Up to a 50% bonus when you buy Air Europa SUMA Miles (Potential value in redeeming for SkyTeam flights?)

Members of Air Europa’s SUMA program can buy miles with a bonus of up to 50% until March 7. The tiered bonus offers 25% to 50% more miles with a maximum purchase of 100,000 miles. That means with the bonus you can buy 150,000 miles for 1,500 EUR or 1 Euro Cent per mile.

The up to 50% bonus

Receive up to a 50% bonus when you buy Air Europa SUMA Miles. Valid until Mar 7, 24. Click here for more details.
(To see the bonus offer click on the “Offers” tab)

Bonuses as follows:

• 1,000 – 10,000 miles = 25% bonus
• 15,000 – 50,000 miles = 30% bonus
• 60,000 – 100,000 miles = 50% bonus

Is there value in buying SUMA Miles?

On paper there definitely seems to be value in buying the miles. I mean I’ve never utilized the program so perhaps some of our readers can give us a better indication on how easy or difficult it is to redeem SUMA Miles for Air Europa or SkyTeam partner flights. If it is relatively easy and they have award flight availability then this definitely could be a very good buy miles opportunity.

However, what I also don’t know is how much of the carrier surcharges, taxes and fees Air Europa passes along on award tickets. I have 0 miles in my SUMA account so I am unable to see the charges on award flights.

With the program you can fly round trip in business class with lie flat seats on Air Europa’s Boeing 787s between Miami or New York and Spain or Portugal for 100,000 SUMA Miles. With the buy miles bonus you can purchase 70,000 miles for 1050 EUR and receive 35,000 bonus miles for 105,000 miles in total – which covers that round trip flight. Based on a revenue ticket that I checked, the carrier surcharges, taxes and fees between New York and Madrid run almost US$2,000 so this first option doesn’t seem like a very good deal. But it all depends on if they pass along that whole amount on a reward ticket. For example, we know that Air France KLM have YQ/YR surcharges that approach $2,000 on business class revenue tickets however when redeeming miles for the same flights the YQ/YR comes in well below $1,000. If Air Europa did the same then there could be value in buying the miles.

With Air Europa’s SUMA program you can also redeem 128,000 miles for round trip business class flights on SkyTeam airlines where those flights are between 1,751 and 3,500 miles. Routes that fall into that distance band include Boston to Lisbon and Paris, Montreal to Amsterdam and Paris and several others. Thus for these options you could buy 90,000 miles (+ 45,000 bonus miles) for 1350 EUR. For a round trip business class award flight on airlines likes Air France, Delta or KLM that is a pretty amazing deal – as long as the carrier surcharges, taxes and fees aren’t outrageous.

Here is the SUMA award chart for Air France KLM and most other SkyTeam airline (amounts are one way):

Images via Air Europa