Is buying LM miles still worth it ?
 

Even under the curent promo 135 % bonus, one can buy 100k for 1404 US$/1258EUR/928GBP

For a direct flight from Europe expl. (FRA-BKK-FRA) you need to pay 2426US$ / 2173EU / 1604 GBP in business or 3100 US$ / 2777EUR / 2050GBP in first class. icl. all taxes/fees.

I think, specially in business, one already get cheaper revenue tix, which aditionaly earn milage and status.

And wider and more flexible availability.

Europe to Asia @ 78k one-way in J is def not worth it with EY/QR/EK rates. But Europe to India (CMB/MLE as well) is def worth looking at @ 45k one-way in J

Europe to "India" in business costs 30k AA miles. First class using AA miles for the same is 40k. Just in case people want to have more options to consider.

but AA Miles dont sell at the LM ratio...yet

but on SQ it soubds a bit different....also from travel times

SQ almost never has availability between FRA/MUC/LON/PAR/ZRH and SIN in J, and in F not @ all !

Of course MLE or KTM are cheap(er), but none of the good *aliance airlines you are able to use, exept TK. Air India I would not fly for the given rate !

Air India is pretty good for DEL-US non-stop flights. I used to avoid them like the plague, but now there are circumstances where they actually are acceptable to me.

AI has been a reason I advised some to buy Lifemiles in recent weeks.

The problem is that one-way J prices are not very good (read: way expensive). One-way EK on LHR-HKG on Expedia's over $3,000 USD... costing more than the round-trip with a Saturday night stay. :eek:

(Europe's like that, too. Round-trip in Y+ on Openskies, very reasonable. One way, not so much.)

I would agree that for a lot of purposes AV miles aren't all that, and it's more of a niche product now, since competitive J pricing on roundtrips USA-Europe and Europe-Asia makes dealing with the vagaries of AV's engine and phone agents not so useful. But there are niche uses I could see for them (one ways where you don't want to start in CAI or CMB, certain zones where the pricing is good).

For members of Milepoint (now known as InsideFlyer), there is a LifeMiles promo where with a minimum of 100,000 miles bought, you get a 150% bonus. And a discount on Star Alliance redemptions is included. Minimum cost is about $3,900 (about 1.55 cents per mile).

See: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/exter...l#post25513110 starting with post #104

For those of us based in the USA (and probably many other countries), the cost is $3,330 USD for 100K miles. No excise tax applies when buying miles from foreign airlines.

The $3,900 includes tax for people buying from certain countries, probably in Latin America where Avianca is based.

So actually the 150% bonus beats the 145% bonus last month for readers of a certain newsletter that was in Spanish/Portuguese.

Sounds like AV is getting really desperate to sell. If they could just spend a little money fixing their website so it's as good as Aeroplan's, I'd buy.

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.

I agree that the AI hard product has improved a lot, the soft product is a bit of hit and miss, but the biggest problem with AI is reliability and punctualilty. The PM is visiting Canada, and a whole flight from EWR to BOM gets cancelled as they need the AI plane as back up. The AI SIN_BOM flight leaves after midnight instead of the scheduled 7 pm more times than not. So if your travel is time sensitive and you have to make quick connections, AI could put a spanner in the works.

The NYC-DEL/BOM flights don't experience many delays.