LifeMiles Award Chart Changes Make Redemptions More Valuable

It’s high time we had some good news in the world of points and miles redemption charts.

Colombian-based Avianca has unveiled a new distance-based award chart for its popular loyalty program LifeMiles.

The new award chart is for flights within Canada, as well as transborder flights between Canada and the U.S.

What’s particularly interesting is that these changes are actually good news for travelers, especially those who like to redeem LifeMiles on North American Star Alliance airline partners, such as Air Canada and United.

Let’s see what this means for North American travelers.

LifeMiles’ New Distance-Based Pricing

Introducing distance-based instead of zonal pricing can sometimes mean bad news for travelers, but not this time.

LifeMiles has scrapped its flat-rate redemptions of 12,500 LifeMiles for an economy one-way and 25,000 LifeMiles for a one-way in business class.

The changes will apply to award flights within Canada and between the U.S. and Canada, mainly affecting Air Canada flights.

Passengers redeeming miles on certain routes could benefit from a reduction of more than 50% compared to the zone-based pricing.

The new charts look like this:

Within Canada

Between Canada and the U.S.

Looking at an example, a one-way flight from Newark (EWR) to Toronto (YYZ) will now cost 6,500 LifeMiles instead of 12,500 LifeMiles — that’s a reduction of 52%!

The only negative impact the changes have are on redemptions on flights in economy between Canada and the U.S. of over 2,001 miles or more. Redemptions on such routes will increase by 1,500 LifeMiles from the previous rate of 12,500 to 13,500 LifeMiles.

For all other domestic travel within the U.S., redemptions will continue to use the zone-based award chart.

Hot Tip: Are Avianca LifeMiles the best use of your miles or points to fly from the U.S. to Canada? We take a look at a few other programs that are also competitive!

Final Thoughts

LifeMiles has shown that it really values those who use its program by making redemptions cheaper for certain travelers.

It would seem that LifeMiles has been able to reach a happy medium whereby while passengers can redeem for less, LifeMiles will still earn enough from the redemptions to keep the program profitable.

Travel within Canada is notorious for being expensive, especially cash tickets. So, it will be interesting to see what impact these reductions in award redemptions will have on the spending and redeeming of flights within Canada and to and from the U.S.