It ain't really Avianca the crazy one in this case; you know that it's your annoying bank that blocked their attempt to charge...

Same thing just happened to me when buying miles earlier today. I called Chase, told them I was going to do an online charge of $xxx from either "Taca 2" or "Avianca LifeMiles" (as they appear on my statement from previous purchases). Told them it would come from either Panama, Colombia, El Salvador or even Miami. They noted and promised there would be no issue.

Sure enough the purchase failed and I immediately got Chase's "fraud alert" email. Fortunately, in this case I just clicked on the "not fraud" button in the email, repeated the purchase and it went through.

So maybe the process to cancel a ticket (for Chase cardholders) should be:

- Call LM, go through the cancelation process
- If the transaction fails, ask the agent to wait a minute
- Get the fraud alert email from Chase (they seem to always come instantly)
- Click the "not fraud" button in the email
- Ask the LM agent to try again. It will go through.