Avianca "Lifemiles" - Questions and Discussion

[Peter78]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Tried booking the return flight from Europe to Sydney on the weekend, finding a J fare from Tromso (TOS) via Oslo and Bangkok on TG that suited me perfectly - we're in Norway to hopefully see the Northern Lights in September. Everything went well until a problem arose, prompting me to contact LM by email without a response. Further research told me that the problem might have been that no J is offered on the TOS - OSL flight, hence mixed class might become the issue.

Today, I called LM's service centre in the US and I spoke to two agents, none of whom could speak English. I later tried the numbers in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru, all without success: I have been told that there was no one in each of those four offices speaking English. My rudimentary levels of Spanish allowed small talk but not discussing the issue at hand.

Not sure if this representative of other member experiences but this is a serious drawback to the program. I will use LH miles instead to get back to SYD and in the future, I will only purchase points for LM if availability is there and dummy bookings can proceed to the final page...

 

[burmans]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Not sure if this representative of other member experiences but this is a serious drawback to the program. I will use LH miles instead to get back to SYD and in the future, I will only purchase points for LM if availability is there and dummy bookings can proceed to the final page...

There has been advice on the FT thread on who and when to ring to get English (US) speaking agents but don't really want to trawl that thread to find.

But tend to agree with the principle. I do think we need to realise we are getting these extremely cheap and they are sometime downsides to the very cheap deals.

 

[kpc]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Ok...after a bit of a saga. it is all sorted! For those who book Asiana award flights using LM, I shall post my experience for the benefit of others. If you don't have an eticket number, the ticket is not yet issued (and this did not happen automatically after my online booking, even after 2 days). Rang Avianca twice in the US (1800 2842622 free with Skype) as the US office puts you on hold whilst they ring the reservation / ticketing centre in Columbia (open during Columbian business hours), and they will then ticket the itinerary for you, and both give the e ticket numbers to you, as well as email it to you. [Alternativly, you can email:[email protected] and they will ticket it and send you your itinerary within 12 hours (my experience anyway)].

I then rang the Asiana office in Sydney (T.61-2-9767-4343) as I could not select the seats online on the Asiana website. After giving the Asiana reservation code (obtained from Check My Trip), she could not see any ticket numbers with the reservation and explained that they don't always automatically get forwarded through the system. Once I gave the 4 eticket numbers, we were all set to select seats but I was then told I can only select seats at T-328 days so I will have to call back later.

Moral of story: get eticket number and ring Asiana to ensure they can see the eticket number in the reservation!

 

[Aussie_flyer]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

It would likely have happened without your input. Ive waited 3 to 4 days for a ticket to be issued on more than one occasion.

Regarding asiana seating the website would work if you sign up for their ff program first and you login and assign seats just by selecting the date and route. Your oz ffnumber does not need to be associated with the booking for this to work. Ive done several oz redemption this way... ive never spoken to anyone via email or phone and always assigned seats fine this way. No issue at check in. Perhaps just a little more patience...

 

[kpc]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

I don't feel comfortable leaving an OZ booking too long before it tickets. OZ have in the past cancelled reservations (or rather they have auto-cancelled) because they haven't received the ticket number in time. Someone reported this just recently. I'd be getting the ticket number from LM asap, and confirming it either directly with OZ or via their webpage (for seat selection) as soon as you can, and well within 48 hours.

It would likely have happened without your input. I've waited 3 to 4 days for a ticket to be issued on more than one occasion......Perhaps just a little more patience...

Absolutely! That's my eternal problem...I can't relax until everything is sorted. I blame MEL_Traveller for getting me anxious (about auto cancelling!). It was difficult to find 4 J seats when I wanted to travel from US to Oz.

 

[burmans]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Absolutely! That's my eternal problem...I can't relax until everything is sorted. I blame MEL_Traveller for getting me anxious (about auto cancelling!). It was difficult to find 4 J seats when I wanted to travel from US to Oz.

4 J seats is very impressive, I found getting 2 hard enough. OZ was great incidentally, we did OZ, United and AC. OZ was best by a fair margin (and United last by a long way)! Mainly food/wine/service got our marks for OZ.

 

[BobbyFlyer]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

I didnt have any problems with booking my 4 pax OZ leg from HNL-ICN...just checked with Sydney office though yesterday and they allocted my seats so all appears fine.
Have noticed variability for flights to/from US from Asian ports over last couple months. Looking to find 5 seats in J next year from SIN...OZ is only one which seems to have availability.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Absolutely! That's my eternal problem...I can't relax until everything is sorted. I blame MEL_Traveller for getting me anxious (about auto cancelling!). It was difficult to find 4 J seats when I wanted to travel from US to Oz.

while it may happen anyway in 3-4 days - given OZ can auto-cancel unticketed reservations after 72 hours it is not worth the risk to do anything other than you did. While it may be fine 99% of the time, is it worth it that you might be the 1% who gets the cancellation? I cannot understand why there is any advice to the contrary for such a simple step as calling OZ. The 5 minute investment for the call is worth the hours it could take to rebuild your itinerary.

 

[Aussie_flyer]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

while it may happen anyway in 3-4 days - given OZ can auto-cancel unticketed reservations after 72 hours it is not worth the risk to do anything other than you did. While it may be fine 99% of the time, is it worth it that you might be the 1% who gets the cancellation? I cannot understand why there is any advice to the contrary for such a simple step as calling OZ. The 5 minute investment for the call is worth the hours it could take to rebuild your itinerary.

