TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Traveling For Miles has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Traveling For Miles and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.
The Caribbean is a hugely popular destination for travelers from both sides of the Atlantic, but not only can it be an expensive place to stay, but it can also be an expensive place to fly to in any kind of comfort.
Fortunately for miles & points fans, there’s at least one very economical Business Class award available for travel between Europe and the Caribbean, and it’s an award that can open up travel to multiple destinations.
Iberia’s Caribbean routes
As I’ve said many times before, Iberia Plus can be an incredibly useful program thanks to the fact that it has some great low-surcharge routes and the fact that it’s relatively easy to get a significant number of Avios into an Iberia Plus account (e.g. transfers from BA or various credit card currencies), but most people tend to focus on the airlines routes to/from South America and its routes to/from the United States.
The fact that the airline also operates two non-stop routes between Madrid and the Caribbean (I’m not including any Central American destinations which may have a Caribbean shoreline), often goes unmentioned or unnoticed.
If you’re looking for a Caribbean break, this is where Iberia will fly you to (non-stop) out of Madrid:
For those who don’t speak airport-code, those destinations are San Juan, Puerto Rico (SJU), and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (SDQ).
Both are popular destinations, but neither is really a major destination for non-Spanish speakers originating in Europe, and that may be a reason why these routes don’t get very much attention.
Nevertheless, one of these routes offers a very good Avios redemption opportunity while the other offers a truly fantastic Avios redemption opportunity and an economical way of getting to multiple other destinations in the Caribbean.
The great Avios deals
The big problem that most people have with Avios redemptions is that on most long-haul routes, they come with high surcharges which can make the currency uneconomical to use.
Fortunately, Iberia’s surcharges are mild in comparison to what you’ll find some other Avios-using airlines charging, and that is a big help here.
Another big help is Iberia’s award chart:
Like the British Airways award chart (which is no longer officially published), Iberia’s award chart is distance-based, and because Madrid is a little closer to the Caribbean than most other major European cities, this is a very useful feature.
Madrid to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic falls into Band 6 of the Iberia award chart and that means that one-way off-peak Business Class awards can be booked for just 42,500 Avios + surcharges (roundtrip for 85,000 + surcharges).
I don’t have enough Avios in my Iberia Plus account to get the Iberia website to price up a booking, but since the airline will allow me to book a roundtrip Business Class award by buying 85,000 Avios and paying $335, I think it’s safe to say that taxes and surcharges come to approximately $330.
As I value Avios at 1.0 cents each, that sees the cost of the whole round trip booking come to approximately $1,180.
Even if you happen to overvalue Avios wildly and think that they’re worth as much as 1.3 cents each, the whole round trip will still cost less than $1,450, and we should all be able to agree that that’s a pretty good deal.
The better deal, however, is to be found on the route to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Where the Madrid – Santo Domingo route comes in at over 4,000 miles and is categorized as a Band 6 destination, the Madrid – San Juan route comes in at a little under 4,000 miles and so gets categorized as a Band 5 route.
This makes a big difference.
During off-peak season, this route can be booked for a little as 34,000 Avios + surcharges (one-way) …
… or 68,000 Avios + surcharges for round trip travel.
Once again, as I don’t have enough Avios in my Iberia Plus account to get the Iberia website to price up a booking, I’m going to have to use the ‘buy Avios and book’ feature to estimate the surcharges, and on this route, it looks like taxes and surcharges come to approximately $230.
If you value Avios at 1.0 cents each, that sees the cost of the whole round trip booking come to approximately $910.
That’s a phenomenal deal.
It remains a phenomenal deal even if you choose to overvalue Avios at, for example, 1.3 cents each.
At that valuation the whole round trip will still cost less than $1,120.
Even in peak season when roundtrip travel will cost 100,000 Avios + ~$230 in surcharges, this remains a fantastic deal, but as Iberia’s off-peak season dates don’t have very much to do with the weather at the destinations to which it operates, you’ll find that off-peak pricing can usually be found for most of January, February, and March which are the most popular months for travel to the Caribbean.
Using San Juan as a stopover
A lot of people reading this will probably be thinking that as great as these deals are, they’re not much good to anyone who doesn’t really want to visit Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic. But that’s not necessarily true.
If you use the Flight Connections website, you’ll find that there are several Caribbean destinations that can be reached from San Juan without a stopover being required (some are seasonal), and this means that San Juan can be used as part of a one-stop strategy to get to a number of other places in the Caribbean.
The British Virgin Islands, St Barts, Barbados, Saint Maarten, Anguilla, St Kitts, Trinidad, Dominica, Saint Croix, and the US Virgin Islands are just a few examples of destinations that can be reached with a short non-stop flight from San Juan, so it should be possible to use an Iberia Business Class award to cross the Atlantic in comfort before connecting on (possibly the next day) to a short-haul service to any one of those destinations.
Yes, this may not seem like a very direct way to get to the Caribbean destination of your choice, but keep in mind the fact that a lot of the destinations mentioned above aren’t easily reachable from Europe without a stopover anyway (have you tried getting to the BVI?!) and keep in mind how much money this could save.
Use this route in reverse (if you’re based in the US)
Flights from the United States to San Juan can often be very reasonably priced and as most of these flights aren’t particularly long (especially true if you’re based on the east coast), you could pair a cheap USA – San Juan Economy Class fare with an Iberia Plus Business Class redemption from San Juan to Madrid to cross the Atlantic in comfort and economically.
Sure, this isn’t exactly the most direct routing that you can take, but Business Class awards between SJU and Madrid are often easy to find and if you’re a fan of the miles & points game, you should enjoy the savings this routing would offer if not the added time it will add to your trip 🙂
Bottom line
If you’re planning a trip from Europe to the Caribbean, don’t forget that Iberia Plus may be able to get you to the Caribbean in comfort (the Business Class cabins are very good) and without asking you to break the bank.
68,000 Avios + ~$240 for a roundtrip Business Class fare between Europe and the Caribbean is a deal that is hard to beat, and although these routes may not represent the most direct way of getting you to the destination of your choice, the savings that they offer could make any extra stopovers more than worthwhile.
Be aware of Iberia’s award cancel policy!