Avianca Lifemiles has devalued its program in the most Lifemilesish way possible.
This is going to get complicated, but if you’re a Lifemiles fan and you saw reports from Loyalty Lobby and One Mile at a Time of a devaluation, know that they are right about situations they displayed, but the full story is far more nuanced. The shortest version of the story is that the devaluation is highly variable. As I’ll show momentarily, in some cases it seems to have hit some airport combinations and not others….and in other cases you just need to check a box to find different pricing on the same airport combination depending on which connections you choose! Buckle up — because this is kind of a wild ride.
Business class to Europe now costs 80K miles each way…..sometimes
The biggest hit for many will be the fact that Avianca may appear to now charge 80K miles each way for business class to Europe. On many routes. Sometimes. Confusion incoming.
Before we begin, remember that Avianca LifeMiles just six months ago increased the price of most business class awards to Europe from 63K to 70K miles. In half a year, the price on some routes has now gone from 63,000 miles each way to 80,000 miles each way, a price increase of about 27%.
Painfully, United awards to London, which had just last week still been pricing at 45K miles each way from the east coast, now cost 80K miles each way. Ouch.
The Loyalty Lobby report suggested that Lifemiles was adding surcharges to awards, but thankfully that doesn’t appear to be the case, at least not significantly. The example used in that post was departing Germany, which has higher departure taxes that some other European countries. The total taxes and fees were within $20 of what Air Canada was charging for the same award, which might be some other small fee or an error in calculation/currency conversion. It isn’t what I feared when I saw the suggestion that they were adding surcharges to award tickets and is relatively small compared to some of the incoming craziness.
Still, the increase here hurts.
But it wouldn’t be Lifemiles without a BIG twist
As upset as I am about a no-notice, no-notification devaluation (I’ll take them to task on that in a moment), I’ve been enjoying a good chuckle at my keyboard this morning. That’s because, in a twist that seems very on-brand for Lifemiles, award pricing varies by airport combination…and other things. While some (perhaps many?) business class awards to Europe now cost 80K miles one-way, many others have actually decreased to 69K miles each way. In some cases, similar awards might cost 80K or 69K depending on user input.
While that sounds simple-ish, it isn’t. To illustrate, one needs to build from mild to wild.
A moment ago, I cited this flight from Newark to Warsaw for 80K miles one way in business class.
However, if you depart from JFK, you’ll need to connect but you’ll pay just 69K miles one way in business class.
All of the awards that I’ve searched to Europe from JFK price at 69K miles in business class, though I can’t be certain that all routes to Europe will price the same departing JFK. The reason I can’t be certain can be found in Boston.
Boston to Milan costs 80K miles one way in business class, so one might think that all awards from Beantown have been devalued.
However, Boston to Istanbul priced at 69K miles one way.
Initially, it struck me that price variance by airport of departure or arrival creates all sorts of wonkiness.
For instance, I showed Newark to Warsaw in business class for 80K miles above. If you originate in Atlanta and connect on to that same Newark to Warsaw leg, you’ll pay 63,030 miles to get to Europe in business class (with the Atlanta to Newark leg in economy class).
That might lead you to believe that Atlanta is benefitting from beneficial pricing to Europe, but not all mixed-cabin awards are created equally. Try that move on Atlanta to Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt and the mixed-cabin award will cost you 77,490 miles one way.
Lest you think that it’s the Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt leg somehow destroying more favorable pricing, allow me to present Atlanta to Washington-Dulles to Frankfurt to Helsinki for 67,600 miles almost entirely in business class.
Meanwhile, Atlanta to Frankfurt costs 80K miles.
But adding a leg to Milan — still in business class — drops the price to 69K miles in business class.
An incorrect initial theory leads to a more interesting find
For a hot minute, I developed a theory that Avianca only devalued routes where a Star Alliance carrier flies a nonstop flight. For instance, Ben at One Mile at a Time reported that San Francisco to Auckland had devalued, with economy awards pricing at 55K and business class awards pricing at 100K. Here’s an example of that 55K economy class pricing.
