The sad state of Avianca LifeMiles mixed-cabin awards

Avianca LifeMiles has long been one of my favorite award programs. That’s been because of the lack of surcharges, interesting award chart sweet spots, and Avianca’s awesome mixed-cabin award pricing. Unfortunately, over the past couple of months, we’ve seen many award prices rise, sweet spots dry up, and mixed-cabin award pricing has unfortunately been turned on its head. I’m certainly not swearing off LifeMiles any time soon, but there’s no doubt that its luster has faded a good bit this year.

Avianca raised award rates: Business class to Europe is now (mostly) 70K one way

This isn’t news, but several months back, Avianca raised most award rates to Europe. Whereas a business class award from the United States to Europe used to cost 63,000 miles one-way, it now costs 70,000 miles one-way.

That increase was somewhat offset by the launch of LifeMiles+ subscriptions this year, whereby one can pay a monthly fee (starting at $20 per month) for a set number of miles and a 10% discount on award tickets.

It’s worth noting that the 10% originally launched as a rebate, but now appears to work as a discount rather than a rebate. That’s kind of nice because it means that you don’t need more miles than necessary to ticket an award (which would be the case if it were set up as a rebate). In other words, instead of having to transfer 70,000 miles and be stuck with 7,000 orphaned miles after a business class redemption to Europe, it is now possible to book that business class award to Europe for around 63,000 miles one-way.

Mixed-cabin pricing still exists, but it varies from a little good to really, really bad

The hidden devaluation over the past few months has been the way that mixed-cabin award pricing has been gutted.

For a long time, Avianca seemed to price mixed-cabin awards on a sort of distance basis.

It wasn’t an exact formula, but it worked kind of like this: Imagine you were booking an award to Europe that covered 6,000 total miles flown on a connecting itinerary from City A to City B to City C, but 25% of the distance (about 1,500 miles) was to be in economy class and 75% of the distance (about 4,500 miles) was to be flown in business class. Avianca would charge roughly 25% of the price of an economy class award from your origin to destination and about 75% of the price of a business class award from your origin to destination.

The short story is that formula would often end up ringing in an award price that was less on a mixed-cabin award. You could sometimes fly across an ocean in business class and then continue on a long economy class leg and pay less than the cost of the nonstop award across the ocean.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way any more. I did find a few situations where you could save a little bit with a mixed-cabin award, but not nearly as many miles as before — and, unfortunately, in many cases, in what I assume must be a glitch, mixed cabin awards now cost far more. In some cases, far more.

I have a LifeMiles+ subscription, so I see discounted pricing when I search. For instance, this itinerary entirely in business class on Lufthansa from New York-JFK to Warsaw, Poland comes to 62,100 miles in business class, which is a bit more than 10% off of the expected price of 70,000 miles.

It used to be that if you flew one leg in economy class and the other in business class, you would pay less overall. However, mixed-cabin awards do not predictably price that way. Here’s a look at New York-JFK to Geneva in economy class followed by just a very short leg in business from Geneva to Warsaw.

As you can see above, that mixed-cabin award that only includes the short leg from Geneva to Warsaw in business class and the total award price comes to 84,465 miles. That’s 20% more than the cost of flying the entire way in business class on Lufthansa above!

Speaking of Lufthansa, you’ll find similar wacky pricing mixing an economy class leg on Lufthansa with a business class leg on LOT Polish, which comes to 87,300 miles for a similar itinerary mixed-cabin.

It’s not that LOT itself costs more than other carriers as a nonstop on LOT from New York-JFK to Warsaw rings in at the correct 62,100 miles in business class.

That said, mixed-cabin savings aren’t totally dead. When you can find both legs on a single carrier, there are still some opportunities to save a small number of miles. For instance, flying business class from Boston to Frankfurt on Lufthansa followed by economy class on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to Warsaw dropped the overall price to 60,651 miles, which at least is less than the cost of flying in business class the whole way (albeit a savings of fewer than 1,500 miles).

The problematic mixed-cabin pricing appears to mostly be an issue when mixing partners on an award. Here’s an example where the short leg from Boston to Washington-Dulles is in business class followed by the long haul from Washington-Dulles to Istanbul in economy class and it rings in at more than 94,000 miles one way.

It appears that a single leg in business class on a mixed-cabin award to Europe is often adding 62,100 miles to the price. The same thing happens with Boston to Lisbon in economy class followed by Lisbon to Istanbul in business class, where the cumulative pricing comes out to over 97,000 miles.

However, mixed-cabin multi-partner awards aren’t universally pricing that way. As an example, here’s Boston to Zurich in SWISS business class followed by Turkish in economy class from Zurich to Istanbul for a total of 59,292 LifeMiles. That’s a savings of almost 3,000 miles over the cost of flying the whole thing in business (which would be 62,100 miles with my LifeMiles+ discount).

Why does that one price sort of “correctly” while the others price so oddly? I don’t know.

