Purchasing miles and points strategically during sales or special offers can yield excellent deals, particularly for premium cabins like Business and First Class.
Nice article . The only concern I have with Lifemiles is that it doesn’t show availability for 3seats which makes it a difficult implementation for a family. However programs like Krisflyer for Asia and Virgin shows good availability (thought they have a high tax). Any clue on how to get 3 seats availability on Lifemiles.
Thanks. Availability is a factor of how much inventory the airline chooses to release to the partner program, this is also why I recommend searching before buying the points.
Unfortunately, there is no hack to book more seats than what you see on the website. Availability for 1 is great. 2 is good. 3 can be patchy.
Nice article .. Agree it’s a good deal, shame though that for my travel dates from Europe to Mumbai towards the 3rd week June not finding many good options. Checked a couple of German cities, Amsterdam and also Lisbon but nothing great for my dates. Else was all set to buy after reading your article.
Yeah that too but even for 1/2 seats on J, it wasn’t that I saw any flights apart from air india via Delhi halts which too weren’t near my dates. I’ll keep checking time and again as I read the offer is still on for another 10 days.
Now they are charging $25 as service charge. They seem to raised the annual buying to 500k plus bonus (atleast that is reflecting in my account) since the points.com colaboration.
You can still only buy a maximum of 200K per transaction, is what I meant. You can do multiple transactions however, yes. The $25 fee has been there for a little over a year or more now but that is a good point to add to the post.
Nice Article, I came accross the Reddit post which mentions that Lifemiles doesnt show actual taxes until you have 40% of the miles in your account and reports have been that those charges are exorbitant , for someone booking say BOM -NYC what are the typical charges that needs to be paid apart from 25$ ?
I wanted to know while booking with Star alliance / Air India. How is the process like I can directly redeem with LM points without any confirmation to Air India? Or do I need to cross check and inform? Haven’t booked with star alliance partner ever that’s why asking
Hi Jay,
Nice article . The only concern I have with Lifemiles is that it doesn’t show availability for 3seats which makes it a difficult implementation for a family. However programs like Krisflyer for Asia and Virgin shows good availability (thought they have a high tax). Any clue on how to get 3 seats availability on Lifemiles.
Thanks. Availability is a factor of how much inventory the airline chooses to release to the partner program, this is also why I recommend searching before buying the points.
Unfortunately, there is no hack to book more seats than what you see on the website. Availability for 1 is great. 2 is good. 3 can be patchy.
Nice article .. Agree it’s a good deal, shame though that for my travel dates from Europe to Mumbai towards the 3rd week June not finding many good options. Checked a couple of German cities, Amsterdam and also Lisbon but nothing great for my dates. Else was all set to buy after reading your article.
What dates?
Aim is 21st June from either Germany or Portugal to Mumbai. 3 pax
3 Pax will be difficult in J.
Yeah that too but even for 1/2 seats on J, it wasn’t that I saw any flights apart from air india via Delhi halts which too weren’t near my dates. I’ll keep checking time and again as I read the offer is still on for another 10 days.
Great post, Since LifeMiles is part of Avianca which is part of S* - are the redemption flights on partner airlines (within S*) generally available?
I am planning a trip in the summer to Europe so would like to check availability before purchasing the LifeMiles.
Yes you will find *A options too.
Now they are charging $25 as service charge. They seem to raised the annual buying to 500k plus bonus (atleast that is reflecting in my account) since the points.com colaboration.
You can still only buy a maximum of 200K per transaction, is what I meant. You can do multiple transactions however, yes. The $25 fee has been there for a little over a year or more now but that is a good point to add to the post.
Hi Jay ,
Nice Article, I came accross the Reddit post which mentions that Lifemiles doesnt show actual taxes until you have 40% of the miles in your account and reports have been that those charges are exorbitant , for someone booking say BOM -NYC what are the typical charges that needs to be paid apart from 25$ ?
https://www.reddit.com/r/awardtravel/comments/1ad53fn/lifemiles_traplesson_learned/
There is another $20-25 redemption fee. So BOM - NYC is typically about 40-50 USD in total.
small correction:
you mentioned: "530,000 LifeMiles for US$ 6600 (~ ₹5,46,823), which equates to approximately ₹0.96 INR per point"
it will come Rs1.03/point, not Rs0.96/mile
I wanted to know while booking with Star alliance / Air India. How is the process like I can directly redeem with LM points without any confirmation to Air India? Or do I need to cross check and inform? Haven’t booked with star alliance partner ever that’s why asking
You can book it directlt through Lifemiles. If there is availablity LM will show it on the website.