In breaking Star Alliance news, it is being reported that Turkish Airlines is to begin negotiations to acquire Poland’s national carrier LOT. I’ll have more as this develops, especially after the European markets begin their day in a few hours. The statement was made by Turkish Airlines’ Chairman Hamdi Topcu. Turkish newspaper Hurriyet carried the article quoting the Chairman.
If such a deal should occur, it will be interesting to see the what happens with LOT’s frequent flyer program. Currently they are part of Lufthansa’s Miles & More. I suspect the program would be merged to Turkish’s Miles & Smiles and that should be a fairly clean combination since both are Star Alliance members. Let the speculation begin…..
Not sure what the mileage accrual for LH M&M is on LOT, but for TK I thought it was pretty poor, IMHO. I flew Turkish from MUC to IST and the corporate travel agency chose the TK flight instead of LH because it was about $300 cheaper. Normally I believe I get around 900+ miles one-way for this route but LH gave me a whopping 125. After I did the trip and saw what posted, I would have been better off giving them my CO FF#.
I love LH but they irritate me sometimes when it comes to *A partners – giving you less miles than you would if it was an LH flight. With UA flights, they almost always post the same as if it was LH, except they sometimes refuse to post UA. They will give some lame excuse that it is not part of the contract, but then the exact same flight operated by the same RJ carrier will post for a different trip later in the year. I am also Diamond Medallion with DL and their treatment of SkyTeam partners is more consistent – it is very rare that a SkyTeam flight is not posted exactly the same as if it were DL itself.