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Avianca is offering a 115% bonus when you transfer your LifeMiles to another account now through August 20, 2021. Although there are fees to transfer miles, this promotion offers a cheap way to increase your LifeMiles balance—as long as you already have miles in your account or transfer miles in from a transfer partner.
Key Terms
- The promotion is valid for transfers through August 20, 2021
- Receive a 115% bonus when you transfer LifeMiles from one account to another
- Transferring miles incurs a charge of $15 per 1,000 miles transferred
- You can transfer a maximum of 75,000 miles per year
- Miles can be transferred to any other LifeMiles account
Taking full advantage of the promotion and transferring 75,000 miles, you will end up with 161,250 miles (75,000 miles transferred + 86,250 LifeMiles bonus). Transfers cost $15 per 1,000 miles transferred, so the total cost of the transfers would be $1,125.
This means that you are effectively purchasing 86,250 LifeMiles for $1,125. Crunching the numbers, this works out at 1.3 cents per mile, which is a great value. That's slightly less than we've recently seen LifeMiles sell miles recently.
Unless you're feeling incredibly generous, the idea here is to transfer miles to an account belonging to a close friend or family member. Since Avianca lets you redeem awards for anyone, moving miles from one account to another shouldn't limit your options for who can travel on an award ticket.
How Good is This Deal?
If you have a LifeMiles balance to transfer, this promotion can produce outstanding value. Remember LifeMiles has various sweet spots, especially on partner awards. At a price of 1.3 cents per mile, sweet spots with the promotion include:
- $780 — 60,000 miles for business-class flights from the eastern U.S. to Europe Zone 1 (includes the UK)
- $1,131 — 87,000 miles for first-class flights from the eastern U.S. to Europe
- $975 — 75,000 miles for business-class flights from the eastern U.S. to North Asia (including China and Hong Kong)
- $1,170 — 90,000 miles for first-class flights from the eastern U.S. to North Asia (including China and Hong Kong)
This is excellent value, especially if you can use your miles to book a Lufthansa first-class award from the U.S. to Europe. Effectively paying $1,131 for a first-class ticket on Lufthansa is simply unbeatable. The ticket would normally set you back at least 5 or 6 times the price.
What If I Don't Have Any LifeMiles?
If you don't already have a significant Avianca LifeMiles balance, you'll need to acquire miles before you can share them. Although Avianca frequently sells miles at a big discount, there isn't a current LifeMiles buy miles promotion. To buy 75,000 miles, you'd spend around $2,475 which comes out to a terrible 3.3 cents per mile.
If you buy 75,000 miles and then sharing them through the current promo, your net cost of buying miles drops to 2.18 cents per mile. You'd pay $2,475 to buy 75,000 LifeMiles and then $1,125 to generate 90,000 LifeMiles for a total cost of $3,600 for 165,000 LifeMiles.
Thankfully, there's a better option than buying miles at full price. You can transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards (1:1), Citi ThankYou Points (1:1), or Capital One (1:1) to LifeMiles. Marriott Bonvoy points also transfer to Avianca at a 3:1 transfer ratio, but those transfers may take 1 day or more to post to your LifeMiles account.
Even better, LifeMiles is currently running a 25% transfer bonus from Citi through August 20 — and another 25% transfer bonus for transfers from Marriott and IHG through September 30.
This option is certainly worth considering if you have a substantial balance with one of these rewards programs, but you should only do so with a specific award in mind. Since transfers are non-reversible, you'll give up lots of alternative options when you convert them into LifeMiles.
Our Take
If you have a LifeMiles balance, and you are looking for a specific redemption then this promotion can be a no-brainer; it's hard to beat buying LifeMiles at 1.3 cents apiece. However, think carefully before buying miles speculatively no matter how good the deal is.
Since this strategy requires transferring miles to another account, we should reiterate that (unless you're sharing miles as a gift) you want to transfer the miles to a trusted friend, family member, or another LifeMiles account you control.
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.
Excellent Lifemiles promotion, I took advantage of the last buying miles promotion with a 160% bonus
Have no Lifemiles, doesn’t help me.
This is not for me as I dont travel thru the routes of Life miles. I would do this though to fly first class on Lufthansa airlines.
Looks like the fees to transfer outweigh the value of the bonus.
In most cases, yes. But that’s the weird part about this promotion. The cost of the transfer is offset by bonus miles. So, as long as you want to generate LifeMiles at 1.3 cents, the value is there.
