Cheetah_SA

All the reminders and now the sale gets extended - hilarious. They really are starting to sound desperate.

Still not biting though. Though if LifeMiles started allowing mixed class bookings I would be much more tempted. Your move LifeMiles!

djjaguar64

Sounds like desperation!!!

AwardBee

Looks like the latest 150% bonus promo has kicked off. 250,000 miles for $3300 USD (1.32 cpm) if your billing address is in the US. IIRC, one of the best prices yet for Lifemiles.

I'm tempted, but my past experiences booking with Lifemiles in the last 1.5 years haven't been great. Avianca, please make a functional website, I'd almost certainly buy then. Right now, I'm dreading being stuck with a small fortune in miles and not being able to book what I can find on United/Aeroplan sites.

Guava

Without access to Lufthansa First Class, the cost is hard to justify even if one wishes to use it on ANA or Asiana First.

AwardBee

No LH F sucks but I'd argue that paying 90K miles (~$1200) each way to fly OZ or NH F isn't a bad deal.

What's the next best *A alternative? Chase is getting harder to churn and Aeroplan is devaluing. I haven't yet seen a Copa sale yet, but maybe they still hold promise.

Guava

Unless your final destination happens to be ICN/NRT/HND, Lifemiles is essentially forcing you to pay two separate awards from North America to Asia in F, followed by Business class intra-Asia connections separately. You would then be under-estimating the actual cost of your trip. Plus, if you don't actually live in a U.S. gateway city or having to connect on UA to your gateway city, better pray your connection has "First Class" because if you don't, Lifemiles is not going to be able to show availability. So in some cases, you will need to have 3 separate awards for what would have been a straightforward single itinerary. Suddenly, your trip is not just $1200 anymore.

As a rule of thumb here in this forum and more or less the rest of FT as well, if you want to keep the *A alternative alive, then thou should never say its name. In fact, it's not "next best" alternative, it is preferable even to Lifemiles today. Churning credit card is not going to last forever, all good things come to an end and it's not just limited to Chase.

Aeroplan is devaluing but not with respect to the awards from North America to Asia, they are still the same. Unless you are impacted by Europe to Asia increases, then this change does not affect your ability to use Aeroplan miles on NH/OZ to Asia from the U.S. So if you prefer Aeroplan over Lifemiles for NA to Asia travel, then you should continue to do so after December 15 because nothing has changed for you. In the same vein, Lifemiles is not offering a significant advantage over Aeroplan when it comes to NA to Asia travel since that's the part that Aeroplan did not touch in this recent wave of devaluation. But with Aeroplan, you don't have to worry about having to do it on two or three separate awards and if you redeem for roundtrip, you can even get two free stopovers, even via Europe and fly a combination of LH/NH/OZ if you so choose to. So no, Lifemiles remains a fairly poor choice due to the loss of LH F, the inability to include free stopovers, an abysmal website and inability to mix F class award with any other classes leading to break up a single award into two or three bookings thereby increasing the actual cost.

Perhaps it's possible to live with the lack of LH F on its own but with all the other identified issues, even if one just want to limit to NH/OZ F, the fact one has to go through major frustration to try to use them and to essentially pay for the flights segment by segment is just not worth the trouble or the cost.

AwardBee

I hear you - it's challenging to book beyond Asian *A hubs with Lifemiles. *sigh* Ok maybe if they cut the price down to 1cpm...

Now, I will argue that most of the *A alternatives are thoroughly discussed on FT, if someone's on the Lifemiles forum, they're probably digging around the others too.

IMO one of the best reasons to use *A is for Europe redemptions, which is harder to get to on *O in a nice product w/o fuel surcharges. AC just gutted their Europe redemptions, and AC actually isn't all that easy to book either considering the minefield of fuel surcharges and relatively inflexible routing with their new pseudo MPMs. Their call center is also effectively closed 8 hours a day, which usually coincides with all the convenient times to call when you're in Asia.

eponymous_coward

SIN or BKK as well (SIN due to an NH F flight NRT-SIN, BKK because you can connect in NRT to TG A380 F), but your point is well taken, because unless you're in a NH spoke route in the USA, you can't connect UA F or Y->NH F, because UA classes its F as C.

I ended up dumping my AV miles for TG/LX C CNX-BKK-ZRH-TXL, which was... an OK use, I guess (and part of an RTW itinerary involving Thailand and Germany constructed from AS and AV miles).

Guava

The BKK and SIN extensions have been noted but in practice, they are awfully hard to connect with long-haul F ex-USA. The reason being they are only possible to/from NRT, so that removes OZ from the picture, leaving only NH. NH has started to fly several late afternoon flights ex-USA, which means they can't connect onto the flight leaving for SIN around 6:30PM on time. If you have to overnight in NRT, Lifemiles can't show it since it would be a stopover even if the connection is less than 24 hours. But if you were to use Aeroplan or UA miles, this is not an issue - at least their call center can help you to overcome this if necessary but not Lifemiles. In short, in any given month, you may not be able to find two connections that allow you to fly NH F connecting another NH F or TG F to BKK or SIN at all. Given such low probability, the practicality of being able to fly to BKK/SIN via NRT on a single F award is very low - you need to be extremely lucky.

