AwardWallet receives compensation from advertising partners for links on the blog. The opinions expressed here are our own and have not been reviewed, provided, or approved by any bank advertiser. Here's our complete list of Advertisers.
Avianca LifeMiles is the frequent flyer program for Avianca, Columbia's flag carrier and national airline. Part of the largest global airline alliance, LifeMiles is one of just three Star Alliance programs that doesn’t pass on carrier-imposed (fuel) surcharges, on both Avianca or partner awards, providing access to awards on all 28 Star Alliance partners, plus AeroMexico and Iberia.
It wasn't all that long ago LifeMiles was viewed as United's eccentric Bohemian cousin, affording good value provided you could put up with its idiosyncrasies (and atrocious call centers). However, following the steady decline in the value of United's MileagePlus program and the addition of multiple new partners transferring to Avianca, LifeMiles has become an essential tool if you want to book award travel on Star Alliance airlines for the best price possible.
The relative ease with which you can collect LifeMiles and the lack of carrier-imposed fuel surcharges make Avianca a top choice for both domestic and international travel.
Best Ways to Earn Avianca LifeMiles
You can earn LifeMiles through flying Avianca and crediting paid partner flights to LifeMiles, or credit miles from hotel stays at Hilton, IHG, Marriott, and Best Western. But if you want to build a serious balance of LifeMiles you’ll need to look at one or more of the following options:
Co-Brand Avianca LifeMiles Credit Cards
Puerto Rico’s Banco Popular released two Avianca co-brand credit cards late in 2016 which are the only Avianca co-brand cards available to U.S. residents. Both cards are currently offering increased signup bonuses with an additional 20,000 miles up for grabs on top of the standard offers. To qualify for the additional 20,000 miles, you must insert the promo code SB4060 during the application and spend at least $1,000 in the first 90 days.
- 40,000 Bonus LifeMiles after first card use
- Earn 3 LifeMiles per $1 spent on Avianca purchases
- Earn 2 LifeMiles per $1 spent at gas stations and grocery stores
- Earn 1 LifeMile per $1 spent on all other purchases
- No foreign transaction fees
- 15% discount on purchases of miles with Multiply Your Miles
- Free additional piece of baggage for travel between the United States and Central America
- A 50% discount on an award ticket redeemed for travel to Central America or Colombia from the United States after $12,000 spent each year
- An additional 50% discount on an award ticket redeemed for travel to Central America or Colombia from the United States after $24,000 spent each year
- 0% Introductory offer for 12 months on Balance Transfers
- Chip-enabled card provides added security
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
- Travel Accident Insurance
- Protection against unauthorized charges
- Emergency Card Replacement
- Online Account Management
- Electronic Statements
- Auto-pay option
- 3X LifeMiles per $1 spent on Avianca purchases
- 2X LifeMiles per $1 spent on gas stations & grocery stores
- 1X LifeMile per $1 spent on all other purchases
- 20,000 Bonus LifeMiles after first card use
- Earn 2 LifeMiles per $1 spent on Avianca purchases
- Earn 1 LifeMile per $1 spent on all other purchases
- 15% discount on purchases of miles with Multiply Your Miles
- No cap on the number of LifeMiles you can earn
- 0% Introductory offer for 12 months on Balance Transfers
- Chip-enabled card provides added security
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver
- Travel Accident Insurance
- Protection against unauthorized charges
- Emergency Card Replacement
- Online Account Management
- Electronic Statements
- Auto-pay option
- 2X LifeMiles per $1 spent on Avianca purchases
- 1X LifeMile per $1 spent on all other purchases
Transfer Points from Flexible Rewards Programs
Avianca now counts four transfer partners that allow you to transfer points to LifeMiles:
- American Express Membership Rewards: 1 Amex Membership Rewards Point transfers to 1 Avianca Mile
- Citi ThankYou Rewards: 1 ThankYou Point transfers to 1 Avianca Mile
- Capital One Rewards: 2 Capital One Miles transfer to 1.5 Avianca Miles
- Marriott Bonvoy: 3 Bonvoy Points transfer to 1 Avianca Mile, plus you receive an additional 5,000 miles for every 60,000 Marriott points transferred.
