Another day, another devaluation…
The avianca lifemiles program is known for being useful for Star Alliance redemptions. Not only does lifemiles often sell miles at an attractive cost, but the program also partners with major transferable points currencies. Unfortunately the value of lifemiles has just decreased, as we’ve just seen another devaluation, the second one in about six months.
In this post:
The lifemiles program increases award costs again
While lifemiles no longer publishes award charts, the program does have consistent pricing between particular city pairs for travel on partner airlines, so we always have a sense of what pricing should be like. Unfortunately within the past couple of days, many award costs have increased.
In isolation, these devaluations wouldn’t be so bad. The issue is that lifemiles also had a devaluation in August 2024, so we’re seeing many award costs increase for a second time in a matter of months.
For example, most one-way transatlantic business class awards have increased in cost from 70,000 to 80,000 miles. With the previous devaluation, those awards had increased in cost from 63,000 to 70,000 miles. 
During the last round of changes, we did see some prices actually decrease as well. For example, the shortest transatlantic awards (like between London and Newark) had decreased in cost from 63,000 to 45,000 miles one-way. That was temporary relief, because those award costs have now been aligned with the standard devalued prices, of 80,000 miles. Ouch.
One-way business class awards between the United States and the South Pacific have increased in cost from 80,000 miles to 100,000 miles.
Obviously this is by no means a comprehensive look at the changes, but just some examples. It’s hard to know the full extent of the increases, given the lack of award charts.
The other thing that’s really standing out to me is that it seems like lifemiles has significantly upped the amount of blocking it does of partner award seats. The program has long been known for not providing access to all Star Alliance award seats. However, I’m noticing that more now than ever before.
Like, it just took me about 10 minutes to actually find the first example of these increases, since every route I was searching that should’ve had availability through partners wasn’t showing through lifemiles’ website.
I think this is part of a much bigger industry shift
I hate to make this prediction, but I think bigger picture, we’re sort of entering a new era in the miles & points world. Recently I wrote a post about how the miles & points world has changed over time, both for better and worse, and how it’s continuing to evolve.
Over the past several years, we’ve seen a couple of trends as it impacts partner award availability. First of all, airlines have increasingly only made award seats available to members of their own frequent flyer programs, and not to members of partner frequent flyer programs. Second of all, we’ve seen a countless number of devaluations.
Honestly, I think we’re maybe a couple of years away from the concept of useful premium cabin partner award availability in premium cabins being obsolete. This ultimately comes down to airlines getting savvier, plus technology constantly improving.
Let me be clear, that’s not necessarily all bad news. As I wrote about some time back, ultimately miles & points are much easier to earn, and transferable points currencies make it easy to earn miles directly with the airline you want to fly. For that matter, transferable points can now largely be efficiently used to just outright book a ticket with cash, and airlines have made premium cabin fares more reasonably priced (leading to more premium seats being sold).
This game has no doubt changed, and between the constant devaluations and the restrictions in award space, there’s less and less value by the day with these kinds of partner redemptions. 
Bottom line
The avianca lifemiles program has just increased many award costs without notice, for a second time in a matter of months. Awards that cost 63,000 miles in business class six months ago, now cost 80,000 miles (with the previous devaluation having increased costs to 70,000 miles). To me the even bigger issue is that I’m also seeing a drastic increase in the amount of partner award space that lifemiles isn’t showing.
Ultimately the miles & points game is always evolving, and the same sweet spots don’t always stay the same.
What do you make of this lifemiles devaluation?
Where are you finding all this availability? For months I have been looking for flights and searching multiple routes, but nothing, nada. Given up on them altogether now and used my last miles for hotels instead
Points collecting has become mass market, so its going to become trash as the airlines make it cost more to get less. Why not, when millions of people who know nothing about points beyond signing up for credit cards are then happy to spend hundreds of thousands of points on a one off flight?
Extinction of "premium cabin partner award availability" isn't savvy, it's insane. Many (most?) people save their miles for those awards. The multi-billion-dollar valuations of frequent flyer schemes are precisely because of that. If the awards people want go away, passengers will just buy whatever ticket is cheapest and not have any loyalty, at which point those multi-billion-dollar valuations drop to almost zero.
I'm using a hotel credit card because airline ones aren't worth it any...
Extinction of "premium cabin partner award availability" isn't savvy, it's insane. Many (most?) people save their miles for those awards. The multi-billion-dollar valuations of frequent flyer schemes are precisely because of that. If the awards people want go away, passengers will just buy whatever ticket is cheapest and not have any loyalty, at which point those multi-billion-dollar valuations drop to almost zero.
I'm using a hotel credit card because airline ones aren't worth it any more. Those airline credit cards are the only thing keeping airlines profitable!
