Originally Posted by Concerto

As I have worked a little to keep my FTL (Silver) card and prolong its validity for as long as possible, I was wondering if there were any tangible remaining benefits left. Instead of going for SEN, I decided to go for medium status with the other alliances, and thus have a finger in all pies.

It seems that from the 1st January, I will no longer have the benefit of lounge access, as all flights from DUS (my main airport) will apparently be 4U-coded instead of LH. Apparently you can buy access for EUR25 for 4U flights, but the girl at the germanwings ticket desk in CGN just laughed at me, and asked me why I would bother wasting money on it. In fact, the whole bunch of them at the ticket desk looked at me like I was a spaceman (which I probably am to most people), and we all had a good laugh about it. In the end I bought a couple tins of Gaffel Kolsch, an excellent beer from Cologne, from Heinemann Duty Free (they have them cold if you ask for them) for EUR1,50 a piece, and drank them while waiting for the flight.. and earned 3 miles for my effort!

We have lost the use of contract lounges, and I am still not sure how bad that will be, as I have been mostly flying with the competition since July. However, it sounds as if the lounge access benefit is slowly being eroded away, the main advantage of FTL for me.

Business Class check-in was a tangible benefit, but as I mostly check-in online these days I don't really really get anything out of it. However, if that benefit remains I suppose that is one good thing.

In all my time as a FTL I have never had an op-up, but I had several prior to being FTL. So, I think that nothing obvious will change in this area.

I appreciate the 25% bonus qualifying miles boost on flights, but these days I just am not doing the flights I was on LH or LX and most miles are collected by other means, such as the COOP Trophy stamps in Switzerland. As for no longer getting full miles on SWISS Business Saver fares, I really think the only way to proceed is to vote with your wallet and not buy them.