Not only does this make Avianca partnership much more valuable for the everyday points and miles fan, but it also opens up some exciting possibilities for anyone looking to combine flexible points from multiple programs to accumulate enough miles for an award flight.
Buy Avianca LifeMiles During Regular Promos
We don’t typically recommend buying miles for award travel. But LifeMiles regularly runs points-buying promos with huge bonuses that allow you to purchase miles as low as 1.35¢ per mile. Considering you can redeem miles across all Star Alliance carriers without paying additional fuel surcharges, buying LifeMiles during one of the regular purchase promos gets you into premium business- and first-class seats for a fraction of the cost you would pay if you purchased revenue tickets at retail value.
Seats are still subject to award space so you’ll need to run the numbers and ensure you’re flying a route with ample award space for this strategy to return a positive result. But paying under $1,000 for premium cabin redemptions is another option if you can’t accumulate the required miles through organic methods alone.
Best Value Avianca LifeMiles Sweet Spots
One of the headaches of award travel on Star Alliance carriers is the prevalence of programs that charge hefty fees. Avianca’s award chart is not the most attractive Star Alliance chart out there, but besides the United, SAS, and Copa programs, LifeMiles is the only program not charging fuel surcharges on any partner awards. Avianca also has an edge on United MileagePlus by not charging any close-in booking fees.
Avianca Partner Award Chart
Avianca Region Definitions
Avianca devalued its award chart to fly Avianca flights early in 2016, and the award prices aren’t particularly competitive. So, the majority of top-value awards are flying partner airlines. Here are a few of our favorites (all prices are one-way and start within the continental 48 U.S. states):
- 63,000 miles in business class to Europe
- 87,000 miles in first class to Europe (Lufthansa with no fuel surcharges)
- 25,000 miles in business class transcontinental within the U.S.
- 78,000 miles in business class to the Middle East
- 40,000 miles in economy class to New Zealand + Australia
- 39,000 miles in economy class to South Asia (includes Bali, Vietnam, and Thailand)
- 30,000 miles in economy class to the south of South America
- 50,000 miles in business class from N.Z./A.U. to North Asia (includes Japan, China, Philippines, and Korea)
- 22,500 miles in business class within North Asia
Yes, you can redeem award flights to Europe via United for 60K, but flying partners will set you back 70K, which makes the Avianca option a lot more attractive for Star Alliance partner awards. Flying coach to New Zealand isn’t high on many travelers' bucket lists, but when you take into account that you could redeem that award after just a single purchase on the Avianca Vuela Visa, the price becomes a lot more attractive.
Other awards presenting top value include the business-class redemptions within North Asia, which allow you to fly premium cabins on some lengthy routes for just 22,500 miles, and the ability to redeem miles for Lufthansa first without the ridiculous surcharges.
Avianca doesn’t allow stopovers or open-jaws on award flights, but factor in that you can redeem one-way awards and you could potentially open-jaw at both ends of your redemption and explore other cities on your travels. Avianca also allows you to purchase up to 60% of the miles required for an award, so there is no need to have the full balance needed to pull the trigger on an award flight if you find award availability.
Benefits and Pitfalls of Avianca LifeMiles Program
As with all frequent flyer programs, Avianca has its pros and cons, which we’ve listed below.
Advantages of Avianca LifeMiles:
- No fuel surcharges on Star Alliance partner awards
- Can book the majority of Star Alliance carriers online via a reasonably intuitive booking engine
- No close-in booking fees
- The ability to buy up to 60% of the miles required for an award via LifeMiles + Cash
- Miles don’t expire as long as there is qualifying account activity every 24 months
- Regular bonuses on purchased miles allow you to buy miles for less than 1.5¢ per mile
The lack of fuel surcharges and close-in penalties is a big plus for the program, but perhaps the most overlooked of Avianca’s benefits is the miles expiry policy. LifeMiles won’t expire if there is qualifying activity in your account within 24 months of the last miles earned. For Citi cardholders looking for a place to park their ThankYou points without the restrictive expiry policies of fellow transfer programs KrisFlyer and Flying Blue, Avianca provides a convenient solution.
