Avianca "Lifemiles" - Questions and Discussion

[Keith009]

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

Working now

 

[prozac]

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

Does anyone else have problems searching a booking on the FM site? Once I get to the booking page by clicking "Enjoy" and then "Air Tickets" I wait around 2 minutes for the site to eventually tell me there is a problem booking. Not sure what I am doing wrong but no probs doing bookings on any airline site ... except TK.

Edit: I have been trying SYD to US bookings without any success. Just tried a dummy to BKK with success. Must just be US J bookings that are heavily sought.

 

[dalereardon]

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

See this new article:

Singapore Airlines: "We're not pulling award seats from Star Alliance partners" - Flights | hotels | frequent flyer | business class - Australian Business Traveller


Has LifeMiles altered their Singapore award policy or who is not telling the whole truth?

Dale.

 

[BobbyFlyer]

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

Has LifeMiles altered their Singapore award policy or who is not telling the whole truth?

Dale.

suggest SQ not being full and frank with their changes....cant be everyone else simultaneously adopting a similar policy of restricting SQ J/F seats....

 

[anat0l]

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

See this new article:

Singapore Airlines: "We're not pulling award seats from Star Alliance partners" - Flights | hotels | frequent flyer | business class - Australian Business Traveller

Has LifeMiles altered their Singapore award policy or who is not telling the whole truth?

Well strictly from that AusBT article, the context doesn't actually make out SQ to be a liar.

They haven't withdrawn award seats completely from Star Alliance partners. You can still redeem SQ Y and most regional SQ J (maybe even shorthaul SQ F). Also, from UA it is apparently still possible to redeem SQ premium seats, but you need to call for it (seems to be not a lot of experience in this regard yet).

Maybe the questions by the author were not quite accurate enough to elicit the correct understanding of the predominant grievances. Of course, it could be all UA at fault here, i.e. they do not want to pay the increased costs imposed by SQ for redeeming their seats. A bit like your pay going up by CPI but your landlord increasing your rent by 8% - whose fault is it if you decide to move out?

suggest SQ not being full and frank with their changes....cant be everyone else simultaneously adopting a similar policy of restricting SQ J/F seats....

Well that would kind of torpedo the entire alliance. Certainly it would be much to the chagrin of the US DM collective here! (Who wants to redeem only on Y, or only US operated flights?)

I wonder if VA's ability to redeem SQ J and F seats is similarly affected (or even, perhaps improved due to the inability of *A partners to redeem such seats)

 

[redtop]

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

I'm new here, but have read through the entire thread and didn't see this answered. Does anyone have any experience with obtaining up to 6 award seats on TG (preferably in J, but also in Y)? Based on this thread, it sounds like the seats are released in batches of 2 (at least in J) and that there are reports of two more J seats being (immediately) released after the first two were booked, for a total of 4 seats. Does anyone have experience with two more seats being released after the first two pairs of seats are taken, for a total of 6 seats?

 

[zainman]

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

so can we still see SQ J availability with life miles? or does the 14 day rule apply now? any definite answer?

 

[seritonin]

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

so can we still see SQ J availability with life miles? or does the 14 day rule apply now? any definite answer?

The 14 day rule applies for any routes between Australia and SIN with great availability though...

 

[bcworld]

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

I'm new here, but have read through the entire thread and didn't see this answered. Does anyone have any experience with obtaining up to 6 award seats on TG (preferably in J, but also in Y)? Based on this thread, it sounds like the seats are released in batches of 2 (at least in J) and that there are reports of two more J seats being (immediately) released after the first two were booked, for a total of 4 seats. Does anyone have experience with two more seats being released after the first two pairs of seats are taken, for a total of 6 seats?

6 in the J cabin is no doubt possible but you aren't going to know until you start taking some seats out of inventory. With USDM it would be easy to put seats on hold and see what happens...I did it the other day on TG...put the 2 available J seats on hold...waited, didn't ticket until 3 days later but throughout that time KVS still showed 2 seats available. With LifeMiles online clearly there is no putting things on hold, perhaps it is possible over the phone but I wouldn't fancy your chances!

 

[redtop]

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

6 in the J cabin is no doubt possible but you aren't going to know until you start taking some seats out of inventory. With USDM it would be easy to put seats on hold and see what happens...I did it the other day on TG...put the 2 available J seats on hold...waited, didn't ticket until 3 days later but throughout that time KVS still showed 2 seats available. With LifeMiles online clearly there is no putting things on hold, perhaps it is possible over the phone but I wouldn't fancy your chances!

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like there is no easy way figure it out beside manual trial and error for specific dates, as you suggest. In the mean time, I created a Thai frequent flyer account in the hopes that it would show the total uncapped award availability to its own members, but that was a dead-end, as it does not allow award searches without a certain minimum number of miles in the account.

 

[redtop]

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

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like there is no easy way figure it out beside manual trial and error for specific dates, as you suggest. In the mean time, I created a Thai frequent flyer account in the hopes that it would show the total uncapped award availability to its own members, but that was a dead-end, as it does not allow award searches without a certain minimum number of miles in the account.

As a follow-up to my own email, I should add that in the mean time, I also did effectively what you suggested using United holds, rather than USDM, since these could be done online. I was indeed able to get a total of 6 J seats in three batches, as well as a total of 8 Y seats in two batches, on two random dates. I hope I didn't eat up any award inventory for anyone else in doing so, but since the dates were many months in the future and I immediately canceled the holds, I am fairly confident Thai will go and re-release all the seats again. Certainly, 2 more J and 4 more Y were still showing as available after my experiments.

