by Lufthansa Flyer | Mar 22, 2018 | Featured, Lufthansa, Miles & More, Swiss |
Lufthansa has announced that it has changed its approach to First Class upgrades for members of Miles & More.
Beginning April 3, 2018, all revenue based Lufthansa Business Class fare classes will be eligible for upgrade to First Class. Until this announcement, Miles & More members could only upgrade using their E-Vouchers if they flew certain Business Class fare classes. For example, purchasing a ‘P’ fare (deep discount fare) ticket would not allow you to upgrade to First. That is now no longer the case. Any Business Class ticket that you PAY for is eligible for upgrade. Award tickets obviously remain un-upgradeable!
Lufthansa made this switch to align with the policy in place with SWISS who has always allowed any Business Class seat to be upgradeable to First Class using e-vouchers. It’s a smart move for LH to make the upgrade policy consistent between the 2 Lufthansa Group carriers that offer First Class cabins.
Speaking from personal experience, the previous policy impacted my decision making a great deal. It was the old upgrade policy that had me choose to fly with SWISS more often than Lufthansa when I had e-vouchers to use for upgrades.
Now LH group passengers have a level playing field when it comes to choosing which of the 2 carriers to fly if they are looking to redeem upgrades to First Class.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Mar 14, 2018 | Featured, Lufthansa, Miles & More |
Good News!
Miles & More has announced that Lufthansa passengers can earn an additional 50% award mile bonus for flights booked between March 12 and May 31, 2018.
The offer is valid as long as travel has been booked on Lufthansa.com and that the flights takes place between March 12 and August 30, 2018. The flights must be operated by Lufthansa in order to qualify for the bonus miles.
The bonus will be based off of your fare class, so the award will be a factor of the fare class, and not actual miles flown.
You must provide your Miles & More number at the time of booking in order for you to qualify for the bonus miles. The bonus miles will be credited as late as 12 weeks after your qualifying flights. And of course, bonus miles do not count toward status qualification.
One small part of the fine print: Residents of Austria, Switzerland and the 13 people living in Lichtenstein are not eligible for the promotion.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Mar 7, 2018 | Featured, Miles & More |
Beginning this May, members of Miles & More will be able to start combining their efforts with family members living in the same household when it comes to earning and redeeming miles.
Though specifics have yet to be released by LH, it appears that that the new plan will allow 2 adults and up to 5 children in the same household to share Award Miles. Status miles will not be combinable. In other words, Dad and the kids can’t put their miles together to make Mom a Senator, but they can get her a First Class ticket by combining their award miles.
Being able to combine miles will be a huge benefit especially when the MM deep discount or ‘Meilenschnappchen’ promos are considered. With monthly ‘Meilenschnappchen’ offers passengers can usually book award travel for nearly half of the miles that are usually required.
Hopefully M&M leaves the redemption table alone while doing this. If they raise the amount of miles needed to redeem for a given award, it would nullify at least some of the benefit of being able to pool miles from several accounts.
I expect more announcements regarding Miles & More over the coming weeks. Miles & More is celebrating its 25th Anniversary so I suspect more user-friendly features to be unveiled as we approach the busy summer travel season.
On my wish list? Knock a few dollars off of the surcharges that are associated with redeeming miles, especially in First or Business Class! 🙂
by Lufthansa Flyer | Dec 12, 2017 | Austrian, Brussels, Featured, Lufthansa, Miles & More, Star Alliance, Swiss |
As has been widely anticipated, Lufthansa has announced that Miles & More will convert to a revenue based program beginning with flights booked on March 12, 2018 and afterward.
As is typical for a revenue-based model, the more you spend on airfare, the more award miles you will earn for your account. Obviously, this favors passengers that book higher level Economy class tickets, Business, and First Class tickets.
The way Lufthansa is going to do it is by assigning ‘multiples’ based on the airline operating your flight. You then multiply the ‘eligible’ part of your fare (including surcharges) by the ‘multiple’ to calculate how many miles you’ll receive.
For flights operated by Lufthansa Group airlines (Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian, Eurowings, Brussels), a base ‘multiple’ of 4 will be used to determine your award miles credit. For example, if your fare has $400 basis (inclusive of surcharges), you’ll earn 1600 miles for the booking.
