I have already written about how I search for award space and how I earn the points in the first place. This post is about the one program I keep coming back to more than any other. Almost every long haul flight I book runs between the United States and either Southeast Asia or Japan, and for those specific routes, Avianca LifeMiles has given me the best results by a wide margin.
Everything below is based on my own personal experience and is not travel, financial, or legal advice. Award pricing, partner airlines, and transfer partners change over time, so please confirm the current details yourself before you move any points.
Why LifeMiles Fits the Way I Travel
When I am not in the U.S., I spend most of my time in Southeast Asia and Japan. I stay one to three months in a place, then move on, so my flying pattern is not complicated. There are a lot of short regional hops, and then a few long haul flights a year between the United States and this part of the world.
On those long haul routes I usually end up on EVA Air or ANA. Both of them are partners I can book through LifeMiles, and that is the first reason I like the program. The airlines I actually want to fly are the airlines it can book.
The second reason matters even more to me. Fuel surcharges are the thing that ruins a lot of award redemptions, because you end up paying several hundred dollars on top of the points and the whole redemption stops making sense. That has not been my experience with LifeMiles on these routes. The taxes and fees I have paid have been small enough that the redemption still feels worth it after I run the numbers.
The third reason is the business class pricing itself. When a good deal shows up on these routes, it tends to be a LifeMiles deal. Not always, but often enough that LifeMiles is the first program I check.
What Counts as a Good Business Class Deal for Me
For a one-way business class seat from the United States to a country in Southeast Asia, I treat anything in the range of 60,000 to 90,000 miles plus roughly $100 USD in taxes and fees as a good deal. That is my own benchmark, built from my own searches on my own routes.
Here is how I use that range in practice:
- If I see something at or below 60,000 miles, I move quickly, because that price does not usually sit there for long.
- Between 60,000 and 90,000 miles, I book it if the dates work for me.
- Above 90,000 miles, I usually wait and keep searching, unless I have a specific reason to lock in that date.
I want to be clear that this is a personal benchmark and not a fixed award chart. LifeMiles has adjusted its pricing more than once, and the number that looks normal today may look different next year. What I actually rely on is the value math rather than the mile count on its own. I compare the cash price against the points plus the taxes, and I check what each point is doing for me. I built a points and miles calculator for exactly this, so I do not have to do it in my head every time.
When I Start Looking
I start searching about six to eight months before I want to fly. Business class award space on EVA Air and ANA is limited, and the good seats get taken early, so showing up two months before the trip has rarely worked out for me.
If I am fairly certain I will be flying a route, I go further out and start checking around the one year mark, which is roughly when schedules open up. That is the situation where I have found the cleanest availability.
Traveling full-time helps here. I am flexible on dates and reasonably flexible on which city I fly into, so I can shift things around until something reasonable appears instead of forcing one specific day to work.
The Search Filter That Made a Difference for Me
This is the part I wish someone had told me earlier. I find the deal on PointsYeah first, the same way I described in my earlier post, and then I go to the LifeMiles site to confirm the space and book it. The problem is that the LifeMiles search defaults to its own smart search, and when I left it on that default, the flight I had just found on PointsYeah did not show up at all. The first time this happened I assumed the seat was gone.
It was not gone. I had to select the airline manually. On the LifeMiles search page there is a dropdown above the trip type, and I have to pick the specific partner there, for example Eva Airways (Taiwan), instead of leaving the default selection in place. Once I did that, the same flight appeared at the same price I had seen on PointsYeah.
I do the same thing when I am looking for an ANA flight. Select the airline first, then search. If a flight you found elsewhere is not showing up on LifeMiles, this is the first thing I would check before assuming the award seat disappeared.
The rest of my process stays the same as always: confirm the space on the airline program site first, and only then transfer the points, because transfers do not go backwards. I go through that sequence in more detail in the post about my award search process.
How I Come Up With 60,000 to 90,000 LifeMiles Points
I do not earn LifeMiles points by flying Avianca. I have never flown Avianca. I earn the miles somewhere else and transfer them in when I am ready to book, which is the part that makes the whole thing work.
Three of the cards I already carry transfer to LifeMiles:
● American Express Platinum
American Express Membership Rewards points transfer to LifeMiles, and this is usually my largest pile.
● Citi Strata Premier
Citi ThankYou points transfer to LifeMiles. This is one of the reasons I use this card for Airbnb/hotels and groceries instead of a card whose points cannot get to LifeMiles.
● Wells Fargo Autograph
Wells Fargo Rewards points transfer to LifeMiles as well. I keep this card on a narrow set of categories, but those points still end up in the same place.
On top of the card spending, the method that quietly adds the most for me is the Rakuten shopping portal. Rakuten lets you take your earnings as Amex Membership Rewards points instead of cash back, and since those points transfer to LifeMiles, a hotel booking or an online purchase turns into miles toward a business class seat. I explain how I stack that with regular card spending in my post on earning points day to day.
If you are not sure which of your cards to pull out for a particular purchase, I built a tool that answers that question based on the categories I use.
One habit I hold onto: I keep the points in the bank programs until the award seat is confirmed. Transferring early because a balance looks tempting is how people end up with miles stuck in a program they did not plan to use.
The LifeMiles Website Is Not Always Smooth
I would not be honest about this program if I skipped this part. The LifeMiles booking flow can be temperamental, and the place where it has failed for me is the final payment step for the taxes and fees.
This happened to me once. I had found the business class deal, the points were already in my LifeMiles account, the itinerary was there, and the site threw an error when I tried to pay the taxes and fees portion. The booking would not complete.
What I did was call LifeMiles reservations. The agent found the reservation on their side and emailed me a payment link, and I paid the taxes and fees through that link. The ticket was issued and the trip went ahead normally. It cost me some time on the phone, but nothing was lost.
What I would not do in that situation is keep hitting the payment button or start the booking over from scratch. Calling was what resolved it for me, and I would rather spend twenty minutes on a phone call than risk a duplicate charge or lose the seat while I experiment.
Why I Keep Using It Anyway
No program is perfect, and LifeMiles has its rough edges. The site has quirks, pricing has moved over the years, and you have to know how to search before it shows you what you want. But for the routes I actually fly on EVA Air and ANA, between the United States and either Southeast Asia or Japan, it keeps giving me business class seats for a reasonable number of miles and about $100 USD in taxes and fees.
If your travel pattern looks different from mine, a different program may serve you better. This is simply the one that fits the way I move around.