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Today Bilt rewards announced the addition of another transfer partner: Avianca LifeMiles. I’ve frequently noted Avianca LifeMiles as being a one of my favorite couple of airline programs thanks to their many sweet spots. This is a nice addition for Bilt Rewards members and it’s great to see Bilt continue to expand on its partnerships.
The Deal
- Bilt Rewards has added Avianca LifeMiles as a new transfer partner. Link your Avianca LifeMiles account in the Bilt Rewards app for 100 bonus Bilt Rewards points.
Quick Thoughts
This is great news for Bilt Rewards members as it provides another opportunity to get outsized value out of Bilt Rewards. My affinity for LifeMiles is well documented. Avianca has what is a generally reasonable award chart (without surcharges beyond Avianca’s $25 partner booking fee), but the program gets even more interesting given Avianca’s awesome mixed-cabin award pricing and numerous secret sweet spots. Just a few weeks ago, I flew one of those “secret” sweet spots from New York JFK to Lisbon, Portugal in business class for just 35,000 miles and around $40 per passenger. We flew home in Turkish Airlines business class from Helsinki to Istanbul to New York for 60,000 miles per passenger and about $90 (that was a manual booking made via email, though readers have reported that manual bookings are no longer possible).
Avianca can also be useful for domestic itineraries on United. If you stay within a “zone” (the three US zones are basically the Eastern seaboard to Georgia, most of the central US and Florida, and like from ~Nevada west), flights usually cost 7,500 miles each way in economy class or 10,000 each way in United domestic “first”. I say “usually” because just like with international awards, there are some routes that price differently without a clear rhyme or reason. United doesn’t make a lot of awards available to partners these days, but it’s a good option when availability exists.
All of the above only gets more exciting if we ever see Bilt offer the kind of big transfer bonus that we’ve seen with other partners.
The key drawback of LifeMiles is its punitive cancellation fees (up to $200 per ticket for international awards). That’s a painful pill to swallow if plans change. If you plan close-in travel, that is probably less of an issue than awards booked far in advance. The LifeMiles website is also notorious for sometimes failing to show some flights that should be available. Sometimes it is just a matter of outsmarting the Smart Search, but sometimes the flights you want just won’t show up.
I see Avianca as a pretty complementary partner for Bilt. LifeMiles will offer reasonable Star Alliance award pricing to/from Europe and a website that works better than Turkish’s website. With the addition of Avianca LifeMiles, Bilt now has 16 airline and hotel transfer partner programs (though since you can move Avios from British Airways to Qatar, you really have access to 17 programs as seen in the charts below).
Bilt Transfer Partners: Airlines
| Rewards Program | Best Uses | Bilt Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|
| Aer Lingus Avios | Fuel surcharges are sometimes lower when booking with Aer Lingus rather than British Airways, Qatar, or Iberia. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Air Canada Aeroplan | Redeem for Star Alliance flights and/or flights with Air Canada partners (such as Etihad). No fuel surcharges; $39 CAD award booking fee; 5,000 points to add stopover on one-way award. See: Air Canada Aeroplan: Everything you need to know. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Air France KLM Flying Blue | Monthly Air France Promo Awards often represent very good value. Air France miles can be used to book Sky Team awards, including Delta awards. Air France often offers very good business class award pricing between the US and Europe & Israel. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Alaska MileagePlan | Alaska Airlines offers decent oneworld award pricing, excellent short-distant pricing, and uniquely allows free stop-overs one one-way awards. Additionally, Alaska allows free award changes and cancelations (although they do have a small non-refundable partner award booking fee) | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Avianca LifeMiles | Avianca LifeMiles can be great for Star Alliance awards. They offer reasonable award prices and no fuel surcharges on awards. They also offer shorthaul awards within the US (for flying United, for example) for as few as 7,500 miles one-way. Best of all, their mixed-cabin pricing can lead to fantastic first-class award prices. See this post for details. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| British Airways Avios | While flights on British Airways itself often incur outrageously high fuel surcharges, many BA partners charge low or no fuel surcharges. Excellent value can often be had in redeeming BA points for short distance flights outside the US. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Cathay Pacific Asia Miles | Cathay Pacific has a decent distance based award chart, but they don't allow stopovers longer than 24 hours. Cathay Pacific Asia Miles can be a good option for booking American Airlines flights with a distance based award chart, especially if other OneWorld Alliance miles aren't available. For long distance flights, it is possible to reduce the cost of a premium cabin award by adding on a lower cabin segment. See this post for details. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Emirates Skywards | The best use of Emirates miles has been to fly Emirates itself. Unfortunately fuel surcharges can be extremely steep. One workaround is to book select routes such as JFK to Milan or Newark to Athens. See: How to find and book Emirates first class awards. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Finnair Plus+ | Finnair points are now "Avios" and points can be moved to/from other Avios programs. Finnair uses zone based award charts rather than distance based. As a result, Finnair sometimes has better (and sometimes worse) pricing than other Avios programs. | 1 to 1 via BA (Instant) |
