Avianca LifeMiles award sale: Fly business to Europe from 48,000 miles and other great discounts

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Avianca Lifemiles is one of the better award programs available for Star Alliance redemptions. It has a solid award chart and doesn’t pass on the sometimes outrageous fuel surcharges that other award programs do – you’ll only ever have to pay taxes and a reasonable $25 booking fee.

On top of their solid award chart, Avianca runs monthly sales where it discounts award flights on certain routes, and this month they’re back with some great deals. That includes discounts on all Star Alliance partners like United, Lufthansa and Air China. You can check here for the full list of routes, but some highlights include:

• Newark to Boston in economy for 4,500 miles
• San Francisco to Las Vegas in economy for 4,500 miles
• Newark to London in business for 48,000 miles one-way (20% discount)
• New York JFK to Frankfurt in business for 50,500 miles one-way (20% discount)
• Newark to Tel Aviv in business for 55,000 miles one-way (29% discount)
• San Francisco to Seoul in business for 56,500 miles one-way (25% discount)
• Los Angeles to Hong Kong in business for 64,000 miles one-way (15% discount)
• Los Angeles to Seoul in first for 72,000 miles one-way (20% discount)

That’s right, you can fly in United’s amazing Polaris business class to London for just 48,000 miles or to Israel for 55,000 miles. United normally charges a whopping 75,000 miles (or more if you’re flying a partner) for the same flight to Tel Aviv.

You’ll need to book your flight by December 9, 2019 to take advantage of the discount, but the discounts should apply to flights booked anytime throughout this year and next. Note that it’s only certain routes on sale, and not entire region-to-region. Since that’s the case, you may have to book a cheap positioning flight to get to the origin so you can fly on a discounted ticket. And there aren’t any tricks needed to get the discounts to appear, they’ll pop up in the search results when browsing eligible routes on Lifemiles’ website.

Avianca Lifemiles is a transfer partner of American Express, Citi and Capital One. Right now, you can transfer Citi ThankYou points to Avianca and receive a 25% bonus. That means you’d only need to move over 39,000 ThankYou points to Avianca to book that Newark to London flight  — that’s a pretty incredible deal.

If you’re interested in earning Lifemiles, you can sign up for one of the airline’s credit cards. The Avianca Vuela Visa® Card is currently offering a 40,000 mile bonus after your first purchase on the card in the first 90 days of account opening — for more about the card and its bonus read our Avianca Vuela credit card review. Or you can earn points with a card like The Platinum Card® from American Express or the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card and transfer them over to Avianca. After applying for the Amex Platinum and spending $6,000 in the first six months, you’d earn 100,000 bonus points. Although you likely wouldn’t earn the bonus before the end of the sale, you can use the points the next time a deal comes around.