It’s not only Europe

Lest you think this is an isolated issue on European mixed-cabin awards, rest assured that it isn’t.

Here’s a look at Taipei to Los Angeles in business class on EVA. The nonstop award costs 76,500 miles in business class.

Yet if you continue on to Orlando in economy class, that leg from Taipei to Los Angeles adds 81,000 miles to the trip for a total price of 89,883 miles.

In other cases, adding a leg costs significantly more miles. For instance, here’s Frankfurt to Johannesburg on Lufthansa. First class on the nonstop comes to 89,100 miles with my discount.

However, if you continue on from Johannesburg to Cape Town in domestic business class on South Africa Airways, that last leg adds 49,500 miles to the price!

Unfortunately, the weird mixed-cabin pricing makes for some really wacky comparison pricing on different routings, which I imagine makes the program even more difficult for beginners to comprehend. For example, Newark to Cape Town in economy class followed by Cape Town to Johannesburg in business class rings in at an absurd mixed-cabin price of 106,200 miles.

However, Newark to London to Frankfurt to Johannesurg with the segment from Frankfurt to Joannesburg in first class rings in at a less absurd 108,180 miles. That’s not great considering the transatlantic legs in economy class, but you do get a long-haul in Lufthansa first class here for just 2,000 miles more than the absurd pricing above.

Is LifeMiles now worthless?

Given all of the wackiness above, has LifeMiles completely lost its appeal?

I wouldn’t go quite that far.

For starters, I did find some business class awards to Europe for the discounted 62,100 miles in business class. In some situations, that’s still pretty good.

And I found occasional bright spots while hunting around for award tickets connecting different regions. For instance, Tokyo to Sydney, Australia for 36,000 miles in business class seems like a great deal given that this is scheduled to be a 9.5hr flight.

And Tokyo to Taipei followed by Taipei to Bangkok in business class at 32,400 miles is also a pretty good deal.

The four-hour flight from Tokyo to Taipei-TSA for just 20,250 miles in business class is perhaps a better deal yet.

But there’s no doubt that the above redemptions are pretty niche.

Frustratingly, I ran into many situations where LifeMiles simply didn’t see award availability that I expected to see.

For instance, I found a fair amount of close-in award space on United from Japan and Korea to the United States and LifeMiles didn’t see any of it — not the nonstop United awards I could book via Air Canada Aeroplan nor the mixed-cabin United awards that I could find via Air Canada Aeroplan to various points around the United States. I had similar issues with availability to Europe.

To be clear, the LifeMiles website has long had limitations where it shows less space than other search engines, at least initially. In the past, I was often able to sidestep those limitations by playing with the search functions — whereas the default “Smart Search” often wouldn’t show availability I wanted, choosing “Star Alliance” or a specific airline from the search drop-down at the top often yielded different results. I was often (or at least sometimes?) able to muscle the site into showing me award availability that I knew should be there.

While writing this post, I struck out with that technique repeatedly and simply couldn’t get the site to show awards that I knew should be there.

Are these “glitches” intentional? Are they permanent?

It seems to me like the most absurd of the mixed-cabin award pricing above must be a glitch in the system. I can’t imagine that Avianca actually intends to charge 62,100 miles for a short business-class segment within Europe on a mixed-cabin award.

At the same time, Avianca must be aware that this is happening and it doesn’t appear that they are taking any steps to fix it. I don’t know whether this new mixed-cabin pricing is permanent, but it isn’t new today. We’ve seen this for a while. I initially figured that this would work itself out, but that doesn’t appear to be the case thus far.

At this point, I can’t say for sure whether mixed-cabin pricing is permanently dead, but for the moment it is far, far, far less likely to be a benefit than a liability when searching for awards through Avianca LifeMiles.

That’s a huge bummer since LifeMiles used to provide all sorts of interesting opportunities for its most engaged members to seek out / hunt out routes for good value. That made the program exciting and made it the first place I looked even when I ultimately ended up just booking a run-of-the-mill full-price business class award between the US and Europe (as I have many times before).

Now, given the challenges in finding award availability that ought to be there combined with the challenges of finding non-ripoff mixed-cabin pricing, I’m far more likely to skip LifeMiles and head straight to Aeroplan to book an award ticket.

And in a post-pandemic world, I’m not only concerned with value today but rather with my future options should plans change. Whereas I didn’t used to think much about canceling trips, these days I am more aware of the way that things can change unexpectedly. Even though I could pay for a LifeMiles+ subscription that includes free changes and cancellations, my concern is now getting stuck with LifeMiles that may become of increasingly less use thanks to these challenges. The unpredictability of value makes me more hesitant to engage with the program. As a former LifeMiles enthusiast, that’s a bummer.

I hope that these pricing “glitches” are actually bugs and not features and that LifeMiles restores its attractive mixed-cabin pricing. In the meantime, the program has certainly taken a hit from my perspective.

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