Avianca "Lifemiles" - Questions and Discussion

[travelislife]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

Thai can help sort this out, it is a very common problem where their schedule changes cause misconnects, their IT is archaic. You just need to find the right person and have to be very specific with your instructions.

1. Don't listen to Shanye2233 for your own sanity
2. Find the Thai flights you want and will work (ignore award availability at this stage) with the right connections
3. Contact Thai Airways (email one of the Australian offices, Melbourne is usually pretty good) with your PNR and state clearly that their schedule change has caused a misconnect.
4. Identify the flights that would work but state there is no award availability
5. Request them to open space on the required flights and associate the segment with your booking.
6. Highlight that you understand Thai airways can't touch the ticket, but they can do the above. That you will contact your ticket issuer (Lifemiles) for validation once the segment has been associated with the booking
7. If getting resistance keep pushing the above stressing points 3 and 6 until you get someone who will deal with it.

As much as some agents will say the above can't be done, it can and has been done numerous times for myself.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

If getting resistance keep pushing the above stressing points 3 and 6 until you get someone who will deal with it.
As much as some agents will say the above can't be done, it can and has been done numerous times for myself.

this is the key. Even emailing bkk may have to be on the agenda if australia doesn't want to help out (and who would blame them... they've had plenty of these requests to deal with... although they are of TG's own making)

 

[tm.smile]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

Thanks for your advice everyone. I was able to find some space on Swiss that connected after a morning in Bangkok and Avianca was happy to book him on that flight instead (although I requested that flight at the beginning of the conversation and dropped Swiss a few times, the agent didn't actually understand me and so proposed it as his idea...).

In the end easier and probably better product wise.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

In the end easier and probably better product wise.

no comparison product wise. even if TG is offering flat beds, Swiss is much better.

 

[coolkid101]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

if TG do a schedule change and the OP realises, will the ticket have to be re-validated proactively with LM by the passenger? (even if LM or TG didn't notify the passenger directly) i suppose LM will then realise the misconnect.

i'm not sure if you can just rock up to the airport for the newly change flight that TG rescheduled you on but the original ticketing carrier LM has not revalidated the ticket for?

is that right?

I dont need to read posts this has happened to me many times all around the world

if he calls lifemiles they will tell him to cancel and re-book. If he calls thai they will tell him to call lifemiles . If he arrives at the airport without any notification thai will sort it out for him . Unless thai emails the person travelling and informs them of the change at which point he/she becomes notified and then will have no choice but to call lifemiles.

 

[Alanslegal]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

is that right?

1. Don't listen to Shanye2233 for your own sanity

1. 
   
   +1,000,000,000
   
   I would never 'rock' up to the airport without a proper ticket - no matter who stuffed it up - and hoping it to be fixed on the spot.

 

[smit0847]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

I dont need to read posts this has happened to me many times all around the world

if he calls lifemiles they will tell him to cancel and re-book. If he calls thai they will tell him to call lifemiles . If he arrives at the airport without any notification thai will sort it out for him . Unless thai emails the person travelling and informs them of the change at which point he/she becomes notified and then will have no choice but to call lifemiles.

I miss your adventures Shayne- please keep posting!

 

[hossein_au]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

I miss your adventures Shayne- please keep posting!

Be careful what you wish for... some people use the thin line between adventure and insanity as skipping rope...

 

[burmans]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

I miss your adventures Shayne- please keep posting!

No, please dont!

PS. Isn't misadventure the correct word.

 

[hossein_au]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

No, please dont!

PS. Isn't misadventure the correct word.

More than the misadventures themselves I look forward to trying to decipher every (almost incomprehensible) sentence ;-)

 

[Austff]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

Be careful what you wish for... some people use the thin line between adventure and insanity as a skipping rope...

That is a great line, will put it in the vault, but I also would like Shayne to keep posting.

 

[burmans]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

That is a great line, will put it in the vault, but I also would like Shayne to keep posting.

OK, so to keep Aussie_flyer happy can we request he posts about his misadventures in the humour forum then?

 

[appaz]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

no comparison product wise. even if TG is offering flat beds, Swiss is much better.

swiss is absolutely fantastic, the bed on the A340 is a little narrow but the service and food was A+

and fully flat beds!

 

[smit0847]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

swiss is absolutely fantastic, the bed on the A340 is a little narrow but the service and food was A+

and fully flat beds!

Agreed. And ZHR is a great place to transit!

 

[Aussie_flyer]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

OK, so to keep Aussie_flyer happy can we request he posts about his misadventures in the humour forum then?

Good idea but seriously there was a reason we split this thread in the first place.

 

[VAG newbie]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

JAL is about the only one I can think of? Air China has a couple of A332s with just 12 seats which I know they were using to HNL, but they're deep angled/recliner style. NH is a recliner only.

I thought JAL is also angled lie flat?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion

I thought JAL is also angled lie flat?

nooo... new sky suite in business on 2 of their 4 dailies to HNL! Their 767s have full flats too now... but a different version than their 777s

 

[Aussie_flyer]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

Agreed. And ZHR is a great place to transit!

The milk maids are wonderful there

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

i just prepared (today) a screenshot application for an air China booking. this doesn't involve any connections... just the error message. Availability confirmed via UA.

so we'll see how this goes and whether it becomes a valid work-around.

fingers crossed!!

otherwsie, air india's gonna become pretty popular!!! (although as I've mentioned before, they're actually not bad. if you just want to sleep the whole way and arrive refreshed, that's exactly what you get)

 

[robcuk]

Re: Avianca Life Miles - post your SUCCESSFUL award bookings here

i just prepared (today) a screenshot application for an air China booking. this doesn't involve any connections... just the error message. Availability confirmed via UA.

so we'll see how this goes and whether it becomes a valid work-around.

fingers crossed!!

otherwsie, air india's gonna become pretty popular!!! (although as I've mentioned before, they're actually not bad. if you just want to sleep the whole way and arrive refreshed, that's exactly what you get)

Good luck MelT.

Here was the response I received:

It is my pleasure to greet you.
We apologize for the delay on our response. We have verified the attached images and it is not possible to book this reservation since Air China is not releasing the flight CA 175 for ticket redemption on none of the dates selected (July 30th or August 1st, 2015), which is the reason of the encountered error message.
Keep in mind that Air China reserves the right to change the routes and/or flights available for ticket redemption without prior notice. In this case, we suggest you to try the redemption process on alternate flights, route or dates.
We appreciate your comprehension with this matter.

​

As you say the AI hard product looks ok and she can sleep standing up so its not a problem - if anything it's a more direct route for us.