Iberia announces two new US routes and brings back another

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With the ban on travelers originating in the Schengen Area now lifted, Iberia has announced that it will launch two new routes to the United States from April 2022 and confirmed that its route between Madrid and San Francisco will be returning at the same time.

Iberia’s two new US routes

Neither of Iberia’s new routes is in the airline’s booking system yet so we don’t know what the schedules will look like or what aircraft will be operating the routes. What we do know, however, is that Iberia will launch services to Dallas and Washington D.C. from April 2022.

Dallas

The new Madrid – Dallas route will operate 4x/week and will operate in conjunction with the daily service that American Airlines already operates between the two cities. With Iberia and American Airlines being part of the same transatlantic joint venture (as well as both being members of the oneworld alliance), this route is clearly being introduced to feed more traffic from Europe into American’s hub at Dallas/Fort Worth from where the US carrier will take over and distribute flyers across the country.

For the time being, that’s all we know about this new route but hopefully, we’ll have a little more information in the coming days.

Washington D.C.

Iberia last offered a service between Madrid and Washington D.C. back in 2010 so as this route hasn’t operated for over a decade, I think it’s probably OK to give the airline a pass when it calls this a new route that will launch in April 2022.

This route was originally announced back in January 2020 and was supposed to launch on 1 May 2020 but for fairly obvious reasons, that never happened. Back then, the planned schedule looked like this:

IB6131 MAD 15:50 – 18:55 IAD (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sun)
IB6132 IAD 20:30 – 10:15+1 day MAD (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sun)

Given that we’re told that the route will be operated 4x/week and given that it is being launched in the summer season, it’s possible that this will be the schedule that Iberia ends up rolling out in April.

Iberia returns to San Francisco

Iberia first introduced its seasonal route between Madrid and San Francisco back in 2018 and the route returned in 2019. The pandemic ensured that the service was suspended for 2020 and 2021 but it’s now set to return for 2022.

Iberia hasn’t yet published its planned schedule for the Madrid – San Francisco route but as we know that it will again operate 3x/week, there’s a good chance that whatever Iberia comes up with will look very similar to this schedule which was in place pre-pandemic:

IB6175 MAD 12:25 – 16:00 SFO (Mon, Wed & Fri)
IB6174 SFO 18:00 – 14:15+1 day MAD (Mon, Wed & Fri)

The last time this route was around, Iberia used its A330-200 aircraft to operate it and as Iberia still has more A330-200s than any other long-haul aircraft type, there’s not much reason to expect this to change.

Bottom Line

Iberia has announced that it will launch new routes to Dallas and Washington D.C. in April 2022 and has confirmed that its summer seasonal route between Madrid and San Francisco will be returning after a two-year hiatus. With Iberia’s award costs and surcharges often noticeably lower than those of its sister airline, BA, and with Iberia often more willing to open up award availability than American Airlines, this should be good news for oneworld flyers looking to burn Avios or AAdvantage Miles.