However, starting in Atlanta and connecting to the same flight to Auckland only costs 40K miles one-way in economy class (presumably business class would be 80K if you could find availability).
That led me to think that routes with a nonstop Star Alliance flight (like SFO-AKL) were devalued, whereas routes without a nonstop option (like Atlanta to Auckland) were not devalued.
But that’s not it.
In some cases, you need to check a box for better award pricing!
We started testing my nonstop theory above by looking at routes from Detroit to Europe since there are very few Star Alliance flights to Europe from Detroit. We quickly learned that my theory was wrong — and in the process discovered something far more useful.
Detroit to London appears to price at 80K miles one-way in business class despite the fact that there’s no nonstop Star Alliance flight on that route. But stick with me . . .
Here’s where things get a little crazy in a way that only Lifemiles could.
In the default search results, I see the 80K business class pricing shown above for the itinerary that departs Detroit at 4:45pm and connects to a 7am flight from Frankfurt to London.
However, if you look above the search results, you’ll see check boxes for “Star Alliance”, “Lufthansa”, and “United”. If you check that “Lufthansa” box, you get far more onward connections from Frankfurt to London — and some of those only cost 69K miles in business class!
Check the “Lufthansa” box above and you might get results like this:
That’s wild!
You might think that the above itinerary costs less because the layover in Frankfurt is longer on the cheaper award, but many searches later we found this to be inconsistent. In some cases, a longer connection priced at 80K while a shorter connection found by checking the Lufthansa box was available for 69K miles.
Note that I haven’t found a nonstop flight that prices less when you check the box, but connecting itineraries sometimes do.
This makes searching for awards via Avianca Lifemiles a bit more tedious if you’re not using one of the award search tools.
If you can position to Canada, awards are cheaper
It’s worth noting that our neighbors to the north have things better than we do. I’m not sure if Avianca never devalued awards between Canada and Europe or they reverted to old pricing, but Toronto to Europe rings in at 63K miles in business class on all the routes I checked.
However, starting at the “wrong” US airport, like Denver, and connecting to that same itinerary from Toronto to Frankfurt and onward to Milan costs 80K miles one way.
If you have a Lifemiles+ subscription and you’re willing to play around with mixed-cabin awards and airport combinations, you can still get some very good deals with the main transatlantic leg in business class.
I’m sure that you’ll find the same kind of wonkiness all over the place.
Lifemiles blocking more space?
One Mile at a Time reports that Lifemiles seems to be blocking access to more partner award space. That very much aligns with what I noticed yesterday when I saw the Loyalty Lobby report and started digging into the devaluation. Just as Ben notes in his post, it took me a surprisingly long amount of time to just find examples of business class availability to see the devaluation in action. I was initially using a Seats.aero pro subscription to find business class awards available to other Star Alliance programs and while I could easily find awards through other programs, in many cases I couldn’t find the same awards available via Lifemiles. Using Award Tool or Points Yeah proved more useful, but only if you searched with “all cabins” — searching business class only yielded no results.
I should note that while the Lifemiles website has always been dysfunctional in the amount of partner award space it shows, I had been looking pretty extensively at the Lifemiles site last week while working on plans for a big award trip. I didn’t have nearly as much trouble finding award availability last week, which lends credence to Ben’s theory that they are blocking access to more space.
Keep in mind that you can still stack Lifemiles+ and a transfer bonus
While it is a lukewarm consolation prize at best, keep in mind that it is still possible to stack a couple of methods to get a significantly better deal on award tickets.
The first is by subscribing to Lifemiles+, the subscription plan that offers to sell you miles each month and provides a 10% discount on award redemptions (and free changes and cancellations if you pony up for the second level subscription or higher). At the $20/mo level, you do get the 10% mileage discount but do not get free changes or cancellations.
Still, at $20/mo, which requires a minimum 6-month commitment, you’ll get 10% off, which drops the price of business class awards to Europe to 72K miles each way. That still hurts as compared to the old pricing, and if you had the subscription before the devaluation, it probably isn’t any consolation at all, but it nonetheless means that you can pay a good bit less than sticker price. The savings starts to add up for family travelers.
