Originally Posted by
Ditto
You can't reasonably compare apples to oranges, earning rates are also very different with LH/LX, and mostly for the worse iMHO.
The big difference is that LH/LX don't have dynamic pricing of awards. It's a table, so the awards cost always the same, no matter which flight/date you take. If they are available (often they are not).
To make a meaningful earn/burn comparison one would have to check how many EUR of spend are needed to get a certain award. Take two examples:
- Base member. Earns 4 miles/EUR spent on FB. For an intra-Euro award in Y at 7,500 miles that base member would need to spend EUR 1,875. However, if that same award prices out at 25,000 miles (not unseen with FB) then that same member wold need to spend EUR 6,250. On M&M, a Euro flight costs always 17,000 miles. For a base member with 4 miles/EUR spent this means spending EUR 4,250 to get an award.
- Status member, Plat on FB. gets 8 miles per EUR spent. For a Europe-USA award in J class. On days that awards are 57,500 the member would need to spend EUR 7,125 to get the award miles. On other days, where the award is 150,000 miles (not unseen on FB) the member must have spent EUR 18,750 to get the award miles. For comparison, on LH/LX, the SEN members gets 6 miles per EUR spent. The award costs 52,000 miles. Which means he must have spent EUR 8,666 to get enough miles.
Conclusion: the dynamic pricing makes a comparison difficult. On the days that FB offers low award rates, it is more attractive than M&M. On days that FB has crazy award rates, M&M is more attractive. But even that is difficult to compare: because the reason for FB to have crazy award rates is that few/only expensive seats are available on that flight for purchase. With M&M when there are only few/expensive seats for purchase, they wouldn't show any availability for awards.