I have put up with AviancaLM for years for the occassional partner award sweet spots and the low cost of miles in their never-ending sales. (Never have or plan to set foot on one of their own aircraft).
This is despite their appalling call centres with their bizzare rules,
know-nothing agents, and those where their self confidence in the English language is sadly misplaced. If you can believe it, the current outdated and...
I have put up with AviancaLM for years for the occassional partner award sweet spots and the low cost of miles in their never-ending sales. (Never have or plan to set foot on one of their own aircraft).
This is despite their appalling call centres with their bizzare rules,
know-nothing agents, and those where their self confidence in the English language is sadly misplaced. If you can believe it, the current outdated and tortuous search engine is mildly better than the preceding one, but also way past its use-by date.
With the onerous fees for changing or cancelling bookings, and now another devaluation with even less decent inventory what is there to like about LifeMiles?
Nothing.
GUM-HNL used to be 22'500 one way in economy. It's now 45'000.
Was anyone dumb enough to get their credit card and pay for their "enhanced benefits"?! This is almost as bad the tRump shytecoin rug pull that burned 200,000 greedy Magatards. Lmfao.
I'm still shocked how people can tolerate their website/app. It's utter garbage and turns what would take less than 10 minutes on other airlines to a half hour search sometimes.
The only thing remotely close to a "good deal" that I've stumbled across lately was a LH 747 from Denver to Munich. I'll probably end up burning my points on short-haul United.
TK next January MIA—IST-PRG is priced at 70k but MIA-IST-VCE is priced at 80k in J.. why the difference?
I've been using my remaining LM shearley due to the frustrations in the booking process. I did book BR J today. MNL TPE PEK for 24000 (and last minute). But the system threw error messages for the 1st 3 attempts and I had to start over.
When you say you had trouble finding redemptions to test this on, even when the availability showed on partner websites were are you searching for United and Lufthansa redemptions in business class within the next three weeks?
Per FT, avianca is (or was) blocking this category of redemptions. Redemptions on United and Lufthansa in business class were only possible with more than three weeks notice…
I've personally found blocking of LOT, Swiss, and Air Canada business class as well, but only on trans-oceanic flights. Close-in business class within Asia and between Asia and Europe seems to be bookable, as is close-in transborder business class on AC.
Agree with some of your sentiments about it being game over soon. Too many miles and points people killing the golden goose. I've noticed a significant deterioration of flyers in the premium cabins these days. People who would definitely not pay cash premium rates.
Why should any partner airlines like SQ, nz etc degrade their cabin experience for cash business class clients when these point hacking types are gaming the system. I'm on frequent...
Agree with some of your sentiments about it being game over soon. Too many miles and points people killing the golden goose. I've noticed a significant deterioration of flyers in the premium cabins these days. People who would definitely not pay cash premium rates.
Why should any partner airlines like SQ, nz etc degrade their cabin experience for cash business class clients when these point hacking types are gaming the system. I'm on frequent flyer forums where people brag about their manufactured spend in 6 figures. Utterly and totally gaming the system. The credit card companies stand by and allow it as long as they get to clip the ticket.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's partner airlines not releasing premium award space to certain airlines but the airlines themselves like Lifemiles blocking premium award space for cashflow reasons. They've found they ran far too many miles sales and now the numbers don't stack up when they have to pay for the partner premium award space.
Particularly those on US routes and united airlines. Predictable really with the amount of money printing going on by the credit card companies.
Agreed the lifemiles award costs have gone up. However I'm not seeing a dramatic decrease in award space from my home base in Oceania. However I can understand why there is little premium award space to and from North America.
One question I keep asking myself is with the constant devaluations (aside from inflation, more miles in public, less supply in seats as travel hits all time highs, etc.) is raising Award redemption prices the main way to fight back depreciation/ liabilities? These loyalty programs have to forecast and pay for unused miles perpetually like all depreciation, so is the driving factor a belief if they charge more, people will burn more? Wonder what the...
One question I keep asking myself is with the constant devaluations (aside from inflation, more miles in public, less supply in seats as travel hits all time highs, etc.) is raising Award redemption prices the main way to fight back depreciation/ liabilities? These loyalty programs have to forecast and pay for unused miles perpetually like all depreciation, so is the driving factor a belief if they charge more, people will burn more? Wonder what the actual data shows vs. some dumb consultant coming in and pointing out singular anomalies (like a user gaming the program) and influencing a systematic change.
Miles depreciation and or liabilities at the program level is one discussion I rarely ever see discussed.
This is really purposefully underplaying it. 46K awards are now 85K or 100K. Costs have about, or more than, doubled generally. LM now has the highest pricing amongst *A airlines, more than double that of other *A programs like Miles & More for many routes.
