International Airlines Group (IAG)

A Speedmarque tail at Heathrow, a red-and-yellow rear end in Madrid, a gray-and-yellow Airbus in Barcelona and a shamrock in Dublin: four airports, four brands, one group. Behind British Airways, Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus stands the International Airlines Group, IAG for short. You read the name on no fuselage – and yet this group shapes the scene at four of Western Europe’s most important airports. For your sightings that means, as with any airline group: the group doesn’t fly, the operators do.

Two flag carriers, one holding company

IAG is comparatively young. In January 2011, British Airways and Iberia completed their merger – though not as a fusion into one airline but as a joint parent company. Both companies remained independent flight operations with their own name, livery, hub and operating license. IAG has applied exactly this model to every new airline since.

Legally, the group is a Spanish public limited company with its registered office in Madrid. The actual group headquarters, however, is in the Greater London area, not far from Heathrow. The share trades in London and on the Spanish exchanges and is listed in both the British FTSE 100 and the Spanish IBEX 35. Since September 2020, Luis Gallego, previously head of Iberia, has led the group. The largest single shareholder is Qatar Airways with about a quarter of the shares.

In the years after the merger the group grew quickly. In 2012 the British bmi was added, whose takeoff and landing rights at Heathrow went to British Airways; the bmi brand then disappeared from the apron. In 2013 IAG took control of Vueling, followed by Aer Lingus in 2015. In 2017 the group founded LEVEL, a brand of its own for low-cost long-haul flights. With that, today’s structure of five airline brands was essentially complete.

The group’s airlines at a glance

For spotters, the question is who is actually flying. The table sorts the flight operations by role, codes and home base. With the codes you find the right operator on departure boards, in schedules and in tracking apps. How the two code systems relate is explained in the article on IATA and ICAO codes.

The “Typical registrations” column is a rule of thumb, but at IAG a fairly reliable one: the British operations fly with G-, the Spanish with EC- and Aer Lingus with EI- registrations. What the prefixes mean is explained in the article on aircraft country prefixes.

The four hubs and what you see there

Each IAG hub has a main airline of its own and its own fleet picture. If you visit all four, you get a surprisingly broad cross-section of European aviation.

London Heathrow is the heart of British Airways and the group’s most important location. Most of BA’s long-haul operation runs here: the A380, the Boeing 777-200ER and 777-300ER, the Dreamliner family from the 787-8 through the 787-9 to the 787-10, and the A350-1000. Add the short-haul jets from the A319 to the A321neo. The airport is introduced in the entry London Heathrow; one of the best-known photo locations is described in Myrtle Avenue.

London Gatwick and London City complete the picture. At Gatwick, BA EuroFlyer flies short- and medium-haul under BA colors; at downtown London City, BA CityFlyer deploys Embraer jets such as the E190.

Madrid-Barajas belongs to Iberia, which handles its flights in Terminal 4 together with its oneworld partners. Iberia flies an all-Airbus fleet, on long-haul with the A350-900, A330-200 and A330-300. Iberia was also the launch customer for the A321XLR. More on the location is at Madrid-Barajas Airport, and a well-known spot is described in La Muñoza.

Barcelona-El Prat is Vueling’s main base and the home of LEVEL. Vueling flies exclusively jets of the A320 family, while LEVEL deploys A330-200s on long-haul. The airport is described in the entry Barcelona-El Prat.

Dublin is Aer Lingus’s hub with transatlantic connections to North America. Besides the A320 family and A330, Aer Lingus deploys long-range narrowbodies of the A321 family. The location is introduced in the entry on Dublin Airport.

British Airways: the group’s widebody treasure chest

For many spotters, British Airways is the real reason to deal with IAG. Hardly any other European airline operates so many different widebody types at the same time. The A380 has become rare in Europe, with only a few airlines still deploying it here. The 777-200ER is the oldest widebody type in the BA fleet; in 2025 IAG ordered further 787-10s for British Airways. The 777-9 is also on the airline’s order books.

The Boeing 747-400, long the symbol of British Airways, was retired by the airline in 2020 – in the middle of the pandemic and earlier than planned. If you are interested in the Jumbo’s history, you will find it in the article on the history of the Boeing 747. And with Concorde, British Airways wrote a chapter of aviation history of its own, which the article on Concorde tells.

