We’re now seeing a new publicly available Amex transfer bonus, which is great news.
Transfer Amex points to LifeMiles with a 15% bonus
Through April 1, 2019, the US Amex Membership Rewards program is offering a 15% bonus when you convert points into Avianca LifeMiles. Points ordinarily convert at a 1:1 ratio, though during this promotion you can convert 1,000 Amex points into 1,150 LifeMiles.
Lately Amex has been offering some targeted transfer bonuses, though best I can tell this one should be available to all US Amex Membership Rewards members.
There’s no limit to how often you can take advantage of this promotion, and the bonus is hard coded into the transfer ratio, meaning that you can earn the bonus on multiple transactions.
While LifeMiles have long been accessible by outright buying them given all the promotions that the program offers, it’s great to see that within the past year they’ve been added as a transfer partner for Amex, Capital One, and Citi.
LifeMiles was added as an Amex transfer partner in November 2018, and to my knowledge this is the first time they’ve offered a transfer bonus. We did see a 25% transfer bonus from Citi to LifeMiles last fall.
The value of LifeMiles
LifeMiles is a great program for booking Star Alliance award tickets. To give a few examples of one way premium cabin redemption rates:
- US to Europe in business class costs 63,000 miles
- US to Europe in first class costs 87,000 miles
- US to Southeast Asia in business class costs 78,000 miles
- US to North Asia in first class costs 90,000 miles
Redeeming LifeMiles for ANA first class is a great value
Furthermore, LifeMiles offers short-haul economy awards within the US starting at just 7,500 miles one-way, so they’re a useful program for that as well.
The great thing about the LifeMiles program is that they allow one-way award tickets, they don’t impose fuel surcharges, and partner airline awards can be booked directly through their website.
The one consideration is that LifeMiles recently launched a new website that’s supposed to be easier to use, though a lot of people have been having issues with it. So if you do transfer points with a specific use in mind, make sure what you’re looking for is actually bookable.
Redeem your LifeMiles for Thai first class
Bottom line
It’s great to see an Amex Membership Rewards transfer bonus to a program as useful as LifeMiles. Personally I use LifeMiles all the time for premium cabin Star Alliance redemptions, and find the program consistently offers great value, at least when they correctly show award space.
Just remember that LifeMiles also sells miles directly, often at a reasonable cost, so I know some prefer to save their Amex points for other uses, and just buy miles directly.
Do you plan on converting Amex points into LifeMiles with this bonus?
Side question: any trip report planned or coming soon?
Haven’t seen any in a while.
Hey Ben, your mention of US oneways is actually a bigger, more exciting issue: I’ve used LifeMiles very economically within SE Asia, especially on Thai within Thailand. Economical but weird, in that the number of miles BKK-HKT (Bangkok to Phuket) differs from HKT-BKK.
LifeMiles is great value, especially for Canadians, who have to buy miles because we get precisely 0.000452% of the Welcome Bonuses that your US readers get.
I would be very careful with Lifemiles at the moment. In the last few months I have not been able to book anything online. Availability is showing but in the middle of the booking process it fails with an error message. The call centre can’t book them either. The only way is to send a manual booking request by email. I missed out on my last three bookings on AC and NH. By the time they called me 3 days later the seats were gone. The new website has not fixed this problem. They admit they are having major issues and they have no idea when it will be fixed. It has been going on for at least 4 months. I’m now stuck with 500,000 Lifemiles that I cannot use. BEWARE.
@ Grorges I guess I lucked out then. Was able to find a return ticket flying LH on JFK-FRA-JFK and booked it easily on the website. Issued immediately without problems. I had JFK-FRA in J (which I then paid to upgrade to F at the check-in counter) and FRA-JFK in F.
Using LifeMiles to book ANA is actually very useful even though ANA itself charges less mileages because after you factor in the surcharge that ANA charges you, LifeMiles basically charges you about the same. So, it’s a great way to fly ANA if you want to use miles entirely without paying cash at all.
happily report, I just redeemed 4 business class from JFK to GVA without any issue. couldn’t believe they open this availability on good Friday, not 1 or 2 but at least 8.