Lifemiles 140% bonus is back plus a special offer on redemption

If you know travel hacking, you probably know Ben aka Lucky, the founder of One Mile at a Time (OMAAT).

Here’s an excellent Rolling Stone profile about him, if you have the time to read it. The man is an absolute legend in the community, and together with Gary Leff at View from the Wing is probably among the most influential bloggers in this space.

Why am I bringing him up? Because OMAAT is doing two special promotions with Lifemiles– one that lets you buy Lifemiles with an additional bonus, and one that lets you redeem Lifemiles at a discount.

Buying Lifemiles with a bonus

Lifemiles has done two sales in the past few weeks. The first was a no-holds-barred 140% deal they ran for Cyber Week, so long as you bought a minimum of 5,000 miles.

I said at the time that this was one of the best deals in recent memory because not only did it allow you to buy LM at 1.375 US cents each, it also didn’t require you to buy >101,000 LMs to enjoy that rate. This was great for topping up accounts that were just short of whatever amount you needed to cash out.

The second promotion (which is currently going on until 20 Dec) was a bit more meh-ish, so much so I didn’t even bother to write anything about it.

This was a more traditional Lifemiles sale where the bonus you got depended on how many miles you bought. You’ll see that the maximum bonus is 130%, and requires you to buy at least 101,000 miles. Given the great Cyber Week sale, where you could get a 140% bonus for any purchase amount above 5,000, I felt this wasn’t anything to shout about.

Well, what’s happening now is that readers of OMAAT (i.e. everybody) can get an additional bonus on top of the published rates. If you register via this link (I imagine Ben gets some sort of referral bonus for this. I get a warm and fuzzy feeling knowing someone else benefited) and wait 24 hours, you should be able to get an additional bonus on your miles, as illustrated below.

Is this the best sale ever? No- the Cyber Week sale was still better, given that under the current OMAAT promotion you need to buy a minimum of 101,000 miles to get the 140% bonus. But if you missed the boat last time, here’s a way you can get back on. And I’ll take 140% over 130% any day of the week.

Redeeming Lifemiles at a discount

Now here’s the promotion that I’m really interested in. Ben has teased the following-

On top of the additional bonus on purchased miles, there’s also going to be a special promotion for OMAAT readers redeeming miles (including for travel in first & business class), which I’ll be sharing the details of shortly. So I’d recommend registering at this link even if you’re not 100% sure if you’ll want to buy miles yet, just so you have the option and your account is activated for the bonus.

Of course, this, like my love life, could turn out to be a damp squib. Given OMAAT’s US-centric focus, it is entirely possible that the routes on discount could be domestic US routes, or journeys that must start in the USA, or routes that otherwise have little relevance to SG-based flyers. I don’t know. But it costs nothing to register, so I’d watch this space very carefully. I just booked a LM business class redemption for 78,000 miles, so I’d be keen to see whether it makes sense to cancel and rebook given what the promotion turns out to be.

Ben has mentioned that more details will be available within 24 hours.

A spanner in the works?

I think it’s only fair to mention one other thing–

Delta and United are sniffing around Avianca, and the word is that one of them will buy a controlling stake. Why am I mentioning this? Because it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this will affect the Lifemiles program.

That said, (1) Lifemiles is a cash cow for Avianca. I can’t imagine why an acquirer would want to change that (2) the timeline on which this acquisition would take place is uncertain. If you’re buying Lifemiles anyway you should have an immediate/semi-immediate (3 months, tops) use for them. I certainly wouldn’t have them sit idle in my account for longer than that.

So have this at the back of your mind, but don’t let it stop you from jumping on what’s otherwise a good promotion.

Let’s see what discounted redemption rates are coming our way…