Avianca "Lifemiles" - Questions and Discussion

[MEL_Traveller]

A potential workaround mentioned was to search for the date before or after your intended one. That might fix the 'hanging' problem, at least for your actual date?

 

[luxury-lizard]

A potential workaround mentioned was to search for the date before or after your intended one. That might fix the 'hanging' problem, at least for your actual date?

thanks for the tip - but tried what you suggest and a few other combinations including trying searching for return trips as well as different dates then moving forward - as well as other browsers - different user id's (mine and Mr LL) - logging off and back on. This hanging seems to be a new bug (to add to all the others) - I've given up on this particular itinerary as Mr LL now is not keen on changing the date of our already booked (via LM) SYD-YVR.

I e-mailed LM support more to see if they would address the underlying issue than manually book the flights. Surely LM have noticed that they have difficulty selling miles with so many fed-up customers.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Disappointing Worth a try though.

I wonder how their sales of miles are going? These glitches have been around for years... I wonder if people are still buying, or if they have given up?

TBH, the low Aussie dollar is making most mileage programs fairly unattractive at the moment. Plus the move to dynamic pricing by the likes of UA (trying to find 80K awards is very difficult these days on UA).

Airfares from AU are pretty low at the moment on some 2nd and 3rd tier carriers, and some top tier ones ex Asia.

Alaska seems to be one of the better ones at the moment. But even they have difficulty with CX and JL.

 

[whole-lotta-moxie]

So i notified Lifemiles twice about their computer issues. They finally got back to me and this is the response. They completed missed the fact that their website is not functioning, we can't even get to the purchase page because nothing is happening!!
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It's a pleasure to greet you.

Concerning your request, we may only assist you with manual bookings when you encounter an error message during the purchase; the lack of availability is not considered an error since the redemption agreements between each airline and each loyalty program are different.

We recommend you to look on alternate routes or dates under our Fly section (LifeMiles number and password needed).

We appreciate your valuable time.

Regards,

 

[drron]

Well the LM search is wonderfully inconsistent.2 weeks ago searching for ANA F awards they were available for several days.Last night in the first few days after awards released only ever Y awards.
Bit like QF really.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

So i notified Lifemiles twice about their computer issues. They finally got back to me and this is the response. They completed missed the fact that their website is not functioning, we can't even get to the purchase page because nothing is happening!!
------------------------------------
It's a pleasure to greet you.

Concerning your request, we may only assist you with manual bookings when you encounter an error message during the purchase; the lack of availability is not considered an error since the redemption agreements between each airline and each loyalty program are different.

We recommend you to look on alternate routes or dates under our Fly section (LifeMiles number and password needed).

We appreciate your valuable time.

Regards,

Yeah. That same response is pretty standard Hasn’t changed in the several years we’ve been having IT problems.

I’m not sure you (we) will ever get the response you’re hoping for (a fix)

 

[drron]

So after getting a little down when the 360 day out flights appeared it had 2F,4J and 3Y awards available on ANA.

 

[NDiddy]

Thanks bcworld - Looking at the o/w price flights Im hoping its in low hundreds but I guess there is no easy way to know. Need to burn the miles so will bite the bullet and see what happens. Will try and post my experience back in here when all is done.

Cheers for the insight and assistance.

Quick update on this - Rang Singapore airlines and was relatively straight forward to add an infant to the existing booking that was redeemed through lifemiles.

We had 2 separate bookings MEL - SIN and then SIN - DPS (I know not an effective use but we're travelling with an infant and wanted to break the trip up) Total cost for adding the infant was $282AUD for both legs.

 

[I love to travel]

Am amazed you got SQ J flights out of Oz on LM. Well done

 

[luxury-lizard]

Am amazed you got SQ J flights out of Oz on LM. Well done

I've noticed that MEL-SIN flights in J do show up on LM "regularly" (well from time-to-time) (as do PER-SIN) but it takes a miracle to get SYD-SIN even though there are 5 flights a day.

 

[Notyourbag]

Am amazed you got SQ J flights out of Oz on LM. Well done

I See J flights with SQ from PER and MEL but never SYD.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

(I know not an effective use but we're travelling with an infant and wanted to break the trip up)

I know I know, you wanted to burn miles... but I can't be the only one wondering how a 10 hour journey via SIN is 'breaking up' a 5 hour non-stop MEL-DPS?

 

[NDiddy]

Am amazed you got SQ J flights out of Oz on LM. Well done

Yeah I was a bit surprised as well. There were only 3 days in June that had J availability and it was always SQ248 that was available.

I know I know, you wanted to burn miles... but I can't be the only one wondering how a 10 hour journey via SIN is 'breaking up' a 5 hour non-stop MEL-DPS?

I worded that slightly poorly and your right nothing will beat the direct 5 hour flight there. We wanted to see what was possible on LM so ended up choosing that routing with a 3 day layover in SIN before moving onto DPS. On the return we're flying DPS - MEL direct.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Yeah, the sq 359s have pretty good availability to MEL. Widely available through United for example. I suspect they are coded ‘regional’, and escape the ‘luxury long haul’ designator. At least for now.

 

[Happy Trails]

Singles’ Day promotion, buy miles and get up to 145% additional bonus. Valid from Nov 7th to 12th, 2019.

 

[diningdecadence]

Would someone please be able to help work out sweet spot of 4 J tix - 320,000 points + USD$317.36 (80k + $79.34 per person)

Working out how many points would be purchased on this 145% discount rate to reduce total outlay.

Many thanks

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Should be approximately 34k base per ticket (42.5%). to be safe you could go for 36k base per ticket.

 

[auriga]

Would someone please be able to help work out sweet spot of 4 J tix - 320,000 points + USD$317.36 (80k + $79.34 per person)

Working out how many points would be purchased on this 145% discount rate to reduce total outlay.

Many thanks

Why wouldn't you purchase the full amount? Will be cheaper than miles plus cash

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Why wouldn't you purchase the full amount? Will be cheaper than miles plus cash

it might exceed the allowed purchase limits? You could split it between accounts, but that has its own issues.

 

[FreddyFattler]

Is it still possible to cancel Lifemiles redemptions up to 12 months after you booked?

I deliberately missed a flight in order to have a few extra days away and am only just now considering calling them to cancel the booking, changing flight was no good as availability was non existent at the short notice.