Avianca Lifemiles dropped the hammer on a no-notice devaluation today that will hit some of you pretty hard.
For as long as I can remember, when someone would ask me why Lifemiles, I would say that the Lifemiles program is riddled with problems and reasons not to use them but that there is also extreme value on some routes, notably Star Alliance from the US to Europe for 63,000 miles in Business and 87,000 miles in First (perfect for last minute Lufthansa First Class availability. On top of the solid rates comes no carrier surcharges. Lufthansa has massive “fuel surcharges” on award tickets and so you can really only book them with programs like Lifemiles (as well as Air Canada’s Aeroplan and United) that won’t pass them along.
Well, as of today, you’ll now pay 70,000 miles for Business Class from the US to Europe (not so crazy of an increase) but you’ll pay 130,000 miles for that Lufthansa First Class hop across the pond. Yes, 43,000 more miles than if you booked yesterday.
I tried to find F space to show you but couldn’t locate any. Remember that Lufthansa as it is only releases this to partners within 14 days of travel.
Some bloggers love to promote Lifemiles point sales (of course, there is a commission on these sales) but I’ve never promoted one. In fact, it’s super rare for me to ever even post about a sale on points or miles unless they are REALLY cheap. Lifemiles sales are simply exceedingly frequent and only cheap on the service given the quirks of the program.
Sure, I have credit card links and I have no issue with affiliate marketing – obviously! But I don’t think the average person should be buying points for precisely this reason. And I won’t promote what I don’t believe in.
If you have transferable points that transfer to Avianca Lifemiles and were saving up, you are disappointed, for sure, but you’ll pivot to another program like Aeroplan that charges less than 130,000 miles for that seat.
If you have paid cold hard cash for the Lifemiles, you are probably not too thrilled with a 67% jump in that First Class seat to Europe.
Also – why do I call out “no notice“??
Because while the Terms and Conditions or a program allow for changes without notice, how to you keep a customer’s trust when you do this? Give a month or two for people to spend at the price they feel they were promised. Obviously people will burn miles this way and you will give up a bit on the short term, but at least you maintain the loyalty…. the trust.
One little bonus that Thrifty Traveler found is that EWR-LHR and LHR-EWR are pricing at just 45,000 miles in Business. We don’t know if that is a bug or not so book that now.
Now, there has been a historic “bug” that allowed you to book JFK to LIS (not reverse) for just 35,000 miles in Business Class. This is on TAP non-stop and I can’t verify if this has gone away or not since I can’t find a day that TAP is releasing award space. Maybe someone can find that and verify?
Thoughts?
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