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Point transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to Avianca LifeMiles currently unavailable

Aug. 21, 2020
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2 min read
An Avianca Airbus 319 taxiing at Santiago airport
Point transfers from Amex Membership Rewards to Avianca LifeMiles currently unavailable
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Things are not looking good for the Avianca LifeMiles program at the moment.

The TPG team has discovered Friday morning that point transfers from the American Express Membership Rewards program to Avianca LifeMiles are unavailable. Points usually transfer instantly at a 1:1 ratio.

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Per a message on Amex's website, the suspension of transfers is only temporary. However, some may speculate that this is tied to the airline's struggling financial position.

(Photo by American Express)

Avianca — the airline attached to LifeMiles — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May of this year. LifeMiles operates as a separate company from Avianca and isn't included in this bankruptcy filings. However, if the airline ends up going out of business or is forced to liquidate, LifeMiles members could lose the ability to redeem miles on Star Alliance flights.

At this point, it appears that transfers from Capital One and Citi ThankYou Rewards are still possible.

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In the meantime, if you urgently need to redeem Amex points for Star Alliance flights, you can do so through programs like Air Canada Aeroplan or Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer.

We reached out to American Express for comment and received the following statement from a spokesperson:

"The Membership Rewards to Avianca points transfer capability is temporarily unavailable due to a technical issue. We are working to get this back up and running soon."

Hopefully this will be resolved quickly, and we'll update this article as more information becomes available.

Featured image by LightRocket via Getty Images

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