I’ve never found anything TATL in J from LAX. I’ll use them up on lax-sfo
Whilst they removed the 45k LHR-EWR-LHR J Class Award, they did not remove a few other 55k J TATL Awards. Yet.
I suspect those will be shortly as well. What a great reminder to never ever hoard any points anywhere.
Points are weaker than the Argentine peso.
Its because of stupid influencers on instagram and tik tok "i flew for free on first class with this card" (eeh no, its business class).
It's a corporation. It's not going to love you back.
I was a LifeMiles defender in OMAAT comments threads, up until this deval, which crosses a line for me. For now, LM purchases are on hold.
But I disagree with the chorus of "Points and Miles are over, Ben's gonna retire, we had a good run, everyone should get CashBack cards", all of which is nonsense.
I bought a shirtload of VS points during the...
It's a corporation. It's not going to love you back.
I was a LifeMiles defender in OMAAT comments threads, up until this deval, which crosses a line for me. For now, LM purchases are on hold.
But I disagree with the chorus of "Points and Miles are over, Ben's gonna retire, we had a good run, everyone should get CashBack cards", all of which is nonsense.
I bought a shirtload of VS points during the current sale and booked Saudia from YYZ at attractive rates. Using availability tools and alerts to find EI seats, booking with AS or BA points is a bargain. Friend asked me if I could help him use his AC points for HKG-YYZ this month and in my very first seats.aero session I found NRT-YYZ for 82k (told him to get himself to Tokyo). Recently I took 7 friends to CUN for 88,000 AC points. Really it goes on and on.
The sky is not, in fact, falling. Some places are stormy but there's sunshine to be found. It's just that the clouds always move and we have to adapt.
You know most people’s spouses don’t love them back either? Divorce rates are high and in any event the majority of couples are effectively roommates with the occasional indulgence in lascivious acts. That’s not true love.
In high end professional circles like mine, in order to succeed, your foremost love must be for your firm and in turn for your clients. No other way to get to $6MM profit per equity partner.
@Arps, why do you always feel the need to comment with such tripe? DenB was making some great points, and he's not the only one who feels this way.
Does this also affect Avianca's flights inside LATAM and to the US?
Other examples. Hawaii-Japan economy went from 27.5k to 45k. Hawaii-Micronesia economy 27.5k to 45k. LM was the best price on both those routes previously, now not.
I don't see how this works out for Avianca. The only thing the program had going for it was price, everything else about the program is inferior to the other Star Alliance programs. And it seems they totally blew that up their price advantage. What's the point of the business now? Why would customers bring in their transferable points? They did get to screw over everyone that had LM points sitting around, but it seems...
I don't see how this works out for Avianca. The only thing the program had going for it was price, everything else about the program is inferior to the other Star Alliance programs. And it seems they totally blew that up their price advantage. What's the point of the business now? Why would customers bring in their transferable points? They did get to screw over everyone that had LM points sitting around, but it seems like that's the end of the line. I would have thought any devaluation would have at least tried to match Aeroplan rates. Maybe they're abandoning the transferable market and just going to have the whole business model focus on selling points to people trying to get some (now small) arbitrage opportunities?
Why should there be any surprises that the airlines that frequently sell the most miles/points, either directly to consumers or indirectly via credit-card issuing banks, have the most frequent and dramatic rounds of devaluation of their miles/points?
Looks like LH first to/from the US is up to 120K.
Air Canada, Avianca, Turkish. Everyone thought they had it figured out.
Miles are much easier to earn - well, in the US. In Europe, where we dont have huge sign-up/spending bonuses for credit cards it is way way more difficult. Basically I can earn only flight miles, in some rare cases also for the spending
And you earn fewer miles for your flights than you used to!
Americans don't care about the troubles in Europe, brah.
Yes, I’m tired of bloggers saying points are easier to earn. They are only for one country in the world, whereas the rest of us have to pay for the devaluations created because of US credit cards
Kudos to Ben for acknowledging the change/decline in usefulness of some of these programs. I’m surprised LM has been so aggressive given that their use case has basically been as a mileage ticket aggregator.
I wonder at what point these programs won’t meet critical mass and see a fall in signups. All these moves make sense in an environment of infinite travel growth, less so when the imminent trump recession decapitates travel spend and they’re desperate once again.
I can't use arround 350.000 LifeMiles that i have. No availability . I hate LifeMiles. Not again!!!
why would you have so many lifemiles?
Umm last week I almost booked ADB-MIA on business with TK for 69K…with discount was 62K…didn’t book because was only 1 seat available♂️
Blocking award space is the worst change. It is extremely hard to find partner business class space with Lifemiles these days, even though same flights are available via other *A's programs.