Drawbacks of Avianca LifeMiles:
- The reservations department is difficult to deal with if you need to call an award in by phone
- Flat $25 booking fee across all awards
- High award change ($150) and cancellation fees ($50 per segment up to $200)
Similar to our experience dealing with Aeromexico, Avianca’s call center is challenging to deal with if you need to phone in an award. The $25 booking fee is bearable if you factor in the lack of other fees on award flights, but the change and cancellation fees are on the high side compared to other programs we’ve featured in our Award Flight Sweet Spot series.
Final Thoughts
Avianca is now firmly in the sights of many award-travel fans. You can transfer points from four of the five major transferrable rewards currencies, earn miles via co-brand credit cards, buy miles on the cheap during regular promos, and redeem miles across the entire Star Alliance carrier spectrum at reasonable rates with no fuel surcharges or close-in booking fees.
We think Avianca presents a reliable alternative to other Star Alliance carriers, particularly following recent devaluations on partner awards from United and Singapore.
If you have any experiences you can share on booking LifeMiles redemptions we’d love to hear from you here in the comments, or jump over to our Facebook community, Award Travel 101, and join the conversation with over 60,000 dedicated points and miles fans!
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Thanks for the great info. This program is new to me, so I am excited to give it a try and hopefully save some $$/miles!!
I have flown Avianca numerous times, both internal (Colombia) flights and external – internationally. I have generally been pleased, though the last time it seemed their quality had slipped. Come to think of it, it may have been only because it was an internal flight. Those seem to have lower standards.
Lifemiles is much devalued from what it was. I would definitely narrow down the “sweet spots” to Lufthansa and any other airline whose surcharges are otherwise unavoidable. Otherwise you’re mostly paying more miles than other ffps.
That is interesting re Lufthansa, as they have an intersting network but I have always been put off by they high charges.
This writeup is fantastic and is why I subscribe. Please keep them coming! 🙂
In general I find the LifeMiles programme very interesting.
Both the earning rate and the miles required for the rewards are quite good compared to other programmes.
Moreover, LifeMiles doesn’t add fuel surcharge on award tickets.
The only concern is its financial situation.
Maybe someone knows something more about this.
IMHO Lifemiles doesn’t have good sweet spots anymore after they killed all the boomers.
It’s just a decent overall program, which is not too bad but also not really outstanding.
It is part of a multi pronged strategy
And, Banco Popular would be light in most folks credit card supply.
Lifemiles used to have a fully functioning web booking interface. That has been severely buffed. A typical booking would error out after pax info is typed in.
Hope Avian doesn’t read this!
Their miles have been constantly “on sale” for as long as I can remember, so I find it difficult to believe Avianca has any illusions about the workings of their program, nor do I think Avianca is too going to be too concerned about one more post about how best to use their miles to redeem awards.
Few years ago I’ve flight on Turkish and Asiana from VKO to SEL via IST in biz class . It was a best way to spend Avianca miles . I took a flight VKO-KHV via SEL ( domestic Russia ) and leave in Seoul . It was much cheaper tHan VKO -SEL , even in economy .
So what are the other airlines that dont charge for fuel? It said avisnka was 1 0f 3
Good info! Two things to be aware of:
1) Their website is so broken, half the flights I’ve tried to book didn’t work online and then when I called I got it done but just barely, their reps are not much better than the broken website!
2) I added in 1,000 Thank You Points to my account because they were expiring and at first I thought it didn’t work, but the next day it updated with the new expiration date luckily! 🙂
If only their website worked most of the time and one was actually able to book any of these…
Most Lifemiles “sweet spots” have been due to Avianca not knowing world geography. In the past, they included Guam as domestic US. And all of Russia as Europe.
Even now, if you look at the award chart above, you can notice that the “United States 1” region includes east coast states and Washington. While I assume they mean Washington DC and not Washington state, “United States 3,” the US west region, includes all the continental western states except Washington. Could you book Seattle to Newark for “United States 1”?
