Lufthansa today announced plans to spin off its Frequent Flyer program and have it operate as an individual entity within the Lufthansa Group. Currently the program is part of Deutsche Lufthansa AG and has 25 million members. The proposal comes from the Supervisory Board of Lufthansa Group.
After move, the program will be known within the Lufthansa Group as Miles & More International GmbH. As part of this internal restructuuring, Lufthansa’s WorldShop will also be merged into the new Miles & More company.
According to Lufthansa, the expectation is that additional program partners will be added to further increase the value proposition to current Miles & More members as a result of this move.
Shareholders will need to approve this restructuring proposal. The vote will take place at the Annual General Meeting scheduled for April 29, 2014 at the Congress Center in Hamburg, Germany.
There has been no mention of any changes to the actual program itself as far as frequent flyer benefits are concerned and I don’t expect there to be significant changes to the program as a result of this restructure.
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Certainly leaves them in an excellent position of being 1st/2nd major program in Europe to adopt revenue-based strategies for their FFP. Not surprised by the WorldShop addition from earlier news.
It does, hopefully some of the intangibles that can come from enhancing the program can counter some of the mid-east carrier ‘invasion’.
Glad to hear that there haven’t been any significant changes to the program (so far). I guess I’m in a wait-and-see mode but will definitely welcome the potential ways to earn more miles through new partners. Although I have the airline’s MasterCard, I’m primarily relying on my Starwood Amex as the cornerstone of my Miles & More accumulation strategy. BTW, really like the new format – especially the First Class Duck Registry :-). Oh, and you can never have too many photos of the FCT … looking forward to that going live soon as well!
I think there have been enough ‘enhancements’ with MM to last a long time! I think being separate will definitely allow them to be more flexible for adding additional partnerships, etc. Hopefully we see some of this before year’s end. Thanks for the kind words on the new look. I should have the FCT pics done tonight – I’ll tweet it out when done! 🙂
So pretty much the story is “on course with what was announced in December” yes? Or have there been changes?
http://boardingarea.com/viewfromthewing/2013/12/08/lufthansa-apparently-spinning-frequent-flyer-program/
Status Quo with perhaps an ‘enhancement’ with absorbing WorldShop which makes sense anyway, just making it official!