Furthermore, there is a 15% current point transfer bonus from Amex Membership Rewards. That means you’d have to transfer 63K Membership Rewards points to get the 72K Avianca Lifemiles you would need to book a business class award ticket to/from Europe (based on 80K pricing) if you have a Lifemiles+ subscription. Ultimately, that might make the devaluation sting a bit less for some folks.
On the other hand, I was looking at tickets to London just last week that were 45,000 miles one-way in business class from Newark to London, which dropped to 40,500 miles for me as a Lifemiles+ subscriber. That meant I’d have needed fewer than 36K Membership Rewards points per passenger to book awards last week that will now cost me 63K Membership Rewards points per passenger. That’s a difference of more than 100,000 points one-way for a family of four. Ouch.
Still, if you can find the 69K awards available, you can still stack some great deals.
Furthermore, this no-notice devaluation comes less than two weeks after a compelling transfer bonus from Bilt Rewards. I imagine that some members may have transferred speculatively because of that transfer bonus and now face increased award costs, which is really frustrating. Those members likely wouldn’t have anticipated a second devaluation to come less than six months after the previous devaluation and now likely need more miles for their intended redemptions.
No notice and no notification is such poor form
Unfortunately, no-advance-notice, no-notification devaluations are becoming an industry norm. I hate to see that trend because it seems so disrespectful and unappreciative of a program’s most loyal customers.
To be clear, while I have booked many awards through Avianca Lifemiles, I know that I don’t represent a loyal customer for them. I’m not flying Avianca, nor am I flying other Star Alliance airlines and crediting those flights to Avianca. I can understand that Avianca might not feel like it owes customers like me any notice or notification of changes.
However, I think it’s awfully poor form for airlines to pull the rug out from under those customers who primarily earn miles from engaging directly with the program, whether by flying Avianca and its partners or by purchasing miles. I would be particularly unimpressed with Avianca if I had recently bought a large quantity of miles only for the airline to decrease the value of those miles by another 14% on top of last year’s devaluation.
Avianca could and should do better on that front if they want to continue to entice US-based members to purchase miles and transfer them from credit card programs. The knowledge that prices might increase with no warning — and within just 6 months of the last price increases(!!) — would make me very hesitant to consider purchasing Lifemiles in the future unless I had an immediate near-term redemption in mind.
Bottom line
Avianca Lifemiles has once again devalued its miles, for the second time in less than 6 months. There was no advance warning to members and no notification — it was left for members to discover these price increases on their own. Given that this is the second time we’ve seen Avianca raise the price of awards in the last 6 months, one has to think twice about buying miles from them or transferring speculatively.
All that said, this devaluation is a mixed bag. Many business awards to/from Europe that were ringing in at 70K miles recently now only cost 69K miles one-way — but in order to find them, you might need to check an individual airline box. Of course, they might not exist at all — it’s going to take a bit more trial and error or a good search tool to find and book awards via Avianca Lifemiles.
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[…] Avianca Lifemiles devalues, but with a huge twist (it’s not all bad news!) by Frequent Miler […]
[…] 最近，各大博主（FM、OMMAT等) 和我们都留意到，以前深受大家喜爱的AV Lifemiles里程半年内第二次贬值了。如果说上一次贬值主要是针对美欧，那么这次贬值就是全航线一个都逃不过的。 […]
I can’t find any awards on Austrian via LifeMiles or Aeroplan… only United shows them.
Devaluation are to be expected. However, partner award availability in business class flights has really tanked. Really disappointing news for those of us with significant LifeMiles balances. Once again, the value of transferrable points is emphasized by this move.
Nick, several years ago I purchased a couple of hundred thousand Avianca lifemiles thinking there was space on a flight when there was not actual space. Since then I have had difficulty finding any availability when I look for a flight. I have read articles on how to use the lifemiles site switching the airline partners, etc. but still to no avail. Any recommendations?
I think this is a crime in progress. They’ll have everything US to Europe up to 80k before too long.