I have never bought any lifemiles but I did spend time looking into this just for my own curiosity. Reading the various stories people posted here and as well as did some award search on my own, just out of curiosity, I gather all of the above information and allowed me to analyze the value proposition of Lifemiles and deem it to be an interesting option but at this time, not worthwhile due to the shortcomings listed above.

eponymous_coward

They work ex-Asia, though, the BKK/SIN-NRT flights from TG and NH sync up OK with NRT-SFO at least.

But I would agree, the headaches make it a niche product if your object is F to Asia from the USA, now that the value's been extracted out of the routing engine thanks to extensive FT publicity. I would say buying AS or AA at 2-2.2 cpm isn't really any worse than AV at 1.3-1.5 cpm for F to Asia given that AV F awards cost about 30% more in mileage (so it actually comes out pretty close in terms of cash outlay), and you don't have to deal with AV's restrictions on routing, class of service, or spend hours on the phone cancelling a ticket if plans change.

smit0847

I can live with most F awards being blocked but if LMs would just fix their website I think they would see far more people buying the miles theyre so desperately trying to sell.

smit0847

What do you think the reason is behind LMs:
1. No mixed classes;
2. No connections over 8 hours; and
3. Almost unusable website?

I assume theyre all related to limiting the amount of value customers can extract from redemptions and therefore limiting LMs expenses when selling and redeeming miles. Many people would gladly tack on a J or Y leg to the end of an F itinerary but cant because LMs restricts it, and therefore LMs doesn't have to pay that airline for it.

Do you think LMs management is sophisticated enough to purposely have these measures in place to reduce expenses or so hopeless they dont even realise how frustrated pax are with restrictions that LMs would be willing to fix? Has anyone actually written to LMs asking them to fix these 3 things? They may not even know its a problem?!?

soy

short answer - yes.
From what I understand it was set up by industry veterns and last year sold a 30% stake to a private equity company. They know what they are doing.

Guava

If you want to buy AS/AA miles, it can usually be bought for less than the cpm you stated. The important thing is not to pounce on every supposed sale that AA offers, some are better than others, just like Lifemiles. Even if you manage to connect intra-Asia as you stated, which is highly difficult to do to the point that it is not practical in most cases, your scenario still does not account for intra-North America travel outside of hubs. So yes, on paper AV only costs about 30% more but in reality, you will almost always end up under-estimating its actual cost whether in $ or time due to the need to break up the award into 2 or 3 separate reservations at either end.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is the apparent urgency for liquidity that Lifemiles is signaling. We had this "sales" last month, then it was extended to something even sweeter in October via Insideflyer which was supposed to last only 24 hours, now it's a whole week. I'd be questioning why Lifemiles seems so desperate for cash... Does it have liquidity problem? It wouldn't be the first time a small FPP goes bust so this is making me a little uncomfortable I must say, their behavior just strikes me as a little desperate. Or it could be as someone else suggested, which I don't have any info on, is that Lifemiles was sold to a Private Equity entity and they are trying to turn this into a cash cow by imposing the various limitations we hate such as no mixed class, no LH F, no stopover and etc. so that the vast majority of people will over-value the worth of AV miles based on the information on paper.

What seems like a great deal at 1.5cpm on paper may in fact worth a lot less than that. I see that most people here on FT are unable to account properly for these restrictions in their valuation so perhaps the information provided by soy deserve a closer review.

One of the biggest fallacy of looking at miles is to compare their absolute value then conclude: "Oh, this program is 30% more expensive because a similar award is 99000 miles here but only 67500 miles there." No, you should never do that - not all miles are created equal and this is definitely the case with respect to Lifemiles. Even if you use a cost base approach like you just did by comparing the cost of acquiring AA/AS miles directly vs. that of Lifemiles, such approach is still flawed because it failed to account for the major differences in usage between these programs. I have to say if what we are seeing of Lifemiles is indeed the work of a Private Equity, I have to congratulate them on their smart because they have really reshaped this FFP into a cash cow such that a large number of experienced flyers can be incited into buying something that is over-valued.

WAS

It does seem a bit strange that there has basically been a sale on miles nonstop for 2 months now. I myself did buy about 15K at 1.35 cpm via the "double your credit card miles" promotion, since it allowed me to get the low price without putting thousands of $ into the program. I seem to have a constant shortage of United miles, whereas I have all the OneWorld and SkyTeam miles I need. So it's nice to buy some for the occasional TATL booking.

It's risky to invest that much money, I think (whereas I would be less worried about AS - they have so many redemption opportunities/partners that it's more likely you would be able to salvage at least some value in case of a devaluation).