Originally Posted by
supergraeme
Hello all,
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I thought it better to do that than start a new one for something that will probably be dismissed pretty quickly! I originally posted this on HeadForPoints yesterday and was directed here.
I want to book some Avianca flights using Avios (MEX-PTY-RTB-MGA-MEX, next July). I called Iberia earlier and the slightly confused girl said she checked, but I’m not convinced she did as she couldn’t find one airport (despite me giving her the code) and understood “Taca Airlines” as another.
Does anyone know of a way of checking availability of Avianca flights for Avios redemptions? There seems to be plenty of availability on their ‘LifeMiles’ page.
From reading the posts on here, I suspect that my route won't be accepted anyway - unless the round trip counts as a "return"? It'd be brilliant to be able to do this as it's going to cost me £1500 for two at the moment...
Thanks for any advice!
Far too ambitious using Avios. As far as I understand it, you can only book return flights on Avianca. You can't just add several Avianca flights into one itinerary, count up the miles and cross reference to the award chart.
As near as I can tell, there are no direct flights on Avianca between any of your proposed stopover points, so you'd be connecting in San Salvador each time. You could book a return between MEX and SAL, another return between SAL and PTY, another return between SAL and RTB and finally another return between SAL and MGA. Any misconnects and you're screwed since they would be on separate tickets.
And that is all assuming that Iberia Plus can actually book on Avianca's El Salvador and Guatemala affiliates and not just the Colombian main airline.
With a sale on buying Avianca miles, you might find it interesting to buy some of those and book as much of your itinerary as you can via LifeMiles. (although you might not be eligible if you don't have an account already)
http://flyingpiggie.com/2015/09/avia...-buying-miles/