EWR to CLT in economy doubled from 7.5k to 15k. Absurd
This is really purposefully underplaying the devaluation, big time. This is purposefully downplaying the devaluation, which is generally a DOUBLING in cost.
46K awards are now 85K, for example (e.g. search HNL-NRT). That is for short <4000 mile, 6 hour flights. And it only gets worse..
Costs have about, or more than, doubled generally (there are former 46K awards now costing 100K). LM now has the highest pricing amongst *A airlines, more than double that of other *A programs like Miles & More for many routes.
The cherry picked examples here of smaller increase are really disingenuous. It should be disclosed that the devaluation is generally a DOUBLING in prices, bringing LM now to be one of the most expensive *A FFPs in terms of redemption costs.
Now, it is true that connecting flights used to price at old pricing, as AV hadn’t updated all the airport pairs. But, AV seems to have pulled being able to book any connecting flights today and will only display direct flights, no connection options anymore. Probably temporary until it does the price hike for all the airport pairs, not just the ones with direct flights, which are indeed ones it had focused on. Some hours or a day or two later I expect connecting flights to come back, and with no longer old but also new roughly doubled pricing.
The miles game is washing out. These blogs would have called it as it is 10 years ago, but things are getting so thin now that – you’re right: putting lipstick on the pig is highly self-serving. These guys may need to get real jobs.
This is an unfair comment. While I agree that Nick might be cherry-picking some examples, the FM team is nonetheless *the* hobby website. The FM team teaches. The FM serves. Just read the recent Amex statement credits article. Just read any number of articles. I absolutely don’t get the “self-serving” comment.
If you don’t like points and miles or travel bloggers… don’t read points and miles or travel blogs.
I’ve never understood these comments of “they’re all shills!” Yes some influencers and blogs are guilty of omission of bad news or better offers than their affiliate links. FM is one of the best in this space at presenting accurate information and what will benefit their readership the best (part of why they do so well). The entire world is not one big conspiracy coming for you. Trustworthy people still exist.
Separately – I also don’t agree with the points and miles game being over. I’ve only been it in for a few years and there are still many great opportunities around. My family of three will be taking their first overseas trip to Europe this summer, flying through four different countries on five different flights all in business class for less than 400K points (with no paid positioning flights). Maybe there are less 20 cpp redemptions and more 3 – 5 cpp redemptions now than their used to be. That still beats redeeming for gift cards, and with points themselves easier to earn than ever (250K MR AMEX offers!) there’s still a lot of value in this hobby.
Indeed, high value strategies exist. There are those who put in the work to invent or discover them. There are those who don’t. And, there are those who don’t and expect to be spoon fed. Andrew, you seem to be willing to put in the work. Thumbs up.
High value strategies remain but will not be found in public forums. They are best kept in private forums. Otherwise, they are doomed to being shut down due to immoderate use.
I’m in the Bilt transfer group that you mentioned. I’ll lose Platinum at the end of 2025 so I made moderate speculative transfer against my better judgement. Thanks to your detailed Lifemiles content, I knew I was taking a risk but, it’s hard to say no to a 100% bonus, with the Platinum clock ticking.
All of my sweet JFK- Europe awards available last week have vanished.
No hard feeling here, … but. Ya’ think Bilt had a whiff that this was right around the corner.
I’ll be waiting for your follow up, when/if this shakes out.
Can’t thank you enough Nick. F.M is the best.
Preposition to Canada . . . on a Tuesday . . . at 2am . . . swing a dead chicken over your head . . . while connecting in Poland . . . on top of great customer service. Where do I sign up?
Honestly, it sounds like their system is in a state of flux. I wouldn’t be surprised to see changes (probably bad, but who know) dribble out over the next few weeks.