I feel these over generous promo’s are warning signs
I would think so too. But, LifeMiles has been running these types of wild promotions for years. I think they just figured out a way to get cheap redemptions from Star Alliance carriers and make it work for them.
Interesting earning opportunity at one of the mot useful mileage programs in the Star Alliance….if you’re already trying to accumulate miles for a Star Alliance flight, this is a great way to tack on a few more miles with little effort.
Wait for it. A better deal will come around and it’s tough to get max value from them right now.
Great offer and oportunity to fly by making a gift to another person
Im not sure if lifemiles are worth much more tha 1.25 on a daily basis.
All depends on how you use them!
Helpful article, although I’m holding off on travel speculation right now
Much better deal to pick up Life Miles with a credit card bonus….they are a very useful Star alliance currency.
This is great, thanks for the post and insights!
I feel VERY more uneasy about the Avianca program because of the very extended soft international ban. The program just takes the cash and outsources most of the award redemptions to its “partners.”
This is a very clever business model. (selling miles that will be used on partners)
Of course the other *A partners occasionally get upset and block Lifemiles accessing their award space…
Great Information! Love all updates on this site!
que podamos viajar mucho mas !
How does it work in pandemics time?
It’s a fact that buying miles speculatively in a pandemic scenariohas not sense
Too pricey for speculative travel at this time for my tastes. Later next year perhaps.
Is Life Miles program really reliable? I usually don’t trust any South American Airlines Frequent Flyer Programs, because they always grab your miles and all of sudden, everything changed for worse.
This is a good value in miles but as is the usual case, it is never a good idea to buy miles to park it. You better have an immediate use of the miles as they devaluate all the time.
$2200 first class between North America and Europe sounds fantastic, if we can realistically travel in the summer of 2021.
Oops just missed the deal. Looking forward to the 145% bonus next time!
I dont trust avianca anymore, avianca in Brasil is broken and maybe his brother too
Missed the deadline. I need to check this blog more often!
As a European resident, how hard is it to book LH 1st class with Avianca miles? And does it come with the normal insane fees that LH has?
Very good offer.
Anyway, it was better you could buy the miles instead of transfer them to another account.
Wish it was for a longer time period
I like Avianca’s award program, but when I had things go wrong with a flight, their customer service was a disaster for what should have been a simple fix.
I assume both of these are pretty small programs, but it’s not a bad deal if you use them!
“$1,080 — 90,000 miles for first-class flights from the eastern U.S. to North Asia (including China and Hong Kong)”
That’s a tempting value proposition.
This can be a good value if you have a trip ready to book.
Transfer to get a payout. Seems legit
Once you think you’re out they suck you back in…. looks like time to acquire some cheap points and plan a trip
I don’t have any Lifemiles at this time but this would certainly be a good idea for someone who does and has a premium cabin redemption in mind. Thanks
I think this is by far the best deal for getting AV miles. It can usually be achieved at 1.5cpm
Avianca is the biggest miles seller of all. Plenty of cheap options for purchasing miles.
Thanks for the heads up about purchasing via Avianca!
I’m making the switch today.
Check to make sure that there’s availability first!
Bonuses are always a plus if you need the miles or points.
This might be good if you already earned miles somewhat easily in your account but if you are transferring miles form TY/MR and then use this to multiply, the end result ends up being the same as buying the miles straight up thru club miles subscription or one of the promos, i.e about 1.26 to 1.28 c per mile
this is one of the cheapest way to extend lifemile point ever since lifemile changed its policy for points to expire in 12 months.
Find someone and both of you do it at the same time.
Yikes, such a short expiration window.
Nice for those with a balance already.
Not sure if we’ll see more of these, but definitely a good reason to keep a few thousand miles in your account, to start the “share miles” merry-go-round. (and to have an active account in your partner’s name)
Can you do ping-pong transfers between 2 accounts?
e.g.) A to B, then again from B to A.
Yes. I did it.
I am not interested in buying any airline’s miles. I am using the last of my miles as I have been frustrated trying to redeem miles for business saver awards.
Does anyone know if I can send miles from account A to B get the bonus then to C get the bonus and then back to A?
You can go from a to b and then b to a. no need to introduce c. Just did it and they are instant. They multiply quickly this way. Do it in any increment of 4k miles so you don’t end up with an even amount of X thousand miles and there will be no leftover miles in B when you transfer back. For example 4k from A means 9k in B, 9K in b is 20,250 back in A after bonus
Thank you.