Where Has All the Iberia Avios Availability Gone?

It was pointed out to me by a follower this bank holiday weekend that seemingly all Avios business class availability on Iberia to North and South America has disappeared from November onwards.

Others reported that BA availability was also missing over this weekend (Reddit #1, Reddit #2), but this has since reappeared.

But it begs the question, what's happening?

Using Reward Flight Finder's Worldwide Map search, I searched for a return trip between the dates of 1st November, and 25th March. This search does not exclusively search for an outbound on 1st November, and the return leg on 25th March, but instead looks at all availability in between those two dates.

From the map below, you'll see some rings, blue denotes economy, yellow denotes premium economy, and purple is business. You'll see one purple ring corresponding to Los Angeles, and yet this is in fact ghost availability, no such seat exists. So for the entirety from November through to March, there are no business class seats to the whole of the Americas.

Not one just to rely on a third-party system, I of course double checked against both the British Airways and Iberia websites (just to be thorough), and there was indeed no availability on these routes in business class.

Reward Flight Finder's Worldwide Map search

If you are to search for availability proceeding November, this is the general pattern across the whole of the Americas. Availability on a smattering of days, and then a sheer drop off in the seats available.

Reward Flight Finder search for Madrid to Quito, Ecuador

Just to prove that the rest of the world is working, here is the Iberia availability for the same date range for Europe and the Middle East. Remember, blue denotes economy, and purple is business class.

Reward Flight Finder's Worldwide Map search

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For those of you unaware, Iberia also use Avios as their reward currency. You can even use the companion voucher earned from a British Airways American Express on Iberia when you book via the BA website.

You may wonder why did I hesitate before posting this article? The Avios system is run off British Airways IT. Case closed. Things appear, disappear, move etc all of the time thanks to the ZX Spectrum that seems to be powering the whole operation. In fact, even when researching this piece by double checking availability across various routes on the BA website I ran into this inevitable error...

So I didn't want to hit publish before giving the system a little bit of the benefit of the doubt (especially on a bank holiday weekend). You may think I've been too forgiving, and you're not wrong. But if I had to write an article every time a bit of BA IT failed, you certainly wouldn't be sticking round to read for very long.

The other answer that is being spoken about in some forums is that Iberia are tweaking their schedules for the winter season, which runs from 25th October 2026. That may be true, but that doesn't explain why they have left up economy and premium economy availability, but removed business.

To wrap this up, if you have been struggling to find Iberia availability, you are not alone. The good news is that these seats have likely not been sold for the dates that you're after, so when the seats get re-loaded onto the system you should be in luck. The bad news, I have no information as to when these seats may reappear.

Sam

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