Received this via email: Lifemiles "enhancement" incoming July 15th. Might not be a devaluation, but we know how this usually goes.
(x-post r/churning)
Posted Apr 16, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC
Avianca quietly has gotten award of their award chart recently. I was not able to find a formal announcement about it. I think this is their announcement. One good thing is that it appears that some fees have been reduced and I haven't noticed a ton of negative changes, yet.
I can't find any reasonable flights out of Newark on Lifemiles. All flights 2+ connects 15+ hours of travel.
I’ve had much better luck on non-united *A partners. Swiss for 16.5k in economy JFK-GVA pretty regularly
Almost certainly a devaluation, but a lower bound of 6500 LM for a domestic ticket could be exciting value, especially since BA devalued their intra-US short haul pricing.
Also there's no need to praise an airline for how they devalue, but kudos to them for giving 3 months notice, though it would be a better look if they actually included the new chart.
Edit: example new rates can be found here. If these examples are representative this change is at worst a mild devaluation. It's hard to be sure that they are though when there's no J prices shown.
It hurts to lose both UA and LM so quickly. (Tiny airport only flies United.) With SQ it definitely appears coordinated.
I would be surprised if it devalues as hard as UA does. Lifemiles essentially runs a business of wholesaling partner award inventory by running aggressive sales on miles (as cheap as ~1.35 cents each). Devaluing hard would be saying "we're getting out of that business permanently"
Sorry, I must have missed the BA devalue—what happened with BA? Thanks!
BA has a distance based award chart where flights between 1-650 miles most places costs 4500 Avios + taxes. Shorthauls in the US were changed to cost at a minimum the second tier of prices (the 650-1151 band) which cost 7500 Avios + taxes.
This happened a LONG time ago so perhaps it was silly of me to mention.
Gotcha thanks! I thought I was missing something that happened recently. I’m glad BA hasn’t changed again!