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!).
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
For complete details on the Avianca TACA LifeMiles 100% Bonus or to buy the miles please see here
Any idea if their "less then helpful" call centre will book a ticket for me if I provide them with all the flights I want? With this deal I can get a Business Class ticket for the same price as the Economy ticket for the flights I'm looking at. I will have to do some leg work to find the appropriate segments though, but that's doable.
ReplyDeleteIf you provide them with the flights you want it shouldn't be too much of an issue as long as their is availability for LifeMiles award tickets on those flights.
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