Pretty exciting how generous Thai is in releasing award availability, even if the total availability is rather veiled.

 

[redtop]

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

As a follow-up to my own email, I should add that in the mean time, I also did effectively what you suggested using United holds, rather than USDM, since these could be done online. I was indeed able to get a total of 6 J seats in three batches, as well as a total of 8 Y seats in two batches, on two random dates. I hope I didn't eat up any award inventory for anyone else in doing so, but since the dates were many months in the future and I immediately canceled the holds, I am fairly confident Thai will go and re-release all the seats again. Certainly, 2 more J and 4 more Y were still showing as available after my experiments.

Pretty exciting how generous Thai is in releasing award availability, even if the total availability is rather veiled.

One more followup for those interested--sorry for all the posts...
(Although what follows is clearly outside the scope of LM, for those interested, HG (Niki) and JL also operate in a similar way. That is, they only release a certain number of seats at a time to partners, but may immediately release another batch of seats to partners after the first batch is used up. On the other hand, in the case of HG and JL, I found that checking for award seats in their own respective programs--these both allow searches with a 0 mileage balance--shows a greater number of seats available, and that this greater number usually corresponds to the maximum number of seats they are willing to release to partners, although the releasing must be done in several batches). I wonder if Thai operates the same way, although it would be much more difficult to determine since it would require a *huge* Thai mileage balance).

 

[HWilliams]

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

Has Lifemiles ever increased the amount of points needed to claim a booking? I'm thinking to take advantage of the offer, but not sure if I'm going to travel next year. If they increase, effectively the points are devalued. Alternatively, it would be good if you can claim tickets under another name other than the one that is on the account to make use of them if you can't manage to travel.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

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

Has Lifemiles ever increased the amount of points needed to claim a booking? I'm thinking to take advantage of the offer, but not sure if I'm going to travel next year. If they increase, effectively the points are devalued. Alternatively, it would be good if you can claim tickets under another name other than the one that is on the account to make use of them if you can't manage to travel.

they increased the number of points required in April or May this year. Without warning. And it was a pretty brutal increase in some cases.

 

[bcworld]

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

they increased the number of points required in April or May this year. Without warning. And it was a pretty brutal increase in some cases.

...and also increased the copay cost from a minimum of about $12.50/1000 to $15.

 

[bcworld]

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

Has Lifemiles ever increased the amount of points needed to claim a booking? I'm thinking to take advantage of the offer, but not sure if I'm going to travel next year. If they increase, effectively the points are devalued. Alternatively, it would be good if you can claim tickets under another name other than the one that is on the account to make use of them if you can't manage to travel.

You can book tickets for whoever you like from your account...you don't have to be travelling.

 

[MEL_Traveller]

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

You can book tickets for whoever you like from your account...you don't have to be travelling.

but I think the OP was hinting it would be nice if you could change names on the ticket in the event they couldn't travel? That's not possible.

 

[Bofter]

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

Does anyone have any tips to increase the success rate for LifeMiles bookings which don't succeed despite showing availability?

I have over a period tried a number of things that I wanted to book and which showed as available. Without fail, I get an error message on the page following the passenger name details screen. Different dates, different regions, different destinations, different numbers of passengers, none of it has worked. I have even tried both with and without passport numbers and with different formats for the phone number. In all cases I have confirmed availability through multiple sources.

I can get to the payment page if I test some bookings that aren't what I am after but not for the bookings that I most want to. The ones that I want aren't ridiculously complex, just something like ORD-PVG-MEL.

 

[smit0847]

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

Does anyone have any tips to increase the success rate for LifeMiles bookings which don't succeed despite showing availability?

I have over a period tried a number of things that I wanted to book and which showed as available. Without fail, I get an error message on the page following the passenger name details screen. Different dates, different regions, different destinations, different numbers of passengers, none of it has worked. I have even tried both with and without passport numbers and with different formats for the phone number. In all cases I have confirmed availability through multiple sources.

I can get to the payment page if I test some bookings that aren't what I am after but not for the bookings that I most want to. The ones that I want aren't ridiculously complex, just something like ORD-PVG-MEL.

Try searching on different browser platforms - chrome, safari, explorer etc.

 

[bcworld]

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

Does anyone have any tips to increase the success rate for LifeMiles bookings which don't succeed despite showing availability?

I have over a period tried a number of things that I wanted to book and which showed as available. Without fail, I get an error message on the page following the passenger name details screen. Different dates, different regions, different destinations, different numbers of passengers, none of it has worked. I have even tried both with and without passport numbers and with different formats for the phone number. In all cases I have confirmed availability through multiple sources.

I can get to the payment page if I test some bookings that aren't what I am after but not for the bookings that I most want to. The ones that I want aren't ridiculously complex, just something like ORD-PVG-MEL.

You're doing well if you successfully search for ORD as I believe entering this airport causes most browsers to go into an infinite javascript loop...FireFox seems to work though.

If you are making it to the passenger details screen then I'm not sure different browsers are going to help you. If the wesbite displays an itin that you can't complete booking...and you are confident that the availability is genuine...then you should be calling.