DansDeals will receive compensation if you are approved for a credit card via a link in this post. Terms apply to American Express benefits and offers, visit americanexpress.com to learn more.
Update, 2/3/25: This offer is alive again through 2/28/25.
Update, 11/1/24: This offer is alive again through 11/30/24.
Note that Lifemiles recently devalued most long-haul awards without warning, though most short-haul redemptions are unchanged.
United blocks some partner award space, so always check on availability before transferring.
You can subscribe to Lifemiles to get a 10% award rebate and free cancellations.
Originally posted on 5/1/22:
Transfer AMEX Points To Avianca Lifemiles And Get A 15% Transfer Bonus
You can transfer increments of 1,000 AMEX Membership Rewards Points into 1,150 Avianca Lifemiles through 5/31/22.
With this promotion you’ll be able to redeem United award flights for less than 6K points each way!
Lifemiles is one of the rare mileage programs that doesn’t collect any fuel surcharges. United is another program that does not collect fuel surcharges, but AMEX points can’t be transferred to United as they are exclusively with Chase.
AMEX cards with transferable Membership Rewards points to miles include, select benefits require enrollment via your AMEX account. Terms apply to offers on this page:- The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express is offering a rare bonus to earn 15,000 Membership Rewards® points after you spend $3,000 in eligible purchases on the Card within your first 3 months of Card Membership and offers 2 points per dollar spent on up to $50K spending annually 1 point per dollar thereafter, plus transfer points to airlines and hotels and keep AMEX points alive. Terms apply. Read more here.
- Limited Time Travel Offer through 6/30: The Business Platinum Card® from American Express is offering a 150K bonus for spending $20,000 in the first 3 months, plus, earn a $500 statement credit after you spend $2,500 on qualifying flights booked directly with airlines or through American Express Travel, as well as monthly credits, lounge access, and much more. Terms apply. Read more here.
- American Express® Business Gold Card is offering a 100K bonus for spending $15,000 in 3 months, monthly business credits, Walmart+ membership, up to 4 points per dollar spent with a $150K annual spend cap, and more benefits. Terms apply. Read more here.
- Business Green Rewards Card from American Express is offering a 15K bonus for spending $3,000 in 3 months. Terms apply.
- The Platinum Card® from American Express is offering an 80K bonus for spending $8,000 in the first 6 months and offers monthly credits, lounge access, and much more. Terms apply. Read more here.
- American Express® Gold Card is offering a 60K bonus for spending $6,000 in the first 6 months, monthly credits for Uber and Grubhub, and more. Terms apply. Read more here.
- AMEX Green Consumer Card is offering a 40K bonus for spending $3,000 in the first 6 months and offers up to $199 in annual CLEAR Plus® credits, $100 LoungeBuddy credit, plus transfer points to airlines and hotels and keep AMEX points alive. All information about the AMEX Green Card has been collected independently by DansDeals.
You can also transfer Marriott points to Lifemiles at a 60K:25K ratio, or Capital One or Citi ThankYou points to Lifemiles at a 1K:1K ratio.
Note that Avianca Lifemiles require earning activity every 12 months in order to stop your miles from expiring. Transferring points to Lifemiles will extend the points validity for 12 more months.
- You’ll need to open a Lifemiles account here before you can search for award tickets online.
- Lifemiles allows you to use cash+points on award tickets, where you can effectively buy miles from about 1.5 cents each on the award search results page. You do need to have 40% of the required miles in order to do this.
Avianca is a Star Alliance member and their Lifemiles program is an interesting one. Lifemiles can be used to book travel with partner airlines like United and Air Canada within North America.
Back when I used to give regular seminars I talked about many of the glitch cities that existed that allowed you to fly to Europe or Asia for just 12.5K Lifemiles, but a blogger managed to have them killed by complaining to the DoT about a flight that involved a trip from North America to Guam via Asia that Lifemiles used to count as a domestic US award.
They recently got rid of their award charts, so I set about figuring out what they now charge for awards.
On their old award chart, Lifemiles split up the US into 3 zones:
US Zone 1: Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Washington DC.
