Avianca Lifemiles Makes Changes To The Elite Program For 2023 Membership Year And Beyond

Avianca Lifemiles has sent an email to all members to inform them that the program is redesigning the way that qualification for elite status will go forward starting from the 2023 membership year.

There are also new benefits, program features, and changes to previous ones, so everyone should get familiarized with the new structure to decide if Lifemiles will remain the program of choice going forward.

It’s a good time to revisit strategies for members of loyalty programs as many companies underwent changes in the past year or have advised up an upcoming restructuring of their program.

Should one more of a program’s features no longer suit your travel profile, then it could be just as well be in your best interest to look for an alternative, though, in the case of LifeMiles, I find that most of the changes made are indeed improvements that deserve the name.

You can access the LifeMiles website outlining the new changes here.

The key points are that:

• Elite Points will no longer be used to manage Elite benefits
• Instead, benefits such as access to Avianca Lounges are now denominated based on a fixed number of complimentary entries that you will receive per Elite status
• We’ve also tried to make sure that members no longer need to request the use of their benefits prior to travel. However, for 2023, selection of seats in rows 1–3 will still require self-management through LifeMiles.com
• Members who have an unused Elite Points balance earned with their 2022 Elite Status qualification progress, will receive an equivalent amount of benefits to use this year.

This is the new chart that allows for Elite Status qualification this year and beyond:

With this structure, it won’t be possible to obtain status without flying at least 50% of the tier level miles with Avianca. This means that it won’t be a program for remote members who seek Star Alliance Gold status but never fly Avianca itself.

Though you can now not just earn miles by flying but also all other transactions involving Lifemiles:

Even miles purchases will count under this new system in order to collect qualifying miles. Would these count as “obtained on Avianca” so that one wouldn’t have to fly them after all? We might have to wait and do a trial and error run on the new program to find out.

Conclusion

Avianca Lifemiles is going to revamp the program as far as the collection of elite tier miles, obtaining status, and conferred benefits are concerned.

Avianca has so far been a prominent program mostly for its lucrative points sales and good redemption opportunities but it has also proven itself to be a very unreliable program with award blocking, last-minute award chart changes without any advance notice as well as technical problems. It’s also a nightmare to cancel or, let alone, change an award.

We’ll monitor the LifeMiles program and see how these new changes will play out but I’d be wary in picking it as my main program for the time being unless you’re really a heavy Avianca flyer and can use the airline specific benefits.