Aeroplan has been blocking partners for a while now, yet still has constant 'sales' of points, every blog touts them.
Try booking a business class flight on Thai from BKK to Europe that they actually show as available on their site. You receive an error code and calling in gets you nowhere. Not only are they blocking they are also showing flights as available that are not bookable. Be cool to see someone call them out for that.
This is an issue specific to TG. For many months now they are not releasing any award space to all *A Airlines except UA.
Same problem for LH, AC, NH, SQ etc.
ANA first class is now up to 144k (and I have Lifemiles+ so I'm assuming it's 160k base). From 90k six months ago. Increased CC bonuses aren't keeping up with that rate of inflation.
Does LM think that people have LM because they fly Avianca? They just priced themselves into irrelevance. No one will transfer MR/TY points or credit to AV now.
If the award price is going to be the same as UA, might as well book through UA for the flexibility and a booking process that actually works.
With TK and AV now irrelevant, I guess I'll save my Citi points for... CX? Or maybe that AA partnership will come through?
They were already doing weaksauce promos at 15% with Amex, while having higher redemption prices than Aeroplan.
Off-topic but TG serving caviar in business class has been completely under the radar:
https://www.instagram.com/thaiairways/p/DFejhGGzTO_/
wrong thread
Curious: how do you view your future as a points blogger when we see a decline in the points game?
Ben answered this years ago on an ABC News segment. He wants to someday have a house and a dog and to never get on a plane again. He already owns multiple homes and has a dog. He’s like 34 years old. Most likely the points game has another 5 or 6 years before it completely conks out (meaning every airline and hotel point is pegged exactly to 1 point = $0.011). That’ll put Ben at a comfortable retirement age of 40.
Did not know that. Thanks!
This is making me incredibly nervous about the value of my miles with other programmes, particularly within *A. It's hard to see what Avianca has to gain from devaluating so aggressively- not only does it not have a huge captive market for its core flying business, but it's going to alienate the sizable number of people using Lifemiles without flying the airline much [if at all]. I'm starting to wonder whether the reimbursement rates within...
This is making me incredibly nervous about the value of my miles with other programmes, particularly within *A. It's hard to see what Avianca has to gain from devaluating so aggressively- not only does it not have a huge captive market for its core flying business, but it's going to alienate the sizable number of people using Lifemiles without flying the airline much [if at all]. I'm starting to wonder whether the reimbursement rates within the alliance have been increasing.
With airlines increasingly silo-ing themselves from providing alliance partners benefits and less award spaces, more than ever regular consumers should just get a cashback card and cut the middle man (airlines) out of the picture. That's how I've been recommending cards lately anyways, since the juice really isn't worth the squeeze anymore.
One of the great things is that many of the cashback cards provide the option of getting the cash back or, if one can find a (real, and not phantom) redemption in a premium, then use the cashback amount as points for transferring to the program that's offering the redemption.
Are there cashback cards that offer 5x on airfare? 4x on dining? Isn't the best you can get 2x on the Citi Double Cash?
2% is the bare minimum, there are cards that offer 3-6% but come with a spend cap (about $500 per month average), and some that reward you for using the card's travel portal to book.
Getting ever harder to use my 6 and 7 figure balance of points between AMEX, CAP1, and Citi rewards. Silver lining is we used up our stash of 1 mill AA miles (almost exclusively on Qatar/Etihad business/first class travel between usa/india) purchased in the 2021 promotion where 240 miles per dollar was given for donating to some charity.
Wasnt trying to hoard points but theres only so much travel we can do in a year given work schedules :(
Points and miles game is almost beaten to death. With industry changes the currency valuation should be given a second look. Programs have engaged in taking advantage of consumers while credit card companies have raked in astronomical profits.
Travel bloggers should start going on a strike stop advertising any Avianca Lifemiles sales to punish them. I know Ben and many other bloggers always put out a statement saying only buy them if you have a plan redeeming them in mind. But it is simply not enough. We need to work together to stop giving these miles company a free advertisement.
It's not free advertisment, in fact it's very lucrative for bloggers to push this kind of sponsored content. They will absolutely not stop.
You will continue to see Ben post about LifeMiles sales.
Well, then if no bloggers are willing to speak up in the name of $, then let it be. Just hope the audience will have the wisdom to do the right thing.
What's worse than just devaluation is the introduction of junk fees on some TATL flights.
@ WorldLiner -- I've seen mention of that, but can't actually find it. Do you have an example?
@Ben Schlappig, try a redemption through Lufthansa out of or through Frankfurt, $359 in fees attached to it. Awards out of Europe will have high fees attached and not the other way around.