| Iberia Avios | On their own flights, Iberia offers low award prices and a very reasonable 25 Euro cancellation fee. Partner awards can offer good value under some circumstances as well, but these are usually nonrefundable. Fuel surcharges are sometimes lower when booking with Iberia rather than British Airways, Aer Lingus, or Qatar. It's possible to move points (Avios) between Iberia, British Airways, Aer Lingus, and Qatar. See also: Avios Sweet Spots for Award Tickets. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Qatar Privilege Club Avios | Qatar has reasonable award prices for flying Qatar itself. Points are now transferable 1 to 1 to British Airways (and from there to Aer Lingus or Iberia). It is now also possible to book JetBlue flights with Qatar Avios. | 1 to 1 via BA (Instant) |
| TAP Air Portugal | Surcharge-free Emirates redemptions. Increased availability on TAP flights between US and Europe. | 1 to 1 (Unknown) |
| Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles | Miles & Smiles offers a number of awesome sweet-spot awards including 7.5K one-way anywhere within the US, even to Hawaii. Many awards cannot be booked online but can be booked via phone or email. See: Turkish Miles & Smiles Complete Guide and Turkish business class sweet spots from the US. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| United MileagePlus | United offers free award changes and free cancelations. Like Avianca and Aeroplan, United never charges fuel surcharges for awards. Unfortunately, United charges many more miles for international first class awards. Good uses of miles include United's Excursionist Perk awards and (sometimes) dynamically priced United economy awards. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | Virgin Atlantic offers a few excellent sweet spot awards. See: Best uses for Virgin Atlantic points (Sweet Spot Spotlight). | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
Bilt Transfer Partners: Hotels
| Rewards Program | Best Uses | Bilt Transfer Ratio (and transfer time) |
|---|---|---|
| Accor Live Limitless | Use to pay hotel bill with value of 2 Euro cents per point. In some cases (such as hotel to airline transfer bonuses) it may make sense to convert Accor points to the following airline miles at a 1 to 1 ratio: Finnair, Iberia, Qantas, or Virgin Australia | 3 to 2 (Unknown) |
| Hilton | 5th Night Free awards. Best value is usually found with very low end or very high end Hilton hotels. Bonus: award nights are not subject to resort fees. Note that Hilton points often go on sale for half a cent each and so its rare for point transfers to Hilton to be a good value. | 1 to 1 (Unknown) |
| Hyatt | Use for Hyatt free nights, free suite nights, lounge upgrades, or suite upgrades. Hyatt points are often worth more than 2 cents each. Bonus: award nights are not subject to resort fees. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| IHG | IHG dynamically prices their awards and sometimes offer very good value. IHG Premier and IHG Premier Business cards offer the fourth night free on award stays. | 1 to 1 (Instant) |
| Marriott Bonvoy | 5th Night Free awards. Opportunities to get outsized value exist but can be hard to find. | 20K to 25K (Instant) |
An argument could be made that Avianca sells LifeMiles at a significant enough discount to make them a less valuable transfer partner since you can buy the miles for a reasonable enough price. We often see Avianca sell LifeMiles from around 1.3c per mile. Some people prefer not to transfer to Avianca because those miles can be purchased reasonably, whereas many other transfer partners do not sell miles directly to consumers at a reasonable price.
That said, if I paid monthly rent and earned 20 or 30,000 Bilt points per year on rent alone, I’d find a transfer to Avianca for a round trip domestic flight or two to be a pretty good return on paying the rent. If you also mix in some dining spend on the first of the month and/or take advantage of the Bilt Dining program and Lyft partnerships and if Bilt ever offers a transfer bonus, I could see this being really useful for a trip to or from Europe.
And even if you’re not a LifeMiles fan, it’s great to see Bilt continue to add to its stable of airline and hotel programs. Also keep in mind that you do not need to be a Bilt cardholder or rent your housing to join Bilt Rewards — anyone can join and link up loyalty program accounts. Now with 16 transfer partners, one could earn 1600 points just linking loyalty accounts — which almost meets the minimum transfer threshold of 2,000 Bilt points for members with no status.
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Nick, if someone earned 20k or 30k from rent and Avianca is the Rent Day bonus baby, that person is looking at 1.75x to 2.5x (depending) for a total of 35k to 75k. Not too shabby. Nevermind all the other Bilt bonus opportunities. And, some will still poo-poo the card for the lack of a SUB.
Bilt has pretty much made the case to be the most valuable award transfer program (the only argument against it is the points are harder to get). I think only ANA, EVA, and Singapore are left from the stable of standout programs.