I warned of the LifeMiles devaluation several times while highlighting how cheaply they’ve sold points over the last couple of years. Today that devaluation took affect, and many of the good/popular “trick” airports are now dead.
Specifically, you can no longer get from:
- US to Europe for 12.5K in Economy or 25K in Business
- US to Asia for 12.5K in Economy or 25K in Business
- Australia to Texas for 17.5K in Economy
- Europe to Asia for 22.5K in Business
There are others that are less popular that are also dead as far as I can tell, including some Russian airports. I’m not naming the airports intentionally in case there is a glitch of some kind that allows them to be bookable later or from specific airports.
But not all of the tricks are dead. A few still live, but for the most part they are not useful for regular travelers. They are usually very long itineraries that fly you from one continent to another and back with a short layover, but still at a cheaper rate. Again, these are routes more suited to real flying enthusiasts than casual travelers.
This truly is a sad day in the travel hacking world. I’ve flown on many of these routes and it’s saved me literally thousands of dollars while flying in premium cabins. I actually have one of the trick airports booked to Europe in November and I’m hoping/praying that LifeMiles does not cancel trips that are already booked. There’s no guarantee with this program.
To be quite blunt, I don’t know what took LifeMiles so long to fix this. Clearly they knew, at least in recent weeks/months, that these trick airports existed…yet they still waited until the devaluation date to implement them. I’m not sure why they wouldn’t have just fixed them overnight. Still, I won’t complain since I got a lot of use out of it.
I still found one going from Asia to Europe in Coach for cheap…but you need a visa for XYZ country… 🙂
Which ones are dead?
The ones I listed in the bullet points. I’m just coming off a flight so I’m still researching and looking into this.
This is a huge letdown. Now it will cost at least twice as many miles to get from the US to Asia. What especially annoys me is that they had all of these promotions for people to buy Life Miles cheaply. Now, many people who bought Life Miles can’t use the miles for the trips they want. This sounds like bait and switch.
What annoys me most about this is that Avianca gave no advance notice that they would change the redemption levels for certain flights. Twice, they changed the award redemption levels overnight with no advance notice (with the Guam changes, and now this).
Now that it’s dead, what was the Australia to Texas for 17.5K trick?
Wonder what other sweet spots are people seeing per the new chart… care to share?
I can’t share any trick routes, but awards from Australia to Southeast Asia (Singapore/Bangkok etc) are a few miles cheaper than they were on the old chart in Business and First Class.
Sorry for that last question. Since I’m in a bad mood about this, I didn’t read carefully that you didn’t want to reveal which tricks are dead.