first class between the US and Brazil/Argentina one-way in first class. With Cathay Pacific or JAL, fly one-way in first class between the US and Asia.
I will admit that award searches in general are less reliable than normal. Airlines are unsure which flights they’ll run on which dates. They don’t know for sure which countries and airports will be open, and they don’t know what demand will be. However, finding flights on a partner and then not seeing them on Iberia means it’s just Iberia’s site acting weird. You might need to book via phone.
Final Thoughts
In this article, we looked at maximizing the Chase Iberia Visa Signature Card. We covered its perks and benefits, as well as its annual fee and application rules. Then, we looked at the 2-tiered welcome offer to see what value it offers. Finally, we imagined how to use those 120,000 Avios for trips in economy, business, and first class.
Are you planning on applying for this card? What would you do with 120,000 Iberia Avios? Dream big!
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