Avianca Lifemiles Shortens Their Mileage Expiration Policy
Caroline Lupini January 18, 2018
This isn’t a devaluation to the extent that most devaluations are, but it is one nonetheless. Avianca is changing their mileage expiration policy as of April 15, 2018, and it’s not for the better.
Starting on April 15, 2018, you’ll have only 12 months to redeem your Avianca LifeMiles, down from what used to be 24 months. In order to extend the expiration of your miles, you will have to earn miles within that 12 months period. Redeeming miles will no longer count as qualifying activity to extend the expiration date of your LifeMiles.
If you already have LifeMiles in your account, they’ll still expire according to the old rules, but any new miles earned (or purchased) will expire according to the new rules.
If you have a LifeMiles credit card or Avianca status, your miles will still only expire after 24 months of inactivity.
This new policy could be a big deal for those of you that enjoy Avianca’s frequent LifeMiles sales. If you have a lot of LifeMiles or generally speculatively purchase LifeMiles (which I still don’t recommend for most!), you’ll want to keep a close eye on the expiration date of your miles. It would be a shame to have a bunch expire!
While this change isn’t going to be a big deal for most people, it could have significant impacts for a few.
What do you think about Avianca’s new mileage expiration policy?
This is obviously designed to weed out people buying Avianca miles when they're on promo & then utilising their often generous reward system. I don't think it will impact a whole lot on legitimate Avianca frequent flyers, other than to open up a few extra legs!
Avianca was recently added as a Citi TYP transfer partner, so if you have a transferable Citi TYP card (Premier or Prestige) you could periodically transfer a small amount rather than transferring a big amount and then leaving it there.
Thanks for the info. I received an email about the changes, but the AV email was not as clear (in Spanish nor English) as the info presented in the above post. I don't have a ton of miles because Star Alliance is not my main alliance, but I will continue to post my car rentals and hotel stays to AV so that my account remains active.
Hum - thanks for the heads-up - I'm a LM member with many miles in my account and have not received any notification of this change. The only reason I have a large balance is that LM's program and web booking engine is so full of bugs and deficiencies that it's just "too" difficult to use these miles. I stopped buying miles almost 2 years ago.