Miles & More has begun to unveil what some of the changes will be to the program beginning later this year. So far, it’s nothing to panic about and actually may be acceptable to most.
In the first phase, M&M is focusing on Intra-Europe award travel. Specifically, it appears that ticket surcharges will decrease substantially and the amount of miles required to redeem a ticket will go up modestly.
Beginning with bookings made on September 15, 2016 or later, ‘Intra-Europe’ redemption surcharges will decrease from €40 to only €5 for Economy Class and for Business Class the fee will go down from €43 to €20. This will apply to flights operated by LH Group Airlines. As far as miles are concerned, Economy and Business Class ticket redemptions will increase by 5000 miles (roundtrip booking).
In reality this is a fairly ‘passenger friendly’ deal. I’m sure most of us would be willing to spend 5k more miles instead of €20 to €35 more in fees. For you dissenters, keep in mind it could have been much worse!
Expect changes to be announced for Intercontinental travel in the near future.
It’s pretty bad. But then again, combine the hardest to reach elite statuses, with super expensive rewards and surcharges, and the miles & more program has been trribke for years now.
to begin with, LH charges a crazy amount as fuel surcharges, and kept doing that even when the oil price went down. So whether you see it customer friendly or not depends on your reference point. On the other hand, many asian airlines dropped//decreased their fuel charges. So I don’t feel very good about LH (and BA for the same reason). Good companies do what is fair and right but this is not a good way of doing business for LH. They are basically reducing the impact of increase in miles by reducing what should be reduced regardless. That is how I see it…