Originally Posted by
Alexzander
I may be re-assigned to Switzerland, and will be traveling a bit. Accordingly, I am considering whether I should concentrate on the Mileage Plus program or Miles and More. It seems a tough decision for me.
I will likely return to the U.S. after three years, so it might be nice to have the United miles. But it may be that miles and more are easier to earn and my status potential could be higher. On the other hand, it seems that M&M miles expire 36 months after receipt, while there are ways to extend united miles.
Has anyone faced this decision? Any advice you can offer is greatly appreciated.
Depends on what you intend to do with your miles and what status you care to earn
M&M rewards paid premium cabin travel heavily. If you anticipate lots of ex-ZRH long haul travel in J/F then it would be a good fit. Many fares (not P though) earn very hefty bonuses and if you can get status it stacks up quickly. Many European star partners will also result you much more M&M miles in J (example TP) than UA.
If you intend to redeem for transAtlantic J/F awards having M&M miles can be good as LH group airlines releases a ton of J/F awards to its own members - if you book far out you can pretty much always get 2 J awards on any flight. If you rack up enough miles you can get F awards fairly easily too (LX F award is only for SEN and above and LH F awards are only released to partners within 14 days of departure (SQ has special access to these) so there's very little competition for those seats).
Downside is that you have to pay YQ on LH awards which can be a lot depending on where you are going. It's also much more difficult to get *G with LH - SEN requires 100k qualification miles per year and that's not easy if you don't fly paid J/F (frequent traveler is only *S which is useless on partners).
If you fly cheap Economy tickets on UA/LH then M&M isn't for you. 25% earning on most discount Y fares. You are better off crediting low fare class UA Y tickets to SQ while you still can.