Questions and Answers

Hi,

Is it better value to accumulate (Iberia) Avios when flying with Avianca if you’re not flying cheap?

Thank you!!!
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Well Lifemiles are cheap to buy, do you have a use for Avios?

Say short and expensive flights on a One World carrier? Or live somewhere that the sweet spots on IB or BA charts is useful too you?

Or do you fly BA J and need Avios to upgrade to F?

The most valuable miles there is, are the ones that get you where you want to go.

If you live in *A fortress hub your use for Avios would be minimal, if you live in One world hub the Avios becomes much more valuable.

Thank you for your answer!

Here is the thing. I live in Colombia so I travel more often in Avianca.
I don’t buy Lifemiles or Avios because at the moment the currency is too weak against usd (lost 50% of its value during the past year), so it’s not really that cheap in my case.

I have some Avios from a couple of past trips I’ve done with Iberia and I would like to complete what’s missing so I can go on holidays to South Asia and get a good deal.
I’ve been calling to Avianca to ask how can I accumulate Avios with their flights, but they don’t seem to know. Next time I’ll try to fly using my passport number instead of my national ID so the miles don’t get automatically added to Lifemiles… and then email the folks in Iberia to get them.

But at the end of the day I’m not completely sure if it’s better to get Avios or just start from scratch with Lifemiles (Because I’ve used most of the ones I had) to get my trip to Asia.

The problem with the BA/Iberia Avios is that they are a zone based system. Might not be very good value on a trip from South America to South Asia.

[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2015/01/29/iberias-devalued-avios-program-bright-spot/[/URL]

Do you have a lot of Iberia Avios?

Around 35k!

Think you should wait for a real expert opinion from [USER=7]@Tiffany[/USER]

But from where I’m sitting it looks like you might have the miles in the wrong program to achieve you travel goals.

If you want to fly Iberia in J just to Europe your are still 7,5K points short for a one way ticket and 50K for return J Columbia-Europe.

Sorry to say this, but it look like you are a long way from a trip to Asia.

A return J trip booked with Lifemiles should cost 168K to SE Asia which would probably be less points than with Iberia and you would also earn the Lifemiles faster when flying Avianca than the Avios.

It might be worth to credit some flying to Iberia so that your miles don’t expire and perhaps get enough miles for a trip to say Europe if that is of any interest to you..

What you should perhaps consider is if some of the other *A programs would be better for you than Lifemiles.