Since the news came out, I’ve been waiting for the detailed analysis I knew FM would provide. Thanks Nick! But I will gripe though that the analysis is North America-Europe centric, but great to hear the devaluation hasn’t been quite so terrible there. In Hawaii, from the couple routes I’ve been tracking, the devaluations are BAD – Hawaii-Japan went from economy 27.5K to 45K (64% increase), business 48K to 85K (77% increase), and HI-Micronesia (to fulfill my dream of visiting Palau) went from economy 27.5K to 45K. I tried the trick of selecting a specific airline and it worked – for HNL-NRT if I select ANA the pricing shown is the old rates! Seems like an error Avianca will fix asap, yes? In the meantime, thanks for the discovery and I’ll keep trying it.
I just had a hearty laugh at the notion of Avianca fixing something on their website ASAP!
Good to know about the negatives out of Hawaii. Was lif miles the best option for booking any of those awards? Genuinely asking is I don’t have a word charts memorized out of Hawaii, but I felt like Air Canada was better maybe?
Glad to hear “Aviance will fix it asap” is laughable – let’s hope! I’ve been tracking both those routes so here’s the rundown – HI-Japan economy one-way on ANA – Aeroplan 35K, Avianca (with the new rates) 45K, United 50K, ANA 40K RT (*surcharges); business o/w Aeroplan not available, Avianca 85K, United 100K, ANA 82.5K RT. HI-Micronesia economy o/w – Aeroplan not available, Avianca 45K, United 45K, ANA 60K RT. Yes, sadly Aeroplan is doing a lot of award blocking on these routes. And I did look at Turkish at some point and the rates were particularly ridiculous (like 77K one-way economy HNL-NRT), so I don’t even try there anymore. Anyway, as you can see with the exception of HNL-Japan business, Avianca has priced themselves out.
AC is generally one of the worst and highest priced programs out there. AC was 75K where LH was 35K, LM was 46K. Now LM is 85K. (Market price – DL, VS, LH, JL, NH, etc. – is 35-40K one-way range for J.)
Issue is that AC charges the same 75K for flights no matter the length, be it 3,xxx miles or 7,499 miles, it’s the same cost. AC doesn’t really distinguish on the distance or flight time, so it’s one of the worst programs out there for such shorter flights in the Pacific.
AV LM used to be a bit higher than the market pricing. Now it is more than double. AV has really priced itself into oblivion..
What’s LH?
Luft Hansa
This one hurt.
I’m seeing some domestic United flights now costing almost the same with United miles as with lifemiles. Almost no incentive to keep earning or buying lifemiles.
Why not just cancel my avianca lifemiles card and earn status with United?
Given the Aeroplan announcement on dynamic pricing last week, I would argue that United wanted this to happen. They had been throttling partner awards for nearly a year. Finally, the partners agreed not to allow arbitrage. Only TK is holding out, but for how long?
To summarize, the Lifemiles website is too clunky for the devaluation.
Sorry. — there is never “it’s not all bad news” when it comes to a no-notice devaluation (I wish you bloggers would stop using that line!). A devaluation is bad all the way around. You all said the Virgin Atlantic devaluation was not that bad (especially on USA-to-Europe economy itineraries) and yet those turned to be few and far between. So now Nick “The Gamer” is suggesting that if you want outsize value in the new world order , look at outlandish routes with connections that may require you to book a positioning flight then spend a lot more time at an airport during layovers. We, as a community, need to more forcefully call out these programs for these moves (and Nick, a few paragraphs buried in a blog is not my idea of calling them out) and move away from the programs that devalue — ESPECIALLY ones that aren’t user-friendly and charge a HIGH cancellation fee. Bottom line: LifeMiles is now an overall bad program, not just a shitty program with some sweet spots. I await the backlash from the trolls who can’t either think for themselves nor truly understand what’s going on here. Ready?
I have a few thoughts here.
The first is that I don’t get outraged by every price increase. Prices will always rise on the whole. I don’t begrudge programs for raising their prices. I do think that it’s crummy when they do it without advance notice because I think it is inconsiderate of their more loyal members — and when that happens, I always note how crummy that is, as I do here.
I didn’t lead with my disappointment here because my disappointment in Lifemiles isn’t going to help a single reader find an award for a lower price, but knowing to check that Lufthansa box might help quite a few readers save 11,000 miles per passenger. I think that’s more important than my disappointment in Avianca Lifemiles for the way they handled this. You obviously might choose to lead with the disappointment and “bury” the way to save miles. We can have different opinions there — but that’s why I did it that way.