US Zone 2: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin
US Zone 3: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, Wyoming
This used to be the one-way mileage requirements for travel within the US:
| From/To | US Zone 1 | US Zone 2 | US Zone 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Zone 1 | 7.5K Coach 15K Business | 10K Coach 15K Business | 12.5K Coach 25K Business |
| US Zone 2 | 10K Coach 15K Business | 7.5K Coach 15K Business | 12.5K Coach 25K Business |
| US Zone 3 | 12.5K Coach 25K Business | 12.5K Coach 25K Business | 7.5K Coach 15K Business |
The new formula isn’t published, but first I tried to figure out if it could be based off of the previous zones.
It soon became clear that the old zones are dead and things were working based on the distance of the flight.
I used GCMap.com to calculate the distance between airports and try to figure out what their new award chart is.
I included the distance flown in parenthesis in the sample routes below. Based on those I believe that Lifemiles typically charges:
- 6.5K miles in coach and 15K-16K miles in business for flights under 500 miles in distance.
- 7.5K miles in coach and 15K-16K miles in business for flights 500-799 miles in distance.
- 10K miles in coach and 15K-25K miles in business for flights 800-1,199 miles in distance.
- 12.5K+ miles in coach and 15K+ miles in business for flights 1,200+ miles in distance.
There are some exceptions. The short haul pricing only seems to apply within the US, as flights between NYC and Toronto or Montreal are 10K in coach or 15K in business. Chicago to Great Falls is 1,210 miles in distance and should cost 12.5K miles in coach, but only costs 7.5K miles. But for the most part, domestic routes in coach seemed to follow this formula.
Business class pricing though is all over the place.
Lifemiles used to always charge a $25 booking fee on top of tax, but now the booking fee is variable and starts at $10.
Note that Lifemiles also allows cash plus points. For example you can use 3.5K miles+$45 instead of 6.5K miles.
- All of these routes are under 500 miles in distance, cost 6.5K miles each way in coach, and had a $10 booking fee:
- Chicago-Kansas City (403): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Cleveland-Chicago (315): 6.5K coach, 16K business. $10 booking fee.
- Houston-New Orleans (305): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- LaGuardia/Newark-Cleveland (404): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Boston (200): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Columbus (463): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Detroit (488): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Pittsburgh (319): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Washington/IAD (212): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Las Vegas (236): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Phoenix (370): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-San Francisco (337): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Washington/IAD-Charlotte (322): 6.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- The following routes cost 7.5K miles in coach and vary between 500-799 miles in distance. The booking fee on these is $10 as well:
- Newark-Atlanta (746): 7.5K coach, 16K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Charlotte (529): 7.5K coach, 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- Newark-Cincinnati (569): 7.5K coach, 16K business. $10 booking fee.
- LaGuardia/Newark-Chicago (719): 7.5K coach, 16K business. $10 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Jackson Hole (784): 7.5K coach. 15K business. $10 booking fee.
- San Francisco-Seattle (679): 7.5K coach, 25K business. $10 booking fee.
- Washington/IAD-Orlando (758): 7.5K coach, 16K business. $10 booking fee.
Exception route: Chicago-Great Falls (1,210): 7.5K coach, 15K business. $25 booking fee.
- The following routes cost 10K miles each and vary between 800-1,199 miles in distance. The booking fee on these ranged from $15-$25:
- Chicago-Bozeman (1,186): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Chicago-Denver (888): 10K coach, 25K business. $15 booking fee.
- Cleveland-Orlando (895): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Chicago-Fort Lauderdale (1,182): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- LaGuardia/Newark-Toronto (357): 10K coach, 15K business. $25 booking fee.
- LaGuardia/Newark-Montreal (324): 10K coach, 15K business. $25 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Colorado Springs (833): 10K coach. $15 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Denver (862): 10K coach, 25K business. $15 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Seattle (954): 10K coach, 25K business. $15 booking fee.
- Newark-Fort Lauderdale (1,065): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Newark-Kansas City (1,094): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Newark-Orlando (937): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Newark-New Orleans (1,167): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Washington/IAD-Fort Lauderdale (901): 10K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- The following awards over 1,200 miles in distance cost 12.5K or more miles:
- Chicago-El Paso (1,236): 12.5K coach, 25K business. $15 booking fee.
- Chicago-Salt Lake City (1,250): 12.5K coach, 25K business. $15 booking fee.