Iberia, Vueling and LEVEL: the Spanish side

The group’s Spanish companies are often more present for spotters in Central Europe than you might think. Vueling was founded in 2004, has its main base in Barcelona and maintains further stations in Rome, Paris Orly, Amsterdam and London Gatwick, among others. The fleet consists of jets of the A320 family – from the A319 through the A320 and A320neo to the A321 and A321neo. It gets exciting with the order for Boeing 737 MAX, which IAG assigned to Vueling in 2025: for the first time, a Boeing type is coming into the Vueling fleet. The family is introduced in the entry on the 737 MAX 8.

Iberia has been flying since 1927 and is thus among the oldest airlines in the world. In 2013 it got a new look with a reworked logo and a red-and-yellow tail – photos from before show the older design, a useful dating feature for your archive. The subsidiary Iberia Express has flown short- and medium-haul from Madrid since 2012 and brings connecting passengers to the hub.

LEVEL is the group’s most unusual brand. It started in 2017 with long-haul flights from Barcelona, temporarily grew with bases in Paris Orly and Vienna, and shrank back to its long-haul offering from Barcelona in the pandemic. For a long time Iberia flew the LEVEL flights; at the end of 2024 LEVEL received an air operator certificate of its own. For spotters that means: with LEVEL, a look at the callsign is especially worthwhile because operator and brand were not always identical here.

Aer Lingus: the Irish path of its own

Aer Lingus was founded in 1936 as the Irish state airline and has belonged to IAG since 2015. Within the group it is a special case: unlike British Airways and Iberia it is not in oneworld, having left the alliance as early as 2007, and since then it has relied on codeshares and partnerships with individual airlines. The shamrock on the tail nevertheless makes it one of the most easily recognizable airlines in Europe.

In regional traffic, Emerald Airlines has flown under the Aer Lingus Regional brand since 2022, among others with turboprops of the ATR 72-600 type. On long-haul, Aer Lingus relies on the A330 and on long-range narrowbodies of the A321 family, with which it also flies directly to smaller destinations in North America. Aer Lingus is also getting new A330-900s as part of the 2025 order.

How to identify the right operator

Identification is simpler at IAG than at some other groups because the country prefixes clearly separate the families. Pitfalls remain, though – above all with the BA subsidiaries and the franchise partners. These steps get you to a reliable sighting.

Alliance, cargo and Avios: the group behind the scenes

On alliances, IAG does not follow a uniform path. British Airways was a founding member of oneworld in 1999, and Iberia joined the same year. Their subsidiaries come along as affiliates. Aer Lingus, Vueling and LEVEL, by contrast, are alliance-free. How the three big alliances differ is explained in the article Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam. The Lufthansa Group, by contrast, is anchored in the Star Alliance, and Air France-KLM in SkyTeam.

IAG Cargo was formed in 2012 from the cargo divisions of British Airways, Iberia and bmi. Dedicated freighters play hardly any role there: IAG Cargo mainly markets the cargo space under the cabin floor of the passenger jets. When needed, the division also offers charter solutions. If you want to see dedicated freighters, you will find tips in the article How to recognize freighter aircraft.

The third bracket is Avios, the shared reward currency of the group airlines, operated by IAG Loyalty. For spotters it is more of a side note – but it explains why customers switch between BA, Iberia and Aer Lingus without being aware of the group bracket.

On manufacturers, IAG buys from both big suppliers. Iberia and Vueling have so far relied on Airbus, British Airways mixes Airbus and Boeing, and with the 737 MAX for Vueling, the low-cost subsidiary becomes mixed as well.

Air Europa and the limits of the group

One chapter shows how fluid the boundaries of an airline group can be. As early as 2019, IAG announced the takeover of Air Europa, one of Spain’s big network airlines. After several attempts, IAG converted a loan into a 20 percent stake in 2022 and agreed in 2023 to buy the remaining shares. The European Commission examined the deal at length; in August 2024 IAG withdrew the takeover because the conditions went too far. The minority stake of 20 percent remained. When Turkish Airlines agreed to take a stake in Air Europa in 2025, IAG announced it would take part in the accompanying capital increase to keep its share.

For you as a spotter the matter is clear: Air Europa is an independent airline with its own livery, its own callsign and SkyTeam membership. In your collection it doesn’t belong to the IAG family, even though the group has a financial stake.

Conclusion

For spotters, the International Airlines Group is a map of Europe’s western flank. It explains why an A380 at Heathrow, an A350 in Madrid, an A320neo in Barcelona and a shamrock jet in Dublin belong to the same family – and are still four different operators. If you know the hubs, you know where which brand dominates. If you read callsigns and registrations, you assign every sighting correctly, even with BA subsidiaries and franchise partners.