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Avianca Lifemiles to Shutdown For 5 Days of Maintenance in February

Brendan Dorsey
Articles
Brendan Dorsey is an Associate News Editor at TPG who covers nearly everything for TPG including aviation, credit cards, points, miles, ride-hailing services and more. He previously worked for TIME.
Jan. 17, 2019
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3 min read
Avianca-(787-8)-Business-Class-Bogota-to-Barcelona
Avianca Lifemiles to Shutdown For 5 Days of Maintenance in February
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Award booking with Avianca Lifemiles will be completely offline for five days in February. The mileage program will be upgrading its IT systems from Feb. 1 through Feb. 5, and during that time flyers will be unable to access the Lifemiles website or make award bookings via any avenue.

The two biggest things to note is that you won't be able to access the Lifemiles website or app during this time, and you'll be unable to make any award bookings online or over the phone. You'll still earn Lifemiles on Avianca flights and Star Alliance partner flights during the outage dates, you just won't be able to see your updated balance until the website is back online.

Lifemiles detailed everything that will be affected during the outage:

  • You will not be able to access or transact in LifeMiles.com or the LifeMiles Mobile App. Our Call Center and Service Centers will be open but will not be able to make transactions in our systems either during this period
  • You will not be able to redeem with LifeMiles or any of our partners
  • You can continue to earn miles as normal with Avianca, Star Alliance airlines and with most of our partners. These miles will be reflected in your account once the system upgrade is complete
  • You can continue purchasing tickets and transacting with Avianca through their channels as usual
  • Elite members will continue to receive benefits such as upgrades at the airport, access to VIP lounges, etc. as normal
  • Your miles and information will be safe. Once systems are back up and running, you will be able to access your account with your pre-existing user name and passwords

Lifemiles is one of our favorite mileage programs for booking Star Alliance awards, think United business or Lufthansa First. It offers great rates for premium cabins, like 87,000 miles for Lufthansa First to Europe or 75,000 miles in ANA business to Asia. It's great for economy awards within the US, too. United flights start at just 7,500 miles one-way. But the highlight of the program is its lack of fuel surcharges when booking awards — you'll just have to fork over the miles, a $25 booking fee and any taxes.

Lufthansa First can be booked with Avianca Lifemiles and very no fuel surcharges. Image by Nick Ellis / The Points Guy.

If you do want to make a booking through Lifemiles, you'll have to do so before Feb. 1 or after the Feb. 5. The program is transfer partners with Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou, Capital One — all of which can be instantly transferred to Lifemiles.

Good cards to earn points that transfer to Lifemiles are the Platinum Card® from American Express, the American Express® Gold Card the Citi Premier® Card or the Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card.

Editorial disclaimer: Opinions expressed here are the author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, airline or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.