100% Bonus Buying Miles from Star Alliance Member Avianca LifeMiles

Avianca’s LifeMiles program, a Star Alliance member, is offering a 100% bonus on purchased miles through December 31. This is only open to members whose accounts were open prior to today.

I love the tagline, ‘Buy iles 2×1’, my eyes tricked me when I first read it and thought they were trying to sell me “lies.” After all, back in May they tweaked some award prices without notice and increased the cash cost of cash and points awards as well.

That said, when they joined Star Alliance I declared the program the most generous in the alliance. After United’s devaluation, which goes into effect February 1, that’s likely true. They are part of my “Devaluation Plan B” which is to look to international frequent flyer programs for value if and when US programs devalue further.

There are no fuel surcharges, they offer one-way awards which are priced reasonably, and as with this offer they sell miles cheap. They also offer ‘cash and points’ which means that as long as you have 40% of the miles needed for an award you can buy the rest at the time of redemption for just over 1.5 cents apiece.

That said, their call centers are frustrating and they don’t permit “mixed cabin” redemption — so if you are redeeming a transatlantic business class award, all segments need to be in business class (including domestic US flights, and intra-Europe flights).

(HT: Lucky)


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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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Comments

  1. Unfortunately there was a lot of fraud and hacking done to this website and they had to act swiftly. That is what I was told when I expressed my dissatisfaction with the devaluation. Indeed I saw some disturbing exchanges on a few websites, so the LM CSR told me the truth

    While we take advantage of great offers to travel ( premium) at tremendous discounts, we should not condone illegal and unethical activities to a programe.

    And buying miles w/o plans should be done with extreme caution….

  2. @Jorge

    can you be more specific? is there a thread where we can read what people were doing? i’m pretty curious. thank you.

  3. The ‘sweet spot’ for miles+cash booking is
    48% miles.
    At that point, the cash portion comes to
    1.5 c/mile, asit is for this sale.
    If you drop it to 40% miles, the cash
    price rises to 1.58 c/mile or so…

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