- LaGuardia/Newark-Houston (1,400): 12.5K coach, 15K business. $15 booking fee.
- Newark-Vancouver (2,429): 12.5K coach, 25K business. $25 booking fee.
- Newark-Los Angeles (2,454): 13.5K coach, 25K business. $25 booking fee.
- Los Angeles-Honolulu (2,256): 15K coach, 40K business. $25 booking fee.
- Newark-Honolulu (4,962): 15K coach. Keep dreaming in business. $25 booking fee.
- JFK-Zurich (3,931): 16.5K coach, 63K business. $25 booking fee.
- Newark-Sao Paulo (4,758): 30K coach, 50K business. $25 booking fee.
- Newark-Tel Aviv (5,692): 42.5K coach, 78K business. $25 booking fee.
While I typically book all of my travel as one-way as that allows the most flexibility, with Lifemiles you’ll pay the booking fee twice if you book 2 one-way awards instead of a round-trip award.
It’s worth noting that Lifemiles has non-existent customer service and their website does not see all of the awards that it should, so you should always check for availability before transferring miles.
Will you transfer points to Lifemiles?
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65 Comments On "Transfer AMEX Points To Avianca Lifemiles And Get A 15% Transfer Bonus, Fly United From 5.6K Points!"
All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.
I did a transfer today and the Extra points did not show. definitely NOT hard wired at the AMEX site
@dan, weren’t they going bankrupt? I was hesitant to transfer into their program because of that…
They exited bankruptcy in December.
based on all these transfer whtas my cheapest optiom to get from nyc to tlv?
If united has saver award available, I think lifemiles would charge 42.5K economy one way, so if a cash ticket isn’t cheaper for your dates, this transfer can make sense
@Dan “LaGuardia/Newark-Montreal (324): 10K coach, 15K business” – I’m on the website now, it says 6,500 points
Promotion is valid from Nov 16 till dec 7
does the promotion come right away? also how much do they charge for a lap child on international flights?
thanks!
Promotion usually comes right away, but I’m not sure if it is guarantied, I once tried asking about infant ticket, and they simply told me to contact the courier, and there the price was 10% of full cash price
I transferred some miles to Avianca lifemiles- first of all how does one do earning to make sure it does not expire- and/or can you just transfer more to do that for any miles in account to not expire, and also how can one use it on united travel now?
1. According to lifemiles rules, transferring in more miles will not extend miles validity, but some people have reported online that it works, so it might just work…. other options are flying/staying/renting with partners and aquiring the miles to lifemiles, or simply spending a few dollars on shopping at
https://www.lifemiles.com/shop/shopping-partners
2. any united saver award ticket should be available on lifemiles.com
“How can you extend the expiration date of your LifeMiles?
Buy miles at special prices
Purchase at any of our more than 300 commercial partners.
Pay your everyday purchases with your Avianca LifeMiles credit or debit card
Fly with Avianca, Star Alliance member airlines, Aeromexico, GOL, or Iberia.
Join Club LifeMiles
Transfer points to miles”
From where is this information coming??
I just transferred from MR to LM today. Even though the bonus offer didn’t show up on the Amex end, when I actually transferred the points, the bonus did reflect in my LM account.
Data point: I transferred 1000 miles 2 days ago to extend my expiration (expiration date was Aug 31 2023) and it was extended to June 30 2024. I wasn’t sure if extend by 12 months was supposed to be from expiration date or from transfer date. Apparently neither.
Lifemiles Website has been down for days now. You may want to hold on any transfers until they get it fixed
Works for me.
Use an incognito browser.
Which browser do you use?
Didn’t work for me in Chrome incognito either (Chrome keeps some cookies even in incognito unless you select otherwise), but did work for me in Firefox.
didnt work for me too
Lifemiles charges a $25 redemption fee per person that they don’t disclose until checkout.
I tried now again with 4 different browsers and it is not working. I can get up to the search page, but nothing comes in to be able to select dates. This is after I used the site successfully dozens of times over 15 months.. Anyone have a good suggestion?
have you tried using a different IP? try on your phone with cellular data
Can someone help a friend out? I’m trying to book a flight to Hawaii on aviancas website from Newark. Hawaii doesn’t come up in destinations and neither does other cities as well.