According to the somewhat poor details in their press release, it appears that the 4 ‘multiple’ will apply to other Miles & More member airlines such as (LOT, Croatia, etc.).
For passengers holding status with Miles and More (Frequent Traveler, Senator, Hon Circle), the multiple will be higher. For these passengers, the ‘multiple’ will be 6 for flights operated by Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, United Airlines, Air Canada, LOT Polish Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Adria Airlines and Air Dolomiti. A multiple of 5 will be used for flights operated by Eurowings, Brussels Airlines, and other Miles & More airlines not mentioned in the previous sentence. There will no longer be a separate ‘Executive Bonus’ calculation. This has been factored into the higher multiples being awarded to members with elite status levels.
According to the release, the determining factor for how miles are credited will be based on your ticket number. For example if you book your Lufthansa-operated flights through a travel agent and that travel agent assigns a ‘Eurowings’ ticket number to it, you will earn your miles based on the ‘multiple’ in place for Eurowings. So be careful when using a travel agent when booking a ticket and make sure they ticket it to the airline that you are actually flying in order to ensure the full mileage credit that you paid for!
With this announcement, no changes are being made as far as how you earn elite status within Miles & More. The same terms and conditions stay in place for status qualifications.
As far as the currency calculation being used to calculate your fare and award miles, all ticket sales will be converted to Euros for the basis of determining the amount spent on your ticket. For example, lets say you spend $720USD to buy your ticket, at the time of sale the $720 will be converted to Euros at current ‘FX’ rates. This Euro amount is what will be multiplied by the earnings multiple to determine how many miles you’ll earn. So if the $720USD translates into €611, the €611 will be multiplied by the multiple to determine award miles earned. A bit unfair if your currency is worth less than the Euro, but it is what it is. It probably would take too many abacuses to keep track of all of the different currencies for the purpose of calculating miles.
ALSO, and a big ALSO:
If your ticket is issued by any other carrier within Star Alliance not mentioned above, and you have the miles from that ticket being credited to your Miles & More account, NOTHING CHANGES. Those tickets will continue earning under the existing terms and conditions and are not subject to this revenue based models. For example, you book a ticket issued by Singapore Airlines, and credit your miles to MM, you’ll continue earning your award and status qualifying miles under the ‘old’ system.
Lufthansa has created a dedicated webpage to help communicate the details of these changes, you can find it here.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Nov 25, 2017 | Featured, Miles & More, Points/Miles |
Normally, it’s quite hard to find a good Miles & More deal for earning miles that doesn’t involve flying anywhere. However, when these rare non-flight related deals come up, they’re usually quite good.
That’s the case at the moment.
getAbstract has long been a partner of Miles & More and typically provides a deal where you get 15,000 miles for signing up for their ‘Pro’ Subscription. Until November 30th, they’ve sweetened the deal and will award you 20,000 miles for signing up.
What is getAbstract?
Call it ‘ Cliffs Notes ‘ for adults. It is a service that provides executive summaries for thousands of books across the non-fiction space including Business, History, Self-Improvement, Biographies, etc.etc. Using their app or desktop you can easily access their library no matter where you are.
It’s actually a useful program whose benefits I think may even out weigh the value of the miles that you’ll receive.
The cost of the subscription is $299/year so when doing the math, it distills down to 1.495 cents per mile. I’ve been hard pressed to find anything that comes close to getting this many miles in one deal for such a low cost. Considering ‘Meilenschnappchen’ deals let you redeem Economy roundtrips for 30,000 miles or 55,000 miles for Business Class Roundtrips between the USA and Europe, getting 20,000 miles for only $299 works out quite nicely.
The deal for the 20,000 miles expires on November 30, at which point the offer will probably revert back to only getting 15,000 miles.
If you do decide to sign up, here’s a tip:
Normally, getAbstract gives you a 30 day money back guarantee period which delays your miles from crediting until after 30 days. However, if you email them asking them to waive the return period, they’ll credit your miles within a few days.
To learn more about the deal, please visit the getAbstract promo on the Miles & More website. Scroll down to the bottom of that page and you’ll see the ad box showing an additional 5k miles bonus being advertised.
