Originally Posted by
Kat007
I`m currently enrolled into United Mileage Plus, but noticed that Lufthansa`s program requires less miles for an award travel. I earn miles by flying on Lufthansa mostly (not much, about 10-20K/year) and shopping on Mileage Plus Mall. Should I enroll into Miles&More to have a lower miles requirement for redemption, or is it harder to redeem through Lufthansa/more tax/etc, and I should continue to earn miles on United Mileage+?
Taxes and fuel surcharges on LH M&M redemption are reputably high to the point of being ridiculous. In many cases, as reported on the M&M forum, the fees and taxes can be close to what an economy ticket costs.
What type of awards do you redeem? Intra-North America, intra-Europe, TATL? etc.? Also class of service: economy, business, first?
E.g., if you do a lot of intra-North America economy class awards, then at $10 in taxes per ticket, M+ is the way to go.
E.g.,if you expect to redeem for mostly economy seats, then you might find M&M redemptions to be a bad deal.
As I understand M&M, it is a good program when redeeming miles for long hauls in business or first, because the inventory of award seats is better than on M+. Yes, the fees and taxes are high, but not so compared to what discount business or first seats would cost.
Also, do you earn your LH miles flying intra-Europe? You'll find that for the most part, discount economy miles on LH earn zero miles on M+. In that case, crediting to M&M would be better.