AviancaTaca Lifemiles Posts Their Star Alliance Award Chart

by Gary Leff

With the addition of AviancaTaca as a Star Alliance member, I noted that this will be a very useful program for some.

They offer frequent bonuses on purchased miles, making their points cheap to acquire, and they offer cash and points award bookings as well.

At the time there was no complete award chart posted, you had to search route-by-route to figure out how much awards are supposed to cost. That has been rectified. Overall the chart is quite good, generally competitive with US frequent flyer programs.

They offer online award bookings, and some glitches (mostly in customers’ favor) have been reported so far (some destinations pricing in the wrong zone, other routings allowing getting off at a connecting city for less than the full routing costs).

I wouldn’t bank of those remaining, I’d focus on the program for the value that it offers. And if you do even better than that, congratulations.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. Off topic question: UA.com used to offer a ‘points plus cash’ option. Apparently the CO.com system is unable to support this.

    Do you know if points plus cash is coming back to the new UA?

  3. Looks okay. Can you use the cash and points option in conjunction with bought miles? Eg, buy 20% of the miles needed, get another 20% as a bonus giving you the mandatory 40%, then use cash and points at the cheaper cost for the remainder? If so, this may become even more valuable than US for premium cabin redemptions as the average cost per mile will fall to 1.365 cents which beats US even with the higher mileage costs.

  4. Thanks for pointing this out. I had not been paying attention to this; and actually posted my question in your old post; I apologize, so reposted here.

    The ability to buy unlimited miles is great. I noticed in your old posts, that they charged 25$ per 1000 mile blocks. They have it listed at 30$ now; was this a recent increase?

    The other question is cash and points. Am I wrong, but doesn’t that sound like a great deal? Just keep 40-50% of the miles and then essentially you are purchasing the rest for better than the 100% promo. Could you still take advantage of this if you have the full amount of miles for an award, just decide to use 40% and buy the rest?

    Thanks again.
    Ed

  5. Re ‘glitches’, stop f’ing stealing from FT. You are the new Airfare Dog. You’ll kill all these deals, you idiot. Worthless leech – just copying content to earn CC referrals and ‘consulting fees’ without doing any research on your own.

  6. @Annoyed FTer — I made the reference to the way the website is pricing certain things — instead of just mentioning the award chart being up — because of the silliness going on in that thread. Comments like “Well, let’s keep talking in code. The bloggers are quite daft and usually don’t do bother doing their own research.”

    But my references were veiled none the less. Truly saying I am the new ‘Airfare Dog’ is just silly.

    As for stealing from Flyertalk, you’ll note that the Flyertalk thread on the UA Hong Kong glitch credits my blog.

    And really, over the years which one of us contributed more to Flyertalk, you or me?

  7. The bloggers are indeed quite daft and I’d bet a lot of money that you guys won’t have figured it out until much later.

    If you don’t realize how this is like the Airfare Watchdog, you’re so beyond the pale that it is pitiable. I guess greed truly can blind some people.

    And I’m sure telling everybody who reads the NYT that Amex lets you transfer MR to anybody was wise, right? Not like the AFWD at all…

  12. @Chris Sure it does. It’s not an open jaw it’s a one way trip. Select Star Alliance partners then CDG depart and arrive at KHV. But get off the boat in ICN. Granted you’ll need a Russian visa…

  14. Hi Gary,

    Could you kindly answer Lark, David and Ed’s questions please? I am also interested in knowing all three of those points.

    Many thanks,
    T

  15. You can combine purchased miles with cash and points awards, cash and points is a way to buy miles at a deep discount. Maybe I’m misunderstanding what you want me to answer?

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