Same, can’t get the site even incognito (or app) to pull actual flights. It gets to the pick a date page, and won’t go any further
Got it to work in Microsoft Edge Private
I’m in the same boat. Can’t get the site in any browser (chrome, safari, edge, Firefox) or via the iPhone app to actually load a flight. It just gets stuck after the date selection. Any tips other than try a different browser and private / incognito mode? Thanks
So for whatever reason, I am not able to get the Lifemiles site to work in Lakewood, NJ at all on any browser.. However, when I went to Beachwood, OH for the weekend, it has been working there.. Must be b’zchus Dan!! 🙂
LOL!
I just tranfered from amex to life miles and I still got a 15% bonus!
how much do they charge for partner awards for lap infants
I just tranfered from amex to life miles and I still got a 15% bonus!
I did a transfer of 47k points on Friday and got 15% more than expected.
Was for LAX-CGK through TPE on china airlines.
Jfk to tlv looks expensive then delta and other airlines…
I transferred 1,000 points, to see if it would work, I opened LIfemiles and it showed right away 1,150 transfer. got the 15%. TY
Nice!
Does a transfer with Avianca / Lifemiles extend the experation date of miles?
Yes
once again, you rock! Thanks for all.
Does united availability with life miles line up with any of the other partners?
Do you have to have the ccount open for a minumum amount of days before ransfering the poits?
They seem to be quite expensive from NYC to TLV
@dan any work around booking with lifemiles an award that should be listed on their website but it isn’t as you mentioned that it can happen.
Try searching by the specific airline instead of the smart search, that sometimes works. If it doesn’t there’s not much you can do
Let’s say I want to go from nyc to Fll. Can I search the United site and if there is an availability it will be available of lifemiles or they have a limited number of tickets they can offer? Thank you
No. They will only show saver awards and even those don’t always show up
Its a very simple search on the Lifemiles website.. when you put in the destination, it prompts you for a date and on the monthly calendar it shows in blue which days they have flights available.. As Dan recommends, always best to do search one way segments initially..
Is the website down?
Hi Dan hope all is well.. not sure where to post this, but it is applicable to Lifemiles as well.. I am looking ahead to book flights back from CLE-EWR and there are almost no later in the day flights with United anymore.. Whats up with that, are they cutting back..?
Thank you
chase points can transfer to lifemiles ?
No
how to book on virgin with points in the USA on delta, it seems nothing available when going to seat checker it doesn’t gimmy the option for USA airports
They block availability to partners within 3 weeks. Use the seat checker for a delta flight between any 2 cities and then change the airport codes in the url (ALL CAPS) to the ones in the US you’re looking for
The Virgin site/tools appear to be very corrupt, keeps getting back to the booking page w/ no results. Anyone else?
Any similar LifeMiles distance based awards on Star Alliance carriers outside of North America? Like intra-Asia, Europe or Africa? Sometimes I need these flights and in some markets relatively short flights can be expensive. UA is now expensive for these partner awards, but AC’s new chart might be OK.
Did not see the update on Amex, tested 1k to see if somehow it transfers as 1.15k
Worked!
Not showing on my Amex, is this from avianca
Yes
Ok just tried, for some reason none of the miles posted ( usually they hit instantly)but will update as soon as it the transfer hits avianca
thx for the reminder. but for some odd reason the website displays this error when clicking on show all for transfer points to partners
I just transferred a 100k this past Friday. Worth contacting Amex?
Nope, the bonus is from Lifemiles.
Worthless! no flights maybe 1 or 2 per month on miles, almost never can you find anything on lifemiles
It may be worth to subscribe for Life Miles plus you automatically get the ticket for 10% less points and with the basic plan $50 monthly you also get free changes and cancelations!
With the basic plan you get receive 2000 miles monthly fairly worth $25 bringing down the monthly fee to $25, and if you save for example 7k on a biz ticket that’s a saving of fairly $100, that’s a net gain and best of all is the free changes and cancelations!
So after flying and you don’t need the membership anymore, while you cannot unsubscribe before 6 month you can downgrade to the lite plan $20 monthly, that also gives the 10% discount but not free cancelation, and earning 500 miles per month worth $7.5 bringing down the monthly fee to effectively $12.5 for the rest of the month