For sometime Avianca LifeMiles had been famous for selling
their miles with a 100% bonus every few months. That recurring offer
seem to dwindle towards the latter half of 2014 but now it is back with
an extra bonus! If you live in countries outside of Guatemala, El
Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, United
States and Colombia you’ll actually get a 120% bonus! Hooray for us Canadians as we get the full 120%!
If you have followed us
for sometime you’ll know this is a decent option to get Star Alliance
flights on the cheap especially in business class. However Avianca
announced back on September 30th the price to buy miles will go
up 10% and had changes to their award chart on October 15th which were a
devaluation. So what should you do? If you
know that you can make your travel work and get the LifeMiles
redemption(s) of your choice go ahead and buy the miles however I
wouldn’t buy them if you don’t think you’ll use them over then 3-6
months just in case another award chart devaluation comes along.
For us we the
miles cost US 1.5 cents a piece +GST. This brings the price down to levels prior
to September 30th, 2014. It appears that those who are eligible for the
extra 20% can only 68,000 miles (+81,600 bonus miles) for a total of
149,600 miles. However you don’t have to buy that many miles. For 78,000 miles you can get a one-way business class ticket to North Asia (Japan, China, Korea etc) from Canada depending on availability. With the bonus this means you only have to buy 36,000 miles for US$1,188 (lets say $1500 Canadian)
Here is a great example of how this bonus can be utilized for some huge savings!
Air Canada Business Class One-way from Calgary to Tokyo costs $5494.41 all in
Same ticket using Avianca LifeMiles with this promotion and taxes costs around $1,600 (and its only 75,000 miles even though their reward chart shows 78,000 miles!)
That’s a saving of over $3,800!
Another decent feature of LifeMiles is their Cash + Part Miles option but that
was devalued over a year ago. This option
only requires that you have 40% of the points for a reward (so buy 40%
during this 100% bonus period) and then you can buy the rest of the
miles (the other 60%) at about 1.56 cents per mile (used to be 1.25
cents!). So if you get the 20% bonus with the current promo you are
better of buying all the miles but if you only qualify for the 100%
bonus where the miles cost you 1.65 cents you may want to go with the
Cash+miles options
Some things to consider with the buy miles option before you pull
the trigger is that their call center tends to be on the less helpful
side so you are better off booking award tickets online which also means
you are limited to the powers of that source, mixed class awards are
not allowed unless you book each award ticket as separate one way
flights and they have devalued the program without notice in the past so
only buy these miles if you think you will use them in the next short
while
Offer details
Earn up to 120% Bonus LifeMiles when you buy LifeMiles online. You must be a LifeMiles member as of May 4 to purchase. Full details Until May 29, 15