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Avianca is a Star Alliance member and their Lifemiles program is an interesting one. Lifemiles can be used to book travel with partner airlines like United and Air Canada within North America.
Lifemiles is one of the rare mileage programs that doesn’t collect any fuel surcharges. Note that Avianca Lifemiles require earning activity every 12 months in order to stop your miles from expiring. Transferring points to Lifemiles will extend the points validity for 12 more months.
They have a hidden award chart, which I cracked in this post for the domestic portion.
They are having an award sale for select routes to Asia for tickets booked from now through 3/12 for travel through the end of scheduling. The full sale list can be found here.
With Coronavirus spreading, I guess that we’ll probably see more award sales like this. But you can book travel for dates for travel up to about a year from now.
You can use United’s award search to find saver award space with their calendar search option:
- You’ll need to open a Lifemiles account here before you can search for award tickets online.
- Lifemiles allows you to use cash+points on award tickets, where you can effectively buy miles from about 1.5 cents each on the award search results page. You do need to have 40% of the required miles in order to do this.
- While I typically book all of my travel as one-way as that allows the most flexibility, with Lifemiles you’ll pay the booking fee twice if you book 2 one-way awards instead of a round-trip award.
It’s worth noting that Lifemiles has non-existent customer service and their website does not see all of the awards that it should, so you should always check for availability before transferring miles. You’re unlikely to have any luck calling Lifemiles for help if there website doesn’t see an award that ought to be available.
Here are some sample deals:
- Chicago to/from Taipei: 60K in business (normally 75K)
- JFK to/from Beijing: 67.5K in business (normally 75K), 81K in first (normally 90K)
- Los Angeles to/from Hong Kong: 60K in business (normally 75K)
- Los Angeles to/from Seoul: 31.5K in coach (normally 35K), 64K in business (normally 75K), 76.5K in first (normally 90K)
- Los Angeles to/from Shanghai: 64K in business (normally 75K)
- Los Angeles to/from Taipei: 32K in coach (normally 35K) or 60K in business (normally 75K)
- San Francisco to/from Hong Kong: 31.5K in coach (normally 35K) or 61.5K in business (normally 75K)
- San Francisco to/from Taipei: 64K in business (normally 75K)
- Seattle to/from Taipei: 31.5K in coach (normally 35K) or 60K in business (normally 75K)
- Washington DC to/from Beijing: 67.5K in business (normally 75K), 72K in first (normally 90K)
Will you book any award travel on sale with Lifemiles?
I CALL IT THE:
THE CORONA VIRUS SALE!!!!
WUHAN YOUR MILES!!
Any one know how to book for infants under 2 with lifemiles? Is there any post talking about booking for infants with different airlines?
It’s a nightmare if you can pull it off, I personally book 1 separate ticket with united miles and put myself or my wife on it and add the infant, or there is one travel agent who charged me to do it, but it was expensive as it was a Lufthansa Business Class ticket JFK-TLV.
They make ELAL’s call center look “westernized” they have terrible service, they put you on hold than hang up, pass you around, return you to the menu, I’ve tried HUCA’s and have gotten the same agent, they don’t have any native English speakers perhaps someone who speaks Spanish can pull it off, but don’t count on it. I have more to say but we’ll hold it at that
And when those flights are canceled, possibly down the road You can expect to pay a $200.00 fee to have your miles reinstated.
That’s lifemiles!
Can you elaborate what happened to you exactly? You can’t have alternative flights?
There’s also a special now by lifemiles. Buy miles and get up to 125% bonus.