oliver2002

As you may have noticed, LH decided to discontinue the ever popular nonsensical feeding and breeding of virtual reindeer in a pen with lounges, worldshop gifts, and other activities.

In a recent boring meeting I had the idea on how to create a reindeer hunt of our own and combine it with the annual review of things that happened to us in the last 11-12 months. I pitched the idea to Newbie Runner at the Advents Do and sought further help from TRAVELSIG to expand the list of 24 clues. So here we go:

Presenting the
:-::-:2012 Flyertalk Club Ren :-::-:
on all things around Lufthansa Miles & More (Swiss, Austrian & partners)

- How does it work?
Each day Newbie Runner and/or I will post a clue to a thread on FT related to LH & co that will contain an image of an FT ren with a letter.
Collect the letters, and on December 24, you will have 24 letters that will give you the winning answer.

- Can I share my findings publicly by posting in this thread?
Yes, sharing is encouraged!

- What will I win?
Over the years I have accumulated a few treasure chests (or 'those stupid boxes that clutter up the office' according to my wife) with select artefacts of my history with LH. In the holiday spirit, I will make a list of items from which winners can pick what they would like and I will ship it to them. Plus I will nudge LH to spare me some more giveaways and FT may chip in too. We have three weeks to post the list, if you are an average Flyertalker there is definitely something there for you.

- How will they pick the winners:
The members that post the full answer will be be ranked in order of posting and get to pick from the list of goodies in groups of five.

NewbieRunner

Rens (and their FT handle) who PM'd the correct answer to Chief Ren and the date/time of their PM in UTC:

1. IMH - 14 Dec, 16:05
2. gojko88 - 14 Dec, 20:16
3. Marr3wk - 14 Dec, 21:28
4. jms_uk - 15 Dec, 17:25
5. clifford79 - 16 Dec, 15:24
6. N1003U - 16 Dec, 17:39
7. livious - 23 Dec, 03:25
8. br0snic - 26 Dec, ??.??
9. gum - 27 Dec, 11:00

oliver2002

The year started out well, with a clear promise that the fabled new business class would be rolled out on the longhaul fleet, finally releasing us all from the agony of the slippery slope. A forgetful exec had a picture of the seat in his IR presentation so we all knew how it would look like, but then the day came when Lufthansaflyer announced the day had come when the general public could finally see it for real at the ITB. Flyertalkers collected questions to be asked. Find the thread about the questions and you shall find the ren!

oliver2002

Not content with the price he had to pay for the slippery slope starting 2011, a Senator sued LH for the short notice he received about the changes to the table. Judgement day was set for hearing on Jan 27, 2012. krausolany picked up and posted the news and a discussion ensued, which the second ren took a peak at and is probably still reading.

oliver2002

In early February, with all weather horror well behind us, Brituchenite took a flight from MUC to EWR and one quarter of the way the flight deck decides to turn back due to a computer glitch. Does LH pay compensation? One ren decided to read up on such matters in case Santa made a similar diversion. It definitely sniffed at Rambusters post.

oliver2002

In mid March, our soothsayer Meilensammler came along and said 'Beware the ides* of April'. We said 'come again?' he said 'the business class miles will no longer be what they used to be!' we said 'noooo' he said 'yessss!' and so on. Sure enough, the devaluation came, only to nearly match the doomsday of August 2004, the day when we all agree the emasculation of M&M began. One of the rens took a look. Find it and thou shall hold the sixth clue.


*The real text of the ides of March incase you wondered:

oliver2002

In late summer two chinese on a flight from the alps to the great wall decided to take a seat recline issue into their own hands, so to speak. laoshu reported the incident and ZUG2007 actually observed it live since he was on the flight. Todays ren took a look what the excitement was all about.

oliver2002

In late June, two teenage girls from India made their way home after spending a few months in Germany. While a normal flyertalker only takes the name of FRA in his mouth with disgust and heads to the closest FCL/T when transiting, these two decided to peruse the offerings that the shops near the gate had to offer since the flight was not boarding. When they were done, the flight had left. hippo72 stumbled across their blog and the headline news it made. Todays ren is visiting that thread and reminiscing the days when it shopped gifts at the DF store in ANC on a fuel stop on an xmas decades ago.

oliver2002

Swiss prides itself presenting the best products from the region as part of their product on the ground and in the air. So everyone rejoiced when bobhope2 and GBM.flights reported spotting M�venpick icecream in the ZRH and GVA lounges. The ren took a peak, especially when it discovered that the winter special limited edition is still served in summer....

