Avianca Lifemiles is a popular program that sells miles cheaply, but it’s also known for sudden devaluations and high fees.

For this post, I’m not going to get into the details of the elite status aspect of the program and instead focus on the redemption side of the program.

Almost all banks transfer to Avianca Lifemiles

If you’re in need of transferring miles over to Avianca Lifemiles, the good news is that every major bank except Chase will transfer points over to the program. This includes American Express, Bilt, Capital One, and Citi. On top of that, each transfer points at a 1:1 rate.

Of course, this brings up an interesting question of should you do it? I ask this because Avianca will quite often sell miles at a very large discount, as cheaply as 1.27 cents each. Do you value your bank points at more than 1.27 cents each? That might suggest you shouldn’t do it. But there are some considerations to keep in mind:

• How many points do you need? The best price during sales requires huge amounts of points to purchase, so it might not make sense to buy if you only need a small amount.
• Is there a sale going on when you need it? Sales don’t constantly run, so you might not want to wait if you need to book award sales now.
• Are you points heavy? If you have too many points, it can make more sense transferring them to this program than cashing out at a worse rate.
• Buying points in this program counts as a direct airfare purchase with many credit cards.

Award flights booked with Avianca Lifemiles can be booked 360 days in advance

As a planner, I love being able to book awards well far in advance. I feel like I can lock down my preferred dates of travel before the majority of other award seekers. And so the earlier the schedule is released, the better it is.

But perhaps what matters more is being able to book awards before those with a large balance of miles with U.S. programs are able to book. Those programs generally open schedules and award bookings 11 months in advance. So if you can find a program that allows awards weeks before the comparable U.S. airline (here, United), you can generally book what you want.

Award flights booked with Avianca Lifemiles can be booked 360 days in advance. That’s awesome if you can take advantage!

Award change and cancel fees can be painful, but there is an avenue to get around them

Need to change or cancel an award flight? Fees are a bit high with Avianca Lifemiles. When fees are low, you can book prospective travel without many repercussions. But when fees are high? You’ll want to make sure what you book is firm and not going to change.

• A non-refundable award booking fee of $25
• Change fees will run $150
• Cancel fees are between $50 and $200, based on the route

Changes will require you to call in, and that can be a hassle due to language barrier and general difficulty of working with the call center.

Want to get out of paying these fees? You might want to consider signing up for a Lifemiles+ basic, pro, or max subscription. Each of these will unlock no change or cancelation fees on award tickets. The cheapest package (basic) will run you $50/month (or $30/month if you have the premium credit card). None of these subscriptions will waive the $25 booking fee.

Awards booked with Avianca Lifemiles are zone-based(?)

Want to know how much it costs in points to book awards with Lifemiles? We’d love to know too. Awards seem to generally follow a pattern that varies based on zones, but it’s not perfect. We called this out during the last devaluation, where pricing varied based on route and even how the search was conducted. So while I could go through the tedious task of developing an award chart, I could just as easily blow it up with counter-examples.

And that, folks, is why most other blogs don’t provide an award chart. You’re going to want to search routes on your own and play with Smart Search. Yes, the odd pricing quirks still exist with Smart Search that bring up the price on some routes and airlines. Don’t ask me why that’s the case but use it to your advantage.

What are the sweet spots?

Outright buying miles with cash to replace what you would pay in cash for the same flight

Let’s talk about this for a moment. Do you want to take a specific flight on a Star Alliance airline and are willing to pay cash for it? Before you pull the trigger, first check if the flight is available with Lifemiles. If you would otherwise not have miles in other programs, consider buying the miles with cash during their frequent sales and then using that to buy your flight. This approach might be cheaper.

Sure, you won’t earn elite status with this approach and it won’t always work if award space isn’t there. But when a program sells miles cheaply, you should at least consider it. You might actually save a few bucks.

Mixed cabin awards lower the price of awards

Want to save some money on your flights that have a connection? Lifemiles makes it pretty easy to build up your mixed cabin awards to your own preferences. Sometimes you just want business class for the long haul segment with a lie-flat seat. So choose business for that segment and then take economy for the other leg.

This also applies if you’re comfortable with skiplagging, or adding a segment to your ticket that you don’t intend to take to lower the price of the ticket. In the example above, maybe you only intended to go as far as Lisbon. Well, the price of that route on its own would be 80,000 miles but you could save 11,810 miles by not taking that last segment to Zurich (58,360 + 9,830 – 80,000). Airlines might get upset if you do this often, but there are valid reasons to miss a flight.

North America to Europe for 63,000 miles in business

We mentioned it above in the prior section, but it bears repeating. Play with routes between North America to Europe and don’t stick with ‘Smart Search’. You might find some pretty good award pricing in business class as a result.

Heck, even west coast flights to Europe show up cheaper when you move away from that ‘Smart Search’ feature. Like this flight from LAX to ZRH for a marginally higher 69,000 miles. It’s hard to complain with that price. On top of that, Lifemiles doesn’t pass along those pesky fuel surcharges (YQ) that Lufthansa and Swiss are known to charge.

Asia to Australia for 40,000 miles in business class

If you’re looking to travel between Asia and Australia in business class, it’s hard to beat this rate with Lifemiles. Only 40,000 miles for the journey between Tokyo and Sydney? Sign us up for that!

Reducing the price with subscription plans

As might be apparent in the screenshots above, if you’re a Lifemiles+ subscriber, you can have access to a 10% discount on award rates. Depending on what you’re looking to buy, this can be a significant discount that might make subscribing worth it. Stacking this on top of the other deals above is sweet.

How to best search for availability?

I always start with the website to figure out availability patterns. The Avianca website is sort of easy to use. If you’re looking for pricing anomalies I mentioned above, you’ll probably want to use the site. That’s because third-party tools might not pick up on that nuance in award pricing.

If you attempt to choose a date that doesn’t have availability, you might find a screen that asks if you’d rather change your date to one that does have availability. This only appears if an alternative date is available within +/- 2 days from the one you initially chose.

Since Avianca Lifemiles is a transfer partner of both Amex and Bilt, the free point.me award tools can help you out. But again, remember that it might not pick up the pricing nuance when changing the airline.

Beyond that, you can certainly use whichever third-party tool you’re most comfortable with using to track down partner availability.

Do Avianca Lifemiles expire?

Yes, miles expire after 12 months. That’s a bit of a pain that they only provide a year of validity. It’s generally easy to extend with activity. I’d recommend transferring in 1,000 points from your favorite bank program to extend validity.

One nuance I should point out is with transferring between accounts, which I learned the hard way. If you transfer miles from Account A to Account B, the validity for Account B will extend for one more year. However, the Account A validity will not change. If you do this right before expiry to help out two programs, you should know that it will only help one program (B).

You can reinstate miles at a price of $0.01 per mile (and it’s not instant). So watch out before you’re hit with a surprise.

Suggested reading:

• Destinations we’ve visited
• How to Travel with Kids
• How to Book Award Travel Like a Pro