Avianca LifeMiles: 100% Bonus on Buying Miles is back for August

Hot on the heels of the announcement of the US Airways Buy Miles promotion, Avianca LifeMiles has also brought back their 100% bonus on buying miles promotion. The offer runs until August 31 and unlike the tiered US Airways promotion the LifeMiles offer basically doubles any amount you buy up to 75,000 miles for a total of 150,000 miles (or 1.5 cents per mile). Remember you are only allowed to buy up to 150,000 miles in a calendar year.

Avianca is now a member of the Star Alliance. So while before I used to tout this offer as a way to get Lufthansa business class from North America to Europe for $1800, you can now use the miles on any Star Alliance airline. The program also offers one way rewards at exactly half the round trip cost and does not charge fuel surcharges on award tickets.

With business class tickets to Europe going for 105,000 miles and Asia for 125 - 130,000 miles you can travel 'luxuriously' for a lot less with this deal. What used to be a decent feature of LifeMiles is their Cash + Part Points option but that was recently devalued. 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!).

What's the catch? You had the have been a LifeMiles member as of Augsut1 to take advantage of it. If you are not, I would recommend joining anyways and wait for the next 100% bonus to appear.

For complete details on the Avianca TACA LifeMiles 100% Bonus or to buy the miles please see here