Haha wow that’s a great observation. Would be interested to know if that works.
I went into ur post highly suspicious of the claim that an airline doesn’t know geography. And, I was going to push back on Guam, since they’re American citizens. But, then Russia. And finally, Washington? LOL
I agree with the post. I thinks Lifemiles are still very useful though they were really good in the past.
Avianca has great bargains for miles but flying from Spain and not USA so cant find something attractive to use the points for
No fuel surcharges is great. And with Star Alliance you can fly Lufthansa, which is a nice airline.
You say that it can be a hassle if you have to call and book your flights does this offset the money/miles savings enough? In my mind it doesn’t. It should be easy to book with money or miles with any carrier. I don’t have the time to sit and take forever to book tickets. I know that it could be more miles but I’ll stick with carriers I’m more familiar with. Everyone has a trade off somewhere. We all make that choice.
I am happy to have that choice and the options that ya’ll give are invaluable so I can make a more informed decision.
Any good ideas for “sweet spots” not from the USA but from Thailand?
no transfers from MR I assume?
Good introduction to what they do and don’t offer
Great info! Thanks!
Have they improved the website? Never been able to make a points booking online…
Marginally. Still not a very good award search experience in my opinion.
Lets go to Columbia!
What is the best way to use Avianca miles now ? Las time I’ve spent the miles a few years ago .
We’ve just updated this post. There is a list of our favorite redemptions right in the middle.
Thanks for this very welcome update!
Makes me happy that Avianca is stepping up to the plate and competing more in the reward travel arena.
This provides me with an oppourtunity to maximize my travel to the Carribena, thanks for the article
Can you actually book Lufthansa first using Avianca miles? I thought they blocked access to everyone but Miles and More.
Only in the last couple of weeks before departure, although there are occasional exceptions. The best strategy is to book Biz class further in advance and change to first in the last week.
Thanks for the useful post and summary. I’ll have to look into Lifemiles now, but am a little bit concerned about the website quality comments.
Great article. Avianca is a great option especially if you fly to and from South America or plan to do so.
I had status with Avianca when they did a status match, and didn’t really look into their award chart. No fuel surcharges is a big plus!
I hope they do not bankrupt. I have a flight with them and Avianca is such a great company.
Is the award chart in this post still accurate? What I don’t like about LM is the lack of consistency and availability. Would love to see LM’s award prices combined with UA’s routings.
Hey John, Avianca pulled the award chart from their website, so we don’t know how much this reflects the current award pricing. For the most part, the current minimum prices still seem to follow the award chart. Please do share any feedback if you find different prices for specific routes.
Good program as long as they dont go bankrupt.
No fuel surcharges is interesting.
“The reservations department is difficult to deal with if you need to call an award in by phone”
Spot on! It is nearly impossible to speak to some one who speaks decent English and willing to help there
This article is wrong.
One of the headaches of award travel on Star Alliance carriers is the prevalence of programs that charge hefty fees. Avianca’s award chart is not the most attractive Star Alliance chart out there, but besides United and Copa, LifeMiles is the only program not charging fuel surcharges on any partner awards.”
Eurobonus is not charging fuel surcharges on any partner awards.
Hey Anton, thanks for the heads up. I’ve added SAS to the exceptions.
Fuel surcharge is way to hide higher costs and inefficiency. This is not Avianca case definitely.
Great alternative to United MileagePlus
Are they reliable?
I am an Avianca silver member, I use Avianca regularly to fly inside South America. Tried to book flights with miles through the page but never could ! I hope it begin to work properly.
Como todos los programas, tienen cosas buenas y malas, Entre las que destaco, que las millas vencen a los 12 meses, sin actividad, cuando otras aerolineas son 32 meses y como bueno sus canjes son muy ventajoso, en ejecutiva, el personal muy amable
Yes, Avianca is reliable. Mainly after the separation of the Brazilian side that went bankrupt after that due to the oligopolium and over regulation in this market. We hope that the current government will change that, but for Avianca it arrived late because was already disabled shortly before the change of government that reversed the economy guidelines. Despite the difficulties, the old part of Avianca did better service than the rest of that market.