LifeMiles is the mileage program of Avianca, and they joined the Star Alliance in 2012. Ever since, they’ve been the avenue to buy low cost miles in the Star Alliance program, and get into premium cabins at a reasonable price. In one of my posts in December last year, I’d advised my readers to sign up for the program, because they frequently do promotions where you can get 100% bonus miles.

Now, for the past few days, uptil May 30, 2014, they are back with a 100% bonus promotion, where you would be able to buy miles at 1.5 USD cents per piece (about INR 0.90) for a total of 75000 miles which you can purchase. You get upto 150000 miles in return. (GlobetrotterHQ reports there is a buy 1 get 2 free promotion till May 23 for 20000 miles purchased)

The precondition is that your account should have been opened before the start of the current promotion, i.e., before May 5, 2014. Here are the salient T&C:

• This promotion is available between May 5th, and May 30th, 2014, as the last date of purchase
• Minimum of miles to buy per transaction: LM1,000
• Maximum miles to buy per transaction: LM75,000
• Maximum miles to buy during a calendar year: LM150,000 (including the bonus for promotional mile purchase)
• Miles must be purchased in multiples of 1,000
• Maximum number of transactions: 1 transaction

• Applies only to members enrolled in the program prior to May 5th, 2014

LifeMiles purchases are processed as airline transactions, which also means you can club this with the current promotion that Citibank PremierMiles is offering on foreign spends. If you buy LifeMiles right now, you get 20 PremierMiles per INR 100 worth of LifeMiles you buy, translating to roughly 1 PremierMile for every 5 miles you buy. So, if you max out the transaction by buying 75000 miles which will cost you roughly INR 1.36 lakhs, you get 150000 Avianca LifeMiles, and you also get 27246 PremierMiles (50% of which are bonus PM under the current 2x spend promotion). Here is the calculation.

I hope this makes sense to some of you who might want to be travelling international premium cabins in the months ahead. However, do only buy miles if you have a redemption in mind.

Related Posts:

• It might be a good time to sign up for the LifeMiles program
• Avianca LifeMiles offering a 100% bonus on buy miles promotion
• Citi offering 2x PremierMiles on International Spends

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