Buying LifeMiles With 150% Bonus = Flying Lufthansa First Class to the USA for €1,142 (Oneway)

Avianca’s frequent flyer program, LifeMiles, offers a very interesting opportunity to fly in the Star Alliance‘s premium cabins for cheap prices. To do this, you don’t need to collect miles, you can just buy them. Currently, LifeMiles is selling their award miles with a 150% bonus as a Black Week offer.

This offer is especially interesting, as Lufthansa’s first class flights have recently become bookable, even months in advance, over Star Alliance programs, including LifeMiles. That means, that you can book a oneway first class flight to North America for roughly €1,150!

Buying Miles With up to 150% Bonus

Until December 3rd, 2019, there will be a bonus of 150%, regardless of the number of miles. To get the 150% bonus (otherwise only 145%), you have to register here:

Afterward, you can buy the miles here (the bonus isn’t mentioned, but can be seen in the summary):

For this promotion, a maximum limit of 500,000 miles (incl. bonus) has been set. Therefore you can buy up to 200,000 miles + 150% bonus.

1,000 miles cost US$33 (~€31) without bonus. Including the bonus, you’ll get 2,500 miles. That makes the price drop to US$13 (~€12) per 1,000 miles, or 1,32 USD-cents/mile. That is the best price since December 2015!

Lufthansa First Class

Sadly, LifeMiles currently only lets you book Lufthansa First Class flights 14 days before the flight, at the earliest. That means that you’ll have to book quite spontaneously to have a realistic chance.

A oneway-flight from Europ to the USA only requires 87,000 miles. With the current sale, you would pay US$1,148 (~€1,080). On top of that, you would have to pay another US$110 (~€103) for taxes & fees (which happens to be far less than the €304 that Miles&More charges for the same flight, as LifeMiles doesn’t impose a fuel surcharge). In total you’d be practically paying US$1,258 (~€1,183) for your first class flight!

As a comparison: If you’d want to book the flight without miles, Lufthansa would charge you €7,176. Including a return flight, you would be paying at least €7,525. That divided by two = €3,762, which means that you’d still be saving roughly €2,600!

You can naturally also fly to other destinations in first class, such as Mexico City for 96,000 miles + US$142 (~€134) = US$1,409 (~€1,325):

Here’s a map with all of Lufthansa’s first class destinations:

Previous Offers

These were the previous bonuses given by LifeMiles

Previous offers

• 25. November – 3. Dezember 2019
  • 5.000 – 200.000 miles = 150% Bonus (1,32 Cent/mile)
• 20. – 26. November 2018
  • 5.000 – 200.000 miles = 140% Bonus (1,37 Cent/mile)
• 2. – 30. May 2018
  • 1.000 – 50.000 miles =  100% Bonus (1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles = 115% Bonus (1,53 Cent/mile)
• 20. – 27. November 2017
  • 1.000 – 150.000 miles = 145% Bonus (1,35 Cent/mile)
• 22. – 28. February 2017
  • 2.000 – 50.000 miles = 115% Bonus (1,53 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles = 130% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles = 140% Bonus (1,38 Cent/mile)
• 12. – 19. December 2016
  • 2.000 – 50.000 miles = 115% Bonus (1,53 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles = 130% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles = 140% Bonus (1,38 Cent/mile)
• 22. – 28. November 2016
  • 5.000 – 150.000 miles = 140% Bonus (1,38 Cent/mile)
• 11. – 13. September 2016
  • 2.000 – 50.000 miles = 105% Bonus (1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles = 120% Bonus (1,50 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles = 130% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
• 1. – 10. September 2016
  • 2.000 – 50.000 miles = 105% Bonus (1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles = 120% Bonus (1,53 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles = 130% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
• 3. – 31. May 2016
  • 2.000 – 50.000 miles + 100% Bonus (1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 51.000 – 100.000 miles + 115% Bonus (1,53 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles + 125% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
• Until 30. November 2015: 140% Bonus (1,38 Cent/mile)
• Until 8. December: Up to 125% Bonus (1,467 – 1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 2.000 – 40.000 miles + 100% Bonus (1,65 Cent/mile)
  • 41.000 – 100.000 miles + 115% Bonus (1,54 Cent/mile)
  • 101.000 – 150.000 miles + 125% Bonus (1,47 Cent/mile)
• Until 11. Dezember: 140% Bonus (1,38 Cent/mile)
• Until 15. Dezember: 150% Bonus (1,32 Cent/mile)

Currency is USD and not Euro, as LifeMiles are charged in USD. Currency fluctuations between Euro/USD would not allow a fair comparison.

Redeeming Miles at LifeMiles

The collected or bought miles can simply be redeemed online at LifeMiles:

When searching for a flight, you can select specific airlines. That tends to lead to a more specific result.

Special terms

There are a few special terms at LifeMiles that one should be aware of:

• You can check the required miles for each airline online.
• There’s no fuel surcharge
  That means: the taxes & fees are always quite low, compared to e.g. Miles&More
• You can mix classes
• No stopovers allowed
  You can’t add a stopover to your trip. Layovers are also limited to a maximum of 8 hours.
• Flexible Payment
  You can buy up to 60% of the required miles during the booking process, at the usual 1,000 miles = $33 rate.
• 150,000 miles per calendar year purchase-limit
  Compared to other programs, you can buy a lot of miles at LifeMiles. 150,000 miles is, however, the limit. Nevertheless, for most promotions, this limit is suspended, and one can buy 150,000 miles + bonus. Once you’ve done that, though, you can’t purchase any more miles during that calendar year, even during promotions.

LifeMiles Tricks & Mistakes

LifeMiles is known for making many mistakes when calculating the required miles. Often airports are assigned to the wrong region, or you can e.g. book a flight from Washington D.C. to Vancouver via Frankfurt (not anymore) and LifeMiles only charges the miles for the direct connection. Many of these “mistakes” have been corrected, but it’s always worth trying around. You might still find some LifeMiles mistakes.

Conclusion

When you buy miles, you should always directly use them. Award charts can always be devalued, and LifeMiles is known for doing exactly that. It can also happen, that Lufthansa stops offering first class award seats. Then you’d be stuck with a lot of miles that you have no use for.

It is, nevertheless, a cheap way to experience the luxuries of a Lufthansa first class flight.