nk15

And most importantly, they won't get it.

tancredi

I am based in Germany, and I still managed to avoid the Lufthansa Group for almost all my long haul trips. Flying to CPH to take a SK flight from there, for example, is usually a small investment of time for a big return in miles.

I do wonder, though, whether this kind of "boycott" would be more effective if accompanied by a polite letter to the LH customer service, explaining why I did not choose their product. Maybe I am too optimistic.

sokolov

Same here. Except: I had to book a transatlantic from FRA, and UA wouldn't allow more than 330 days out. So my return had to be on LH metal. I'm not looking fwd to it. But UA just wouldn't sell the ticket.

NWIFlyer

It won't make any difference - we are individually throughly unimportant to any airline of the size of LH. They simply won't care - the best you'll get is a cut & paste response which probably won't address any of the points you've made. You'd get exactly the same from AF, KL, BA et al.

What you've already done - not booking at all - is the right message. LH only cares about the bottom line, so it'll believe that the volume of passengers it loses to other carriers because of stingy earning is offset by the savings. Only if it's got those sums badly wrong (or the economic environment changes) will the attitude change. If enough people do the same as you, then perhaps the load factor will reach the tipping point where LH needs to incentivise you to come back - but, given most people only care about the lowest fare, I suspect that will be a long time coming.

Your current choice of airline - SK - is a case in point. Earning used to be amongst the most stingy in Star (SK was the first airline to only give 25% earning in low cost Y), but once it became obvious the airline needed bums on seats to be able to survive, along came the incentive of 100%/200% earnings and even minimums. Once they recover financially, that may well not continue and there'll be a return to LH-like behaviour.

witlesspax

Unfortunately, in this case LH doesn't care if you fly them or UA. Thanks to the joint venture, they get their share of your money no matter what.

Donegal

LH Group avoiding is possible even if based in DE/AT/CH. Flying mostly with Oneworld these days due to high fares of LH&Co, their extra charges for bags/seats and the no/low amount of miles credited for their affordable fares. They will only change their policy if they see passengers and revenue moving away (though they will of course never admit it).

sokolov

They do have a JV. But I would find it hard to believe if there was really no monetary advantage to UA to fly a passenger instead of LH. Do you have details on that?

NWIFlyer

Obviously the exact terms of any JV will be commercially sensitive, but most of them are direct revenue share. The oneworld TATL one between AY/BA/AA certainly operates on that basis, and indeed BA actively advertises the number of lie flat J class seats it can offer from London with its partnership with AA.

There are many advantages to this for the airlines in terms of fixing prices and managing inventory between them.

witlesspax

I have no information other than what NWIFlyer wrote but the general assumption around FT at least seems to be that this JV is direct revenue share.

MSPeconomist

Does LH credit these P fares for HON status?

RedChili

But is it also a direct cost share? Obviously, the cost of flying a Lufthansa A380 FRA-LAX is far higher than flying a United B752 OSL-EWR.

KLouis

Don't you think that this is an oranges vs. apples comparison? What about cost (also revenue!) per mile per passenger? This doesn't lead anywhere...

RedChili

Yes, it's oranges vs apples, but revenue sharing also appears to be just that if the airlines divide revenue equally between partners.

:D!

Do we know that they divide it exactly equally, or is it in proportion to, for example, the number of seats or aircraft each airline sells / provides?

frenchft

Lufthansa is a long time souvenir for me, i avoid them at all cost... almost useless except for C and J fully flex, other fares really gives you nothing (literally in some cases indeed). Can be now applied to Austrian and Swiss (only good credit i get is with LH > PS, very generous even on cheap fares, can be useful if travelling in ukraine as the upgrade with miles are very cheap on LS).