Lifemiles Devalues Award Ticket Costs (Again): This Is Rough

Another day, another devaluation…

The avianca lifemiles program is known for being useful for Star Alliance redemptions. Not only does lifemiles often sell miles at an attractive cost, but the program also partners with major transferable points currencies. Unfortunately the value of lifemiles has just decreased, as we’ve just seen another devaluation, the second one in about six months.

The lifemiles program increases award costs again

While lifemiles no longer publishes award charts, the program does have consistent pricing between particular city pairs for travel on partner airlines, so we always have a sense of what pricing should be like. Unfortunately within the past couple of days, many award costs have increased.

In isolation, these devaluations wouldn’t be so bad. The issue is that lifemiles also had a devaluation in August 2024, so we’re seeing many award costs increase for a second time in a matter of months.

For example, most one-way transatlantic business class awards have increased in cost from 70,000 to 80,000 miles. With the previous devaluation, those awards had increased in cost from 63,000 to 70,000 miles.

During the last round of changes, we did see some prices actually decrease as well. For example, the shortest transatlantic awards (like between London and Newark) had decreased in cost from 63,000 to 45,000 miles one-way. That was temporary relief, because those award costs have now been aligned with the standard devalued prices, of 80,000 miles. Ouch.

One-way business class awards between the United States and the South Pacific have increased in cost from 80,000 miles to 100,000 miles.

Obviously this is by no means a comprehensive look at the changes, but just some examples. It’s hard to know the full extent of the increases, given the lack of award charts.

The other thing that’s really standing out to me is that it seems like lifemiles has significantly upped the amount of blocking it does of partner award seats. The program has long been known for not providing access to all Star Alliance award seats. However, I’m noticing that more now than ever before.

Like, it just took me about 10 minutes to actually find the first example of these increases, since every route I was searching that should’ve had availability through partners wasn’t showing through lifemiles’ website.

I think this is part of a much bigger industry shift

I hate to make this prediction, but I think bigger picture, we’re sort of entering a new era in the miles & points world. Recently I wrote a post about how the miles & points world has changed over time, both for better and worse, and how it’s continuing to evolve.

Over the past several years, we’ve seen a couple of trends as it impacts partner award availability. First of all, airlines have increasingly only made award seats available to members of their own frequent flyer programs, and not to members of partner frequent flyer programs. Second of all, we’ve seen a countless number of devaluations.

Honestly, I think we’re maybe a couple of years away from the concept of useful premium cabin partner award availability in premium cabins being obsolete. This ultimately comes down to airlines getting savvier, plus technology constantly improving.

Let me be clear, that’s not necessarily all bad news. As I wrote about some time back, ultimately miles & points are much easier to earn, and transferable points currencies make it easy to earn miles directly with the airline you want to fly. For that matter, transferable points can now largely be efficiently used to just outright book a ticket with cash, and airlines have made premium cabin fares more reasonably priced (leading to more premium seats being sold).

This game has no doubt changed, and between the constant devaluations and the restrictions in award space, there’s less and less value by the day with these kinds of partner redemptions.

Bottom line

The avianca lifemiles program has just increased many award costs without notice, for a second time in a matter of months. Awards that cost 63,000 miles in business class six months ago, now cost 80,000 miles (with the previous devaluation having increased costs to 70,000 miles). To me the even bigger issue is that I’m also seeing a drastic increase in the amount of partner award space that lifemiles isn’t showing.

Ultimately the miles & points game is always evolving, and the same sweet spots don’t always stay the same.

What do you make of this lifemiles devaluation?