Avianca Airlines: The Complete Guide To Earning and Redeeming LifeMiles

In order to gain Silver, Gold or Diamond elite status, you must meet status requirements within a calendar year (January 1 to December 31). All members who met the airline’s Elite status requirements in 2019 and received it on March 1, 2020 will have their status extended until January 31, 2022. The status will be automatically extended on March 1, 2021 without the need for customers to contact the airline.

As you move up in elite status, you’ll unlock additional exclusive benefits:

Elite status members also get extra baggage perks:

The following Star Alliance benefits apply with your LifeMiles elite status:

Avianca lets their elite members take maternity leaves from the LifeMiles program. If you recently gave birth, you can extend your elite status for another full year. For example, if your Silver status is valid until February 2020, and your baby was born on October 1, 2019, you can enjoy Silver status until February 2021.

To qualify, you must:

• Be a LifeMiles Elite member at the time of your baby’s birth.
• Request the extension through the Avianca Call Center.
• Submit a scanned copy of your child’s birth certificate.

Earn status benefits for life with Cenit acknowledgment:

To qualify for Cenit, you need to be at least 60 years old and a member of LifeMiles (or predecessor programs) for 15+ years.

Because Avianca is a member of Star Alliance, you can earn LifeMiles on both Avianca and member airline flights to 1,250+ destinations worldwide. The miles you earn on most Star Alliance partner flights also count towards LifeMiles Elite status.

Star Alliance members include:

You can also earn LifeMiles on Aeromexico and Iberia flights.

Avianca offers two co-branded credit cards, issued by Banco Popular based in Puerto Rico. Below are both LifeMiles-earning cards, along with a quick rundown of their features:

Additionally, Avianca Vuela cardholders get:

• One free additional baggage for travel between the United States and Central America.
• A 50% discount on an award ticket redeemed for travel from the United States to Central America or Colombia when you spend at least $12,000 each year.
• An additional 50% discount on an award ticket redeemed for travel from the United States to Central America or Columbia when you spend at least $24,000 each year.

LifeMiles has a large network of shopping and dining partners. Although most are South American, there are a number of American companies on the list, like American Eagle, Armani, Golds Gym, Harley Davidson, L’Occitane, P.F. Chang’s, Steve Madden, Tumi and Vans.

For a list of all partners along with earning rates, visit the LifeMiles shopping portal.

To maximize your earning potential, read our complete guide to online shopping portals.

Earn LifeMiles for hotel stays, car rentals and experiences. Partners include Avis, Booking.com, Hilton, Marriott, Rocket Travel and more.

We don’t normally recommend purchasing miles, because they’ll likely lose much of their value at redemption. However, LifeMiles offers regular bonuses on purchases. We’ve seen promotions for up to 200% bonus miles.

The regular purchase price is $33 for 1,000 LifeMiles, which comes out to $0.033 per mile. But with a LifeMiles purchase promotion you could be paying less than $0.0143 per mile. That’s far below what we average each mile to be worth, $0.017.

Keep in mind, you are limited to purchasing a maximum of 200,000 LifeMiles each calendar year (bonus miles excluded).

Use your LifeMiles for Avianca or partner-operated flights. There is no published Avianca award chart, but there is an online calculator that gives you mileage estimates for specific routes.

Star Alliance has region-based award charts for each member airline. To view, go to the LifeMiles partner page and click on a carrier. Scroll down to the “How to redeem your LifeMiles” section. Then, click on “Review here” after “Find out how many LifeMiles you need for a ticket on…”

When it comes time to redeem your LifeMiles for an award flight, keep the following points in mind:

• LifeMiles does not pass on any fuel surcharges – no matter which carrier you fly with. However, there is a $25 booking fee for all award tickets.
• LifeMiles does not offer the same Lufthansa first class availability as other Star Alliance programs.
• You can redeem in miles and cash, but you need at least 40% of the required miles.
• There are no stopovers allowed.
• There is no online award booking for non-alliance partners. You must call to redeem.

Use your LifeMiles to upgrade your seat on Avianca-operated flights.

You can also redeem your LifeMiles to upgrade on Star Alliance-operated flights, but restrictions do apply.

Use your LifeMiles to access hundreds of VIP lounges around the world. Entry to most lounges are priced between 4,500 to 8,000 miles.

Use your LifeMiles for a variety of other redemption options, like hotel stays, car rentals, extra baggage, experiences and donations. None of these will get you the best value for your miles, so we recommend avoiding them.

You can also transfer your miles to a friend or family member. Pay $15 for every 1,000 LifeMiles you want to transfer. So the cost to transfer is $0.015 per mile.

Like purchasing miles, LifeMiles will run limited-time transfer bonuses. For example, pay $15 for every 2,000 miles you transfer. That ends up being just $0.0075 per mile.