Avianca LifeMiles – Bookings and Discussion

[goldenhorn]

Last night I decided to look at LM again and see if there had been any changes. Unfortunately there had.
Absolutely no awards 10-11 months out on the routes I monitor. Even no Y awards. Hope it was just a glitch.

Have you tried using seats.aero.com? I've found a Pro account incredibly helpful in finding award flights and made 3 bookings for May 2024 in the last few weeks to use up the last of my LM.

Payment of LM taxes is a real pain. For my previous booking CDG-WAW-ORD, they called last night at 2am (I didn't have the phone on). I called back at 5am, was on hold for over an hour, and hung up on 3x. Eventually I got a LM agent who had me on hold while he kept trying the finance department for another 30-40 minutes. He was very apologetic about the wait time and said he was going to make a 'special exception' and send me an email link to pay.

I got the email, clicked the link to an online cart and paid within 30 seconds. The e-ticket arrived within an hour.

God knows why they can't do such a simple process for all taxes.

Booked today:

May 2024
2 pax, TK/LH, J,
IST-MUC-CDG
52,000 LM (I was short 10,000 LM so will pay an extra US$275 for the difference)
US$25 taxes

That's the last of my LM gone now, and I doubt I'll be back!

 

[drron]

Thanks @goldenhorn . I had looked at it before but I was put off by the sheer number of irrelevant routes and basically only the next 3 months. but because of your post I tried to follow through. Picked a SIN -ICN route and put in search on life miles and doing it that way there is a blue dot on the availabe dates in the next 11 months. Perfect.
Though all our flights for the next 12 months are already in place.

 

[Flashback]

May 2024
2 pax, TK/LH, J,
IST-MUC-CDG
52,000 LM (I was short 10,000 LM so will pay an extra US$275 for the difference)
US$25 taxes

Ouch, you could have near enough had a revenue fare (for 1 of the 2 pax) for what you paid for the additional 10k miles but at least you got to wind down your balance I suppose. Puts about £300 value on the 42,000 LM for the other pax.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Some quite expensive fares these days and bags fees added on too. LM ended up being a really good deal for us HEL-ZRH.

 

[goldenhorn]

Ouch, you could have near enough had a revenue fare (for 1 of the 2 pax) for what you paid for the additional 10k miles but at least you got to wind down your balance I suppose. Puts about £300 value on the 42,000 LM for the other pax.

I’m very happy. The same flights in cash would have been $1600. So we get to go J for the price of economy fares and enjoy the amazing IST TK lounge.

 

[I love to travel]

I’m very happy. The same flights in cash would have been $1600. So we get to go J for the price of economy fares and enjoy the amazing TK lounge.

And in the post Covid world I think increasingly we need to set our expectations at this level across many FF programs credit card churns etc.

 

[goldenhorn]

Quite a difference in paying fees this time for my IST-CDG trip.

They called at 3:30am (I didn't get the call), and I called back at 8:30am. I got through in 1 minute and had a great agent who didn't try to 'call the finance department' but immediately sent me the email with the payment link.

The payment was completed in 1 minute, and the whole process took less than 5 minutes.

Hopefully, they are now doing this going forward instead of the painful transfer to a different department to get a credit card manually over the phone.

 

[Cynicor]

Did you mention/offer/enquire about email first off, yourself?

 

[goldenhorn]

Did you mention/offer/enquire about email first off, yourself?

No - she sent me the payment link via email without me asking.

 

[drron]

The arrangement with booking.com finishes on 6th July.
As long as you accessed booking via the life miles website you can get points for any reservation through booking.com. saved paying for extra points to keep miles active.
I used this as I do sometimes use that site for hotel bookings especially in Japan.

 

[Flashback]

I secure LAX-TPE-BNE for Mayo 2024 with the Lifemiles. Need to do almost a year away. And return. Only one seat. Will enjoy EVA for first time - trust they are good?
Return costed 160,000 points. And some small dollars.

Eva are fantastic.

 

[boomy]

I secure LAX-TPE-BNE for Mayo 2024 with the Lifemiles. Need to do almost a year away. And return. Only one seat. Will enjoy EVA for first time - trust they are good?
Return costed 160,000 points. And some small dollars.

Eva is great, one of the best J products.
Did you book online or use screenshots?

 

[Cynicor]

Does anyone with access mind doing a quick search for me. I don’t want actual dates, just wondering if it’s worth paying for?

Is there anything from PER, in business, on LM, to anywhere, in the next 12 months?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Does anyone with access mind doing a quick search for me. I don’t want actual dates, just wondering if it’s worth paying for?

Is there anything from PER, in business, on LM, to anywhere, in the next 12 months?

You have LM banked? Or want to buy some? Don’t buy!

 

[goldenhorn]

Does anyone with access mind doing a quick search for me. I don’t want actual dates, just wondering if it’s worth paying for?

Is there anything from PER, in business, on LM, to anywhere, in the next 12 months?

Almost nothing. Most departures from the Oceania search are AKL MEL BNE or SYD.

You'd probably need to reposition to SIN or similar to then get more availability.

All I could see was PER-NRT on the dates in the image below. The direct (green) was 1 seat on NH, 50K LM.

The 2 blue at the bottom in June 2024 are each 2 seats, PER/SIN/NRT on SQ, 50,000 LM, USD$58 taxes.

 

[Cynicor]

You have LM banked? Or want to buy some? Don’t buy!

Haha, god no, no more buying. Still 200k pre-covid to get through.
ANA from PER or BKK with TG was my reliable use case. No longer.

But thank you goldenhorn, too. It is nice to see that ANA has the occasional, if rare, seat, that might be used.

As you say, positioning to SIN is doable. Also post covid i now have 2 kids which makes on demand travel, and taking the longer route, a lot harder.

Just trying to use up the last of them, like others here

 

[bernardblack]

I've been looking at the end of the calendar (June 2024) in preparation for booking a trip to the Paris Olympics. I don't know how far you want to go @Cynicor or when, and I'm not seeing anything out of PER, but there is consistent J availability on NH SYD<>HND (often on both daily frequencies), and a smattering of OZ SYD<>ICN and BR BNE<>TPE.

There's even some SQ space, including J, SYD/MEL/ADL<>SIN, and SIN<>Asia, but I can't get any through itineraries to price, and I haven't tried to book it to see if it's real. But given that Velocity has SQ space (up to J) again, and even Aeroplan can get SQ J space, maybe it's real.

 

[BobbyFlyer]

Wondering if anyone can help me with this....I have a lifemile booking with EVA in Oct from CDG-TPE-SIN that has a slight flight change on first leg that has now made my booking 'not confirmed'.... will EVA confirm if i call them or is this an Lifemiles call i need to make ? (had a similar issue with TK flight from SGN earlier this year that i ended up cancelling as neither TK nor LM were able to resolve!!)....

 

[I love to travel]

Wondering if anyone can help me with this....I have a lifemile booking with EVA in Oct from CDG-TPE-SIN that has a slight flight change on first leg that has now made my booking 'not confirmed'.... will EVA confirm if i call them or is this an Lifemiles call i need to make ? (had a similar issue with TK flight from SGN earlier this year that i ended up cancelling as neither TK nor LM were able to resolve!!)....

LM need to reticket this. It should be an easy task for them. Email support.

 

[BobbyFlyer]

LM need to reticket this. It should be an easy task for them. Email support.

Thanks for that…emailed them but said I should call…BUT is this just tonight? but all their numbers do not work…I have called them a million times in that past but nothing working at the moment…anyone else having same issue?