RememberTheConcord

This year, Avianca revised their program qualification so that you now earn one elite qualifying for every two base miles you purchase, and one elite qualifying mile for every twenty bonus miles you receive with purchased miles. In theory, this would mean you could purchase ~48,000 miles to receive Star Alliance Gold status, and thus presumably get partner lounge access for up to two years. During one of the standard sales, this would come out to something like $1,200 for enough miles for a round trip in international business class as well as lounge access for two years, which is a pretty solid deal. Other airlines, such as TAP Portugal and Singapore Airlines, have run similar promotions in the past, so this doesn’t seem too good to be true.

There is still a minimum number of miles that must be earned through Avianca, but it is not clear if purchased miles count towards this threshold or not. For the Gold Tier, 12,000 miles must be from Avianca.

The exact text from the LifeMiles website translated from the authoritative Spanish is that you must “Ensure that a minimum of those qualifying miles are accumulated on flights or additional services on Avianca”. This is slightly different meaning than LifeMiles’ own English website text that says you must “Make sure that a minimum of those qualifying miles are earned on Avianca flights or Avianca additional services”. The first would seem to imply that it’s additional services on Avianca flights that must earn the miles, while the second seems to imply that any additional services would qualify.

Nonetheless, I have made a test purchase to see if the miles qualify. If anyone else has experience with this, it seems like a good opportunity to share notes.

ffI

https://www.lifemiles.com/landing/ELITE2023
It seems one still needs 12000 lifemiles earned by flying on Avianca to get to Star Gold as the minimum;
on top of whatever is the new total elite miles also needed = 24k for Gold
So 12k from card spend = 24k spend on cards

nemenor

Here's one dp where the purchased miles DID NOT count towards elite status qualification:

https://loyaltylobby.com/2023/02/22/...3/?omhide=true