This Month Only: Buy Miles to Get Discounted Award Tickets to Hawaii & Europe

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You can buy Avianca miles and get a 100% bonus until September 30, 2014.

Avianca is a member of the Star Alliance, so you can use their miles to book flights on airlines like United Airlines, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, and Air Canada.

Avianca 100% Buy Miles Promotion

Link:   Buy Avianca LifeMiles

You can buy up to 75,000 Avianca miles with this offer, and earn a 75,000 Avianca mile bonus (75,000 purchased Avianca miles + 75,000 bonus Avianca miles = 150,000 Avianca miles total).

You’ll pay $30 per 1,000 miles, or 3 cents per mile.  So if you buy 75,000 Avianca miles (the maximum amount), you’ll pay $2,250 and get 150,000 Avianca miles.  This means you’re paying 1.5 cents per mile ($2,250 cost to purchase Avianca miles / 150,000 Avianca miles).

There are a few conditions:

• You can only buy a maximum of 150,000 Avianca miles per calendar year
• You can’t buy Avianca miles if you did NOT join the LifeMiles program before September 2, 2014 (you can’t join now and participate in the promotion)
• Purchased Avianca miles do NOT count toward elite status

Buying Avianca miles counts as a travel purchase because you’re buying Avianca miles directly through Avianca.  So you can get extra points using your Chase Sapphire Preferred, Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express, or Barclaycard Arrival Plus World Elite Mastercard.

Or you could use whichever card you need to meet minimum spending requirements on.

How to Use Avianca Miles

Link:   Avianca Star Alliance Award Chart

Link:   Avianca LifeMiles Frequent Flyer Program

I’m not sure how I feel about Avianca’s frequent flyer program.

I like that you can use Avianca miles to book 1-way award tickets, and they do NOT add fuel surcharges!  You can also use Avianca miles on any Star Alliance airline, including United Airlines.   And you can book flights online.

But, you can only book flights that are searchable online.  You can NOT call in to book flights that don’t appear in Avianca’s online search, even if you know the award seats are available!

You can NOT book mixed cabin awards, which means you can’t book a Business Class ticket on 1 segment and coach on another. This means that I can’t book a Business Class award to Europe and fly in coach on a regional jet to get back to Austin!

But, the Avianca award chart doesn’t have separate award rates for high season and low season, so if you can find award seats during popular travel times, it could make sense to buy miles.  And sometimes it’s cheaper to use Avianca miles than other Star Alliance partner airline miles.

1.   Hawaii

For example, you should use Avianca miles to fly to Hawaii instead of United Airlines miles.

Flying round-trip from the US to Hawaii in coach costs 45,000 United Airlines miles on November 6, 2014, to November 13, 2014.  But you will only pay 40,000 Avianca miles.

So you’d pay $600 (40,000 Avianca miles x 1.5 cents per mile) if you bought Avianca miles during this promotion.  Which is a pretty good deal, if award seats are available.

The cheapest flight booked through Kayak from Austin to Honolulu is on US Airways for $713.  You’d save $113 buying Avianca miles ($713 cost to purchase ticket – $600 cost to purchase Avianca miles).  However, you won’t earn miles on an award ticket.

2.   Germany

You could fly round-trip in Business Class from New York to Munich on November 19, 2014, to November 25, 2014, for 105,000 Avianca miles compared to 140,000 United Airlines miles.

So you’d pay $1,575 (105,000 Avianca miles x 1.5 cents per mile) if you bought Avianca miles during this promotion.  This is a pretty good deal, if award seats are available.

The cheapest flight booked through Kayak from New York to Munich is on Incelandair for ~$2,291.

You’d save $716 buying Avianca miles (~$2,291 cost to purchase ticket – $1,575 cost to purchase Avianca miles).  But, you won’t earn miles on an award ticket.  And you might not be able to find seats.

You’re still spending money (although $1,575 for a Business Class ticket to Europe is good deal).  But you should do what’s comfortable for you.

Bottom Line

You can get a 100% bonus when you buy Avianca miles through September 30, 2014.

You can buy a maximum of 75,000 Avianca miles and get 75,000 Avianca miles for $2,250, which is 1.5 cents per mile.

You can use Avianca miles to fly on any Star Alliance airline.  You could save money buying Avianca miles instead of buying tickets.  But you do NOT earn miles on award tickets and you might not be able to find award seats.

Are you going to buy Avianca miles?