A few days ago I released a video on my YouTube channel, about my experience booking a cheap business class ticket using LifeMiles. I also included the drawbacks and what you need to consider when booking such a ticket. Ultimately, it can be very rewarding so I strongly recommend to review the video. In this blog I will provide a summary.
Introduction to LifeMiles
LifeMiles is the award program of Avianca, the biggest airline of Colombia. Avianca is part of the Star Alliance and thus the award program offers the opportunity to book Star Alliance tickets using LifeMiles.
LifeMiles is famous among frequent flyers because of their attractive awards as well as their award bonus miles. Lifemiles regularly runs promotions which offer up to 170% bonus miles when purchasing miles. This could make purchasing LifeMiles an attractive proposition. But every advantage comes with a disadvantage… In the case of LifeMiles it’s their website which is notorious for having phantom awards (awards that don’t really exist), as well as glitches which makes it difficult to book an actual ticket. On top of that, their contact center also doesn’t have the best reputation.
Finding a suitable award
In my YT video I’m providing more details of my award journey which started trying to find a Business Class Ticket from Amsterdam to Dubai with Swiss. That Business Class ticket was 42,000 LifeMiles. Using the LifeMiles promotion, I was able to purchase 43,200 miles for a bit less than 560Euro. That would have been a great deal for a Swiss Business Class ticket to Dubai, via Zurich. However, this didn’t quite work out. So I found an alternative; Amsterdam to Muscat (Oman) via Istanbul in Business Class. Same amount of miles. In order to confirm that this was not a phantom award, I checked whether I could find the same award ticket using my United app. And indeed, also on United, this same award appeared. The required United miles was a lot more though (90,000) and purchasing the United miles would have been at least 3 times more expensive, even if there would have been a 100% United Miles promotion offer.
Buying the cheapest economy class one-way ticket from Amsterdam to Muscat with Turkish Airlines, would have been 577Euro. So, we would be able to buy a cheap Business Class ticket for roughly the price of an economy class ticket, using LifeMiles!
Booking the Award
After purchasing the miles, identifying the award, and confirming that the award was really valid, I tried booking it via the LifeMiles website. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to book any ticket using the LifeMiles website. I had to contact the call center and that was quite a lengthy process. After the contact center made a booking, I had to wait between 24 and 72 hours to get the payment link. The payment link included the taxes and an extra 25USD because I had to use the contact center…. After contacting the call center again, I finally got the payment link. And after paying, I again had to wait a couple of days before the final ticket was booked. Finally I received the E-Ticketnumber, but not before I again had to contact the call center myself.
Conclusion
Booking an award ticket via LifeMiles certainly requires patience and persistence, especially if the LifeMiles website doesn’t allow you to book the ticket directly online. In my Youtube video, I show that the initial booking made by the call center, isn’t actually a valid booking. This means that potentially the award booking could disappear during the timespan of 4 to 5 days it takes to get the booking confirmed. In my case, I only got my ticket confirmed a few days before departure. That’s a bit too much stress! But if you can plan well in advance and have some back-up options, then trying to book an award via LifeMiles can certainly be worth it!
Again, check out my Youtube video where I go through the booking process step by step and don’t forget to leave a thumbs up!
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