In terms of your assessment that it is bad news “all the way around”, I think that perhaps you’re failing to think beyond your personal circumstances. Most people don’t live next to an airport with ubiquitous nonstop award availability to Europe. And even flying out of New York City, I rarely ever get a nonstop to exactly where I’m going (whether because I’m going to a place that doesn’t have nonstop flights to the US or because there just isn’t typically award availability for four passengers on a nonstop flight). I can count on a couple of fingers the number of times I’ve flown nonstop to or from my destination in Europe (and, by contrast, I’ve gone to Europe at least twice a year for at least the last few years). For me, the decrease in price from 70K to 69K for the awards that I’m most likely to book anyway just can’t logically be “bad news”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wildly excited about saving 1K miles per passenger each way. But you saying that everything here is bad would be like me saying that everything is good — either way, that’s nonsense. It’s both — there’s bad news and there’s good news. The good might not be good *for you* and it might not be so good as to be an exciting change, but saying that the good doesn’t exist would be like me saying that a size 12 sneaker doesn’t exist because it doesn’t fit me. Of course it exists.
For the record, as I mentioned in the post, it’s not that awards with “absurd” connections price cheaper. It varies day by day and situation by situation. Sometimes a shorter connection costs more, sometimes a shorter connection costs less. (and in the example I used in the post, I wouldn’t want the 80K itinerary with the 1hr and 10min connection anyway since my kids aren’t going to hustle fast enough to make that comfortably, especially if we landed late — so for me, just knowing that checking the Lufthansa box likely adds more connection options on LH is helpful — if I can *also* save miles on the connecting itinerary I choose, that’s awesome).
To me, the important point to be made here is that there hasn’t been a uniform devaluation. When I read the Loyalty Lobby and One Mile at a Time posts, I thought that all awards to and from Europe would now cost 80K miles each way and that I’d now be exclusively booking my Star Alliance awards through Aeroplan. I imagine some other readers might have also seen those headlines and thought the same. But that’s not true — many awards actually cost a smidge less than they did last week. To me, that’s the important part of the story to get out — that yes, many awards increased in price and that stinks, but it isn’t across the board and that devaluation might not even affect you depending on your situation.
Regarding whether or not Lifemiles is a good program, that’s a matter of opinion and I think it certainly isn’t the right program for everyone. It’s certainly got plenty of quirks that may turn many people off, not the least of which is a dysfunctional website.
But I also think that one has to do the math to decide whether it’s a bad program instead of making a knee-jerk reaction.
For instance, Flying Blue has much more customer-friendly change and cancellation fees than Avianca Lifemiles. However, consider that Flying Blue adds more than $200 in surcharges per passenger each way. A round trip award booked via Flying Blue will cost my family of four more than $1600 in surcharges round trip. Yes, they have a lower cancellation fee than Avianca Lifemiles, but am I not essentially pre-paying for that privilege in the form of those $1600+ in surcharges? Alternatively, I could pay Avianca $50/mo and over the course of the year I will have given them $600 in Lifemiles+ subscription fees and in return I’ll get 24,000 miles and free changes/cancellations. If I were to book one round trip per year and mileage cost was about the same through Lifemiles or Flying Blue, I’d be saving $1,000 over the course of the year by paying to subscribe to Lifemiles+. Even if I only booked one direction per year via Lifemiles I’d be spending less.
Does that work for everybody? Of course not. Is it an apples-to-apples comparison? Of course not. Do I think you and everyone I know should be excited about it? Again, of course not. But I think that calling it a bad program is like saying that a seafood restaurant is a bad restaurant because I don’t like seafood. It might be a bad choice for me, but the fact that what it provides doesn’t align with what I want doesn’t make it universally and unequivocally bad — and in fact, for many folks it may be quite good.
Thank you for the nuanced post and for this thoughtful answer, Nick! Keep up the great work!