The Offer
- $95 annual fee not waived first year
- Sign up bonus of up to 100,000 points, broken down as follows:
- 50,000 Bonus Avios after $3,000 spend within first 3 months
- Plus 25,000 Bonus Avios after $10,000 spend within your first year.
- Plus a further 25,000 Bonus Avios after you spend $20,000 total on purchases within your first year from account opening.
Card Details
- $95 annual fee, not waived first year
- Card earns at the following rates:
- Earn 3 Avios for every $1 you spend on Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, LEVEL and OpenSkies purchases.
- Earn 1 Avios for every $1 you spend on all other purchases
- $1,000 discount voucher each calendar year (more on this below) after you make $30,000 in purchases on your card
- 10% off Iberia flights
- No foreign transaction fees
- Visa Signature
- Our full review here
Our Verdict
The bonus on this card has always been 75,000 points (without the last 25,000 points) since it launched in Mid march. This bonus is better for those that can spend the full $20,000 in a year. Keep in mind the Chase 5/24 rule does not apply to this card. This is as high as the British Airways card goes (and I suspect this card will always match that cards bonus). Definitely a good bonus if you have a need for Avios, but card isn’t worth keeping long term. As always read these things everybody should know about Chase cards before applying. If you applied under the old 75,000 point offer it should be possible to be matched. Bonuses on the Aer Lingus & British Airways card have also been increased.
View Comments (23)
I wonder if this is/going to be 5/24 since British Airways is rumored to now be 5/24.
Is there no way to buy Premium Economy with the 10% off via iberia.com/Chase10/ ?
I’ve always thought Avios was the best travel currency out there.
There is a little-known (or, perhaps, “little-publicized”) fact that Chase will not deduct Avios miles that you have generated (bonus or regular spend) for returned or refunded purchases that were originally made with BA Chase card. If I were to buy a $3K fully refundable plane ticket on BA using my BA Chase card, I stand to earn 9K miles during the billing cycle that I made the purchase. (3x miles for in-network purchases). If I cancel the ticket during the next billing cycle, my BA Chase billing cycle would show the deduction (again, in this case), but the miles are never *actually* deducted.
In this case, Chase gives you a ‘theoretical’ deficit, whereby you would have to spend another $3K, before you could start earning Avios miles again.
The miles-earning potential knowing this info is insanely profound, and I have already profited greatly from this miles inflating strategy.
That's dishonest, and Chase will catch up with you. I hope you don't get a bill in a few years asking for reimbursement of all those miles you didn't earn, at whatever cost they want to decide they want you to pay for them
Re: matching to this offer, though I don't have plans to spend $20k, I did write via secure message to request this and got an affirmative:
"We'll be happy to review your request regarding the
enrollment bonus offer on your Iberia credit card.
We reviewed your credit card account and found that the
offer you requested was to earn 50,000 bonus Avios after
you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of
account opening. Plus earn an additional 25,000 bonus
Avios after you spend $10,000 on purchases within your
first year of account opening, plus a further 25,000 Bonus
Avios after you spend $20,000 total on purchases within
your first year from account opening.
Our records show you haven't met the spending requirement.
After you have met the required spend, please reply to
this email to claim the offer."
How long does it take to get the card in the mail after approval?
To reply to my own question: It took 2 weeks.
Day 0 - applied and was automatically approved (BTW: I am over 5/24)
Day 2 - Welcome to Iberia Plus e-mail
Day 11 - $95 Annual fee posted on account
Day 12 - received card in mail and activated
Day 12 - congratulations on your new card (e-mail from Chase)
Now that I look at the actual dates, it wasn't that much, but it seemed longer at the time :)
I will wait until the annual fee is waived the first year.
I do not think that has happened on the 100k offer for the BA card in the past so I would not "hold your breath" for this to get the AF waived and the 100k offer
I actually did the BA 20k version of the deal, though Chase & BA cheated me out of the last 25k because (so they claimed I completed my 20k spend one day over the one year anniversary of a start date from when their computers opened the account.... Higher-ups at Chase blocked my appeals, despite sympathetic lower level reps. Nearly took them to court over this, but chose not to fight the so and so's -- this time, in part as I DO value the use of Iberia Avios on American. (beginning at 11k plus fees for short haul round-trip flights == and no close-in booking fees either)
Bottom line for everybody going for this deal: Find out as soon as you get your card what the exact date is that they consider the card opened. (not when you applied, not when you got the notice that the card was approved, not when you activate your card..... In the immortal words, of Felix Unger, don't "Ass-u-me" you know just what their computer says -- and get it in writing via s.m.) Take my stupid tale as lesson to learn from, for your benefit.
And (if you're so inclined) happy flying on American award seats -- thanks to Iberia!
American award seats? Whenever I look, there's no availabilty.
Ah, I too have the same general experience with AA's miserly award availability. Yet I've had some extraordinary repeat success recently using Iberia Avios points to land last-minute cheap round-trip point flights on AA.... even when AA wasn't showing availability. (and better yet, for far fewer points, and NO close-in booking fees..... Taxes & fees though via Iberia site a bit higher, depending on # of stops--...... still 11k Avios for a short-total distance domestic RT US flight on American is quite good)
MommyPoints one of the few bloggers to ever attempt to explain all this.
PS: one of the dirty secrets of AA award availability..... at least in my experience: you'll just magically (gag) find a lot more award seats available within 3 weeks of your desired flight date..... (Guess why? Cause then they can nail you with the $75 close in booking fee.) But if you have Iberia Avios, your odds of landing one of those AA flight (on a RT booking) are even better -- and again, without any AA close-in booking fees.
British airways is excellent for short haul trips especially under 1999 miles but especially under 1149 miles. British airways has high carrier imposed charges so learn how to avoid those if possible.
Iberia is good for Business Class between the USA and Europe. Very low carrier imposed charges and almost always charges less than BA. But since you can transfer Avios between all 3 airlines you can choose which airline you want to fly on and then move those miles over.
50K Avios are good for two RT West Coast to Hawaii, only non-stop from West coast hubs (AA & Alaska are Partners - converting some UR to Avios for this exact reason, don't want to give up for a 5/24 spot), also good for short hops in Asia and I think Europe, I think I also read also that Boston to Dublin is/was 25k Avios RT.
Would you rank BA, Iberia, Aer Lingus cards in any particular order?
I think you can transfer Avios points between the three.
and TTHAT is one hell of a mess to accomplish. (involving bizarre computer incompatibility between all three -- I've been working to straighten out the mess between my BA and Iberia account names for six months -- still not fixed. by contrast, transfers from Chase UR to any of the avios programs are INSTANT -- AND without any hassles of slight differences in spellings of your name.)
just curious how you managed to spell your own name differently in each program lol
Actually I’ve not had any issues transferring between BA and Iberia. Don’t know about Aer Lingus, I don’t have an account with them.
well good to hear somebody had no problems. You must have been spared the nightmare of the different avios systems presenting your names (initials, double last names) differently -- caused as one Iberia rep explained to me (in an unguarded moment) by a serious IT screw-up. (I've called a dozen times on this..... rare will be the rep who has a clue -- but it's a long standing issue between Iberia & BA avios programs)
impossible to answer. so many factors.
Literally just applied for the old offer. 20k is a lot of spend though.
Chase usually matches, so not a big deal.