NewbieRunner

In April a brand new Swiss Arrival Lounge opened at Zurich Airport. Early reports on FT suggested there was some confusion regarding who had access to this lounge. Can *G arriving in Y access the Arrival Lounge? There were also reports that some SENs were refused entry "because LH does not pay us for the access".

Was the press release from LX incorrect? newflyer530 thought so but how about SENs with the LH logo on their card? Ren was curious and went to check the access rules found on swiss.com that NewbieRunner had posted.

Fortunately SWISS Lurker came to our rescue and the rules were eventually clarified on FT and corrected on swiss.com.

NewbieRunner

So you've been checking the ANA tool several times a day, managed to avoid phantom availability on United's website and finally secured a First Class award on LH! But will you get the new First?

There are three types of LH First Class seats at present. The old First, the new First on A380, 747-8i, latest A333 and retrofitted airbuses, and a seat and bed combination on retrofitted 744. When the original First retrofit thread became too long and unwieldy earlier this year, the Mods suggested opening a new thread and NewbieRunner took up the challenge by trying to keep updated information.

Ren must be planning First Class travel on LH as he was spotted inspecting the first post of the thread which lists the registration of all aircraft with retrofitted F cabins. We've had dogs in First threads but reindeer in First?

oliver2002

In early may our resident expert who seemed to be a novice at moving at a faster pace when signing up for FT, discovered that in some markets our favorite crane and its siblings decides to abolish the much hated surcharge that we need to pay to compensate the poor airlines for not being able to resist the evil capitalists in Texas and the Gulf. As we all prepared to collectively open our champagne bottles (the Brut 'D' bottle handed over the last time we visited the F cabin) in anticipation of all the funky Bora Bora trips we could now book with our miles, a second look at the fare calculation revealed that LH got inspired by us chanting the internationale*.... find the thread and you will find the ren reading and scratching its ear about all this sillyness.


* the third stanza speaks from our soul...:

oliver2002

Once upon a time, Abraham Lincoln coined the phrase used to describe the amount of 20 units with a four letter word. In modern days, (male) teenagers use it to describe the fact they finally managed to convince their partner to do the activity they spent years of training for. The urban dictionary tells me it also means a number of other things I shall not dwell upon further. Anywho, LHs management thought it wise to name their latest round of savings after this legendary phrase since climb was already taken in the last round. Managers sat down in lengthy meeting, consultants were called in and later dismissed, employees feared for their jobs, visiting flyertalkers got no cookies in meetings, and Rambuster noticed that the practice of serving a fresh breakfast in F had been supposedly optimised. As the end of the world as we know it drew near, FTers went in overdrive: the contacts at LH were queried, US DM and newpaper mile redemptions hastily rebooked to other carriers.

The ren sniffed at the OP to see what the heck was going on. The practice of eating other animals unhatched offspring is not so common in the artic, and requires extra study.

oliver2002

In March, Super80 reported that the best culinary experience in the M&M skies was going to be enhanced further by the addition of new stools. The instant question that came up why papa LH is not going for the same... the ren took a look, since the new color scheme is pretty festive, albeit missing the previous green of the meadows and the purple of the mountains

oliver2002

So you found your favourite *A loyalty programme, collect millions of miles using elite bonuses, baseball like grand slams ordering wine bottles, opening checking accounts, complaining a bit to get 10000 miles from customer relations, buy cookies etc etc and finally want to book that dream trip in first class via a paradisal little airport in the alps that also has a Heidi train. You pick up the phone to be connected to your premier chairman hotline with a personal agent in pune or manila and are even willing to spend a bit of cash on top of the miles, but the agent tells you that this exclusive little boutique LH group airline doesn't give away F award seats to partners in the star alliance but prefers its own core customer base instead. Shocked by the absolute disrespect of the carrier to its Partners Elite (with a capital P & E !!!) you start researching the inventory and make it a point to highlight this abysmal performance to the resident lurker on FT.

What would be the outcome? Todays ren decided to take a peak at moebods attempt to uncover the truth.