A place to discuss anything related to redeeming airline miles & hotel points.
Hi there,
My husband and I have been saving miles for the past couple of years by using their MM credit card and other rewards points, the idea being to use them on booking our honeymoon. We currently have 110,00 miles, and FRA is our home airport, so Lufthansa's Miles and More seemed the way to go. We've finally got a chunk of time that we could use for a vacay, and we went to look at the flights, with a destination of LAX in Aug/Sept.
This is where our trouble began. LH wants 30,000 M + 490EUR pP "Fees & Taxes" for an economy flight. No business class available.
This far out, I can book a flight with Delta for the same dates, cheaper and not using any miles. Or plenty of other airlines for comparable $$$ without using miles.
We both feel like we have a bunch of useless miles that won't really take us anywhere without us having to spending cash that would be comparable to a fare and we're spending money for their upkeep by keeping their stupid MM credit card. Did we get bamboozled? Or is MM just shitty?
Avoid Lufthansa. Try using those miles to book flights operated by Swiss, Turkish, Brussels, Aegean or TAP.
...but yeah, M&M sucks.
I thought I read that I can't actually use MM miles on partner airlines, only for upgrades?
You can, here is a list of partners for M&M.
https://upgradedpoints.com/best-ways-to-redeem-lufthansa-miles/
Once you click on use points to book flights with our partners you get a 404.
Seems like an IT fail rather than something that's disallowed?
Unfortunately Lufthansa charges an insane amount in taxes and fees for award tickets compared to many other airlines. I believe it’s because Lufthansa collects fuel surcharges on award tickets while some airlines, such as United, do not. I too found this out the hard way when I lived in Frankfurt. Some of my colleagues used the United MileagePlus program and, in general, paid 75% less taxes and fees on award tickets to/from the US.
Try looking for two one-way award tickets, might decrease the surcharges a little.
Look for partner award space on United. They don't charge fuel surcharges so if you can find space, you'll be able to redeem for the same number of points. Note that you will still have to pay the high German departure taxes, which are around 100 euros.
Miles and More is generally a shitty program. It's useful for booking LH F more than 15 days out and I think a couple of medium hall star alliance sweet spots though I don't remember exactly what they are.
The sweet spots are in the link jello_sweaters shared. And they are there - just very specific. I booked YVR-YYZ and YUL-YVR for 17K + $41CAD each way in business. Lie-flat seats are operated on both routes; I'm currently only on a lie-flat plane one-way, but am hoping to same-day change (free with biz class) to get them both ways. 17K was before the recent devaluation, but I think it's still a relative bargain. I get this doesn't help with a honeymoon to LAX, but my point is don't give up yet as perhaps you can still get some good value with some flexibility.
The only upside of M&M I’ve found is that they release a ton of J award availability on their own flights, that they don’t release to partners.
If you’re looking for 4+ J award seats between the US and Europe, Lufthansa will reliably have them available through M&M (but not Alliance partners) so long as you’re booking 330’ish days out. The downside is the terrible fees, IIRC about the same as you’re seeing for Y fares. Still too damn high, but not quite so insane since they’re for a more expensive J flight.
British Airways did the same to me. I spent $438 on fuel fees on each ticket even though I hand plenty of Avios that could’ve paid for it all.
I ended up using all of my Avios for hotels...the fees made flying unappealing.
I’m not the biggest Avios fan. It just happened to be a good sale at the time so the $438 I spent on each round trip ticket was worth it.
Avios are only good for short flights in the US on AA metal.
I only use MM miles on their bargain deals where it’s half off for round trip business class (55k miles or so per person). Yes the fees are high but it’s just a bit more than a regular economy ticket cash cost, plus miles, to get business- still a deep discount than paying biz via cash.
This was our idea, but there a no more seats in business left. I know that on Saturday they’ll have new deals with business availability, but they will probably be at a time when we won’t be able to go. And they might not have a destination we want to go to.
Same goes for the Virgin Atlantic program for US based people going to EU. Not the best deal...
The VS program is amazingly good for people wanting to fly in Delta, as well as on ANA to JApan. Funny how things work out.
Really the only reasonable way to book Delta one suites. Conversely, Delta has pretty good redemptions for VS upper class, US to London with just $2 in fees.
You can book D1 for 80k or less DL (less if there’s a flash sale) if you are flexible. I’d much rather burn 80k DL than 60k of a flexible currency if there’s no transfer bonus.
It's pretty hard to find that space though at convenient times
This is why you don't put your eggs in the airline miles , instead invest in chas ur or amex.
Easy to say for the Americans. EU options are significantly fewer
I much rather have free European health care over chase ur points any day of the week.
We also have Amex, don’t know what Chas ur is?
It's a typo, they mean Chase UR (Ultimate Rewards)
That's what I thought. But Chase does not exist here, so not an option for us.
Yeah I got the initial spend bonus on that credit card, figured out what you did for points booking, then just cashed in the points for gift cards before they expired.
By your own admission, you’ve been accumulating miles for years. That’s plenty of time to research what you should be doing. How do you feel scammed?
This is the first time trying to actually redeem any of the miles. And yeah I did look into what to do in this location. Unfortunately there really isn’t a lot in the way of choice here. The other comments echo that Luftwaffe has shitty redemption policies coupled with the lack of competition in this market, giving them free reign to stay shitty.
Miles and More is the purest form of crap. If crap was art, Miles and More was Leonardo Da Vinci.
(1) Your miles expire before you know it. (2) Their app doesn't work properly and (3) you frequently don't get the miles or flight segments credited that you actually executed. (4) Any request, inquiry or information needs around a month or longer to be treated. Different representatives give you different answers and around 50% of requests ultimately get the "it's not possible and there is no one that can help you". (5) Any award flight charges extra euros and you need to fly via Frankfurt although direct flights exist. (6) Getting status requires generally more miles than with other programs. For example, with United you get to Start Alliance Gold much quicker.
I can't express what difference it was when I started to put my miles on United's program. I went from crap to copper (I will never compare any airline service with silver or gold...).