Originally Posted by
jimis
I tried to use Expedia to book a Brussels flight (I think Brussels belongs to the Lufthansa group?). All Economy options were shown as K, and all Business options were shown as P. Even the ones priced way too high.
Yea, this happens, some airlines make it hard to buy different fare buckets, I'm not exactly sure why, but like for instance United offers (or at least did) a like "power users" version of the website where you had a little more control over the fare buckets. I'm not sure any other airline really does that. I know some airlines make it nearly impossible, Avianca shows you nothing about fare buckets. Yes, SN is part of the LH group, so it wouldn't surprise me if you had the exact same issues with them.
Originally Posted by
jimis
I'll keep that in mind if I ever fly extra-schengen. But this is very surprising and disappointing. Is the LH group not selling qualifying ticket classes even for the expensive intercontinental flights?
It's disappointing, but not surprising. I've known this about LH and LX for years, it's made them really irrelevant when I'm shopping for fares. That said, it's not like I'm some high yield customer they're losing out on, in fact I'm quite the opposite. But being based in Canada, it's really a non-issue for me UNLESS I REALLY wanna go to Europe and the LH group is significantly cheaper than AC/UA....which it basically never is.
Originally Posted by
jimis
So my two options is either to go full Lufthansa, or forget about Star Alliance and start booking all the low-fare companies that are available. I'll definitely save a lot of money like that, but lose the frequently flyer benefits.
It sounds to me like LH Group is being anti-competitive to the Star Alliance partner carriers.
It would make sense for Star Alliance to enforce rules on this.
I'm not gonna pretend to know whatever agreements the alliance has with it's member airlines, it SEEMS like they kinda just let them operate as they see fit. Singapore releases a fraction of the award space that others do. Each carrier I think is allowed to basically do whatever they want with their FFPs, as long as they provide standard benefits across the alliance, such as a free checked priority bag. So I'm not sure there's anything to "enforce" as you'd like to see.
I don't think they're being anti-competitive either, if anything they hurt themselves by doing this. They have a virtual monopoly on western and central europe as far as Star goes, there's plenty of competitors though, it's up to you to make that decision or not.
Lastly, yes, you could just switch to Lufthansa, keep in mind, you can still credit Aegean flights there too, but be mindful of the earning rates. Also, look into their programs because IMO they're terrible, but that's just my opinion as an economy flier. If you're the kinda person who flies paid first class once a year and business class on a couple trips a year and are part of that Deustch-elite status of people, then you either probably think it's fine, or don't care. I'm sure some economy fliers are elites with LH as well, but I just can't imagine how or why.