A recent piece highlighted Iberia’s cash and points options as a way to increase the value extractable from Avios miles. In some cases the reported value exceeded 30 cents per point.

The maths is correct. The conclusion is not.

A one way business class ticket:

On the surface the progression looks like huge progress.

These options do not increase the value of your Avios.
They change how the value of the transaction is measured.

Each step down the slider is an offer to keep more Avios in exchange for more cash.

You are not choosing between six different redemptions. You are choosing between cash and miles trade-offs.

Another way to think about it: if the starting point is 40,500 Avios + $125.90, at what price am I effectively buying some of the Avios back?

Start with the baseline:

Now compare:

The difference:

That implies:

As you move down the slider:

So the cents per point number rises, from 11.8 cents per mile all the way up to 32 cents per mile.

That increase is mechanical. The denominator is shrinking. The underlying trade is not improving.

The cash fare is already doing the heavy lifting. Simply entering the Avios pricing system is what unlocks most of the value in the first place, much like what happens in hotel award pricing. Once you are there, the slider is no longer about finding more value. It is about deciding how much of that value you want to take in points versus cash.

Each step down the slider is a trade:

Pay more cash now in order to keep more Avios for later.

The table above shows the implied price of doing that.

So the question becomes very simple:

Do I want to buy Avios at roughly 1.7 to 2.0 cents each?

In my case, the answer is no.

In an earlier piece, I used 1.4 cents as a working value for Avios. Like for other airline miles, that has remained in the ballpark of a level above which I aim to redeem them.

I have a decent balance of Avios myself. Recently, they have not been particularly competitive versus other miles when valued in this range. I am becoming increasingly comfortable anchoring lower unless I have a specific reason not to. One of the sources I respect, Frequent Miler, places them around 1.1 cents, while other published figures, like AwardWallet, are higher.

Even at 1.4¢, every option above the baseline here is expensive.

This is the inverse of a British Airways booking I wrote about in December.

There, the airline was offering to buy my Avios at low prices.
Here, it is offering to sell them back at higher prices.

Same behavioral pricing structure. Only the direction has changed.

Switch pricing systems and something changes. Similar to the IHG pricing structure, where room types collapse and ratios shift, the numbers start to look better.

The underlying trade does not.

Cash and points can be useful. But not always because they increase the value available to you.

They are a way of choosing how many points you want to spend.

Once you see the slider as a series of cash vs point exchanges, rather than upgrades in transaction value, most of the options become easy to ignore.