Call OZ for what? You can see whether it's been ticketed on checkmytrip

 

[MEL_Traveller]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Call OZ for what? You can see whether it's been ticketed on checkmytrip

to ensure they have the ticket number against the booking. there are reports of OZ not having the ticket number in their system, that is, not receiving it from UA/US. I don't suspect LM to be any different. Ticketing is separate from OZ having it.

 

[kpc]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Call OZ for what? You can see whether it's been ticketed on checkmytrip

Edited to say: refer to post above.
Even though my itinerary was ticketed (after contacting LM), the Asiana office in Sydney could not see the eticket numbers on their system so I had to read them out to her....it may be that eventually the numbers will filter through to the Asiana system but I found it quite unusual that I could see the e ticket numbers on CheckMyTrip, but the Asiana system couldn't.

 

[Aussie_flyer]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

to ensure they have the ticket number against the booking. there are reports of OZ not having the ticket number in their system, that is, not receiving it from UA/US. I don't suspect LM to be any different. Ticketing is separate from OZ having it.

LM is possibly very different, there hasn't been any reports of problems that I am aware of with LM issued OZ tickets. The ticket number notification should be an automatic part of the ticket issuing process in the GDS. Inputting manual ticket numbers is not even allowed by certain carriers.

I don't know which PNR/RELOC the last poster mentioned to OZ on the phone but if it was the Amadeus one they probably couldn't see it.

 

[RB]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Tried booking the return flight from Europe to Sydney on the weekend, finding a J fare from Tromso (TOS) via Oslo and Bangkok on TG that suited me perfectly - we're in Norway to hopefully see the Northern Lights in September. Everything went well until a problem arose, prompting me to contact LM by email without a response. Further research told me that the problem might have been that no J is offered on the TOS - OSL flight, hence mixed class might become the issue.

Today, I called LM's service centre in the US and I spoke to two agents, none of whom could speak English. I later tried the numbers in Mexico, Guatemala and Peru, all without success: I have been told that there was no one in each of those four offices speaking English. My rudimentary levels of Spanish allowed small talk but not discussing the issue at hand.

Not sure if this representative of other member experiences but this is a serious drawback to the program. I will use LH miles instead to get back to SYD and in the future, I will only purchase points for LM if availability is there and dummy bookings can proceed to the final page...

I also had problems initially when I rang on Skype. I eventually deciphered that there was an option at the start for English. I seem to recall pushing 3 & that at least got me the English options to follow.-quite a while ago.

 

[travelislife]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

I also had problems initially when I rang on Skype. I eventually deciphered that there was an option at the start for English. I seem to recall pushing 3 & that at least got me the English options to follow.-quite a while ago.

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to always register as selecting and continues on in Spanish, I have had to call up 6 times before getting it to register English once! The more LM stories I hear the more lucky I feel with the booking I managed to put through last year which was through the call centre, not at all straight forward but still got it done.

 

[bcworld]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to always register as selecting and continues on in Spanish, I have had to call up 6 times before getting it to register English once! The more LM stories I hear the more lucky I feel with the booking I managed to put through last year which was through the call centre, not at all straight forward but still got it done.

I think yours is the ONLY story I've heard with such a positive outcome! Fortunately all my online bookings have worked out really well and I'm actually more and more liking LM at the moment!

 

[Aussie_flyer]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

ive booked and flown about 7 or 8 itineraries with LM. never one problem, never had to speak to anyone until i arrived at the check-in counter.

 

[wafliron]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

I think yours is the ONLY story I've heard with such a positive outcome! Fortunately all my online bookings have worked out really well and I'm actually more and more liking LM at the moment!

I had success dealing with the call centre too, although it was to fix a problem rather than actually book an itinerary. No English problems, but the extremely poor line quality (using a regular landline, not Skype) made the call difficult. Still, it got sorted. I posted the longer story right back at the start of this thread - early August 2012 IIRC.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

LM is possibly very different, there hasn't been any reports of problems that I am aware of with LM issued OZ tickets. The ticket number notification should be an automatic part of the ticket issuing process in the GDS. Inputting manual ticket numbers is not even allowed by certain carriers.

I don't know which PNR/RELOC the last poster mentioned to OZ on the phone but if it was the Amadeus one they probably couldn't see it.

On 2nd January I posted a link in this thread from an FTer - their SQ reservation cancelled out because they suspect the LM ticket number didn't get across in time. May only be one instance out of 1000 - but the whole point of phoning the airline is to make sure it's not you that's the 1 in 1000.

FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Avianca/Taca Lifemiles may be Best Program in Star

 

[xsiq]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Had to cancel an award reservation by calling their reservation office. Was much easier than I thought and the mile were posted back into the account within 12 hours. Still awaiting for the refund of taxes.

Followed the instructions from here Cancelling Aviance Award Flights - Not flying is cheaper than buying miles - FlyerTalk Forums

One of the things to watch out for is their system cannot handle Australian suburb names, only major cities. Had to use a cc that had Melbourne as the city in the address.

 

[markis10]

re: Avianca "Life Miles" - New FF program in *A

Currently on a LM redemption, 1 flight down two to go and it's all too easy. Had the old Thai J product on last leg, new product on the next, and interestingly Thai online checkin was showing first flight was in C class not I, maybe I will get lucky with my TK number in the booking.