Thanks a lot! I was not aware of any changes, and the former 100K mile threshold was a no-go for me. I mostly fly LH P on long-haul, and econ intra-Europe (unless on a feeder flight, or unless I find some deeply discounted short-haul biz on LH) but I 'll definitely check out the new LH scheme. Although living in Sweden, and flying mostly to the US and Greece, at least in the foreseeable future, SK's EB and A3's M&B seem the to be the FFPs that offer the most to me.

For LH SEN, you will need 480 tier points from 2021 onwards. All intercontinental flights in business (including P) earn 50 points per sector, while intra-European flights in business earn 10 - there is no difference between booking classes. All 'continental' (e.g. intra-European) flights earn 5 points in economy (including K) and 10 in business. Star Alliance partner airline flights earn the same points as LH-Group airlines but half of the 480 points need to be obtained on Miles and More collaborating airlines. Mileage accrual remains the same.

ad.1. Incredibly high earning in sas, premium economy 200%
ad.2 Yeah stupid rule but look at British Airways you pay points for each segment
ad.3. United have also stupid rule which I found out with mixed clases
I booked LHR-IST (J) 25000 /DPS-SIN (J) 0 miles due united perks/IST-LHR (Y) 15000 miles for 3 pax
but then I tried book the same routing I found only mixed class left for 1 sector LHR-VIE-IST first Y second J and in the end United wanted 25k+25k+15k = 65k for the same routing....
ende booked pax via ZRH in both J

ad.4. True but lots airlines keeping avalibility for own FF
ad.5 very low on LOT,SAS

and big advantedge You can pool all miles form Your family and friends(6 per year) into one account.....
and cool special routings sweet spots like ANA F for 75k now....

but on other way
increasing redemption ticket cost without notice is no go for me....but still It's easy program to retain GOLD for next year
I'm Gold till March 2021 now....
and it took me to spend 500Euro per year to extend it

Im my opinion it would better if they made it harder to reach or maintain the Gold status (more miles).

This is just nasty. No notice at all, just quietly raising the cost is a no-go for any customer with a tad of self-respect.

M&M 2021, here I come

Question is: where to credit all my LH/LX/SQ F flights in 2020.

Anyone have a suggestion for a program that gives the most miles for A/F and offers good redemption rates for F too ?

Thanks & regards,

El Puerco Volante

Wow.. I was debating if I wanted to continue with MB next year. This just made my decision, no longer want to go for it. I regret not redeeming my 45k to North Africa.

Thank you everyone here with valuable information in the past. I wish you all well in the future.

www.wheretocredit.com

I was expecting this kind of change because it seemed too good to be true.

All I'll do is to credit the minimum required to renew Gold (for OA flights) and the rest of them go to M&M (only until the end of next year though) or SQ, depending on the flights.

As a Far East-based leisure traveler, this isn't fantastic news, but I'm happy to see that flying to Hawaii/Oceania is now cheaper than Europe/Africa for us; previously it made little sense that a trip to Perth, just 8 hours south of me, would cost the same as a trip to Portugal or South Africa or Senegal, all of which are twice the distance or more. I'd been holding off on Oceania for a while and now it's reasonable to do a one-stop via Auckland somewhere on Air New Zealand, or to try the new ANA A380s to Honolulu.

The countries seem to have shifted slightly as well on the list of which ones are in which redemption regions. Not too many changes but a few small loopholes closed...

- There's no longer a 'Russia-Siberia' in the Central Asia category, which was a cheaper redemption than European Russia for those of us in East Asia (though other than ANA's yet-to-launch Tokyo-Vladivostok route, do any Far East Star Alliance carriers serve any Siberian cities?)

- Denmark now excludes Greenland; Greenland moves to North America.

- San Marino has been deleted from the Europe list but Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein and the Vatican are still in.

Greenland has no Star Alliance carrier service. Actually it has no service from any of the big 3 airline alliance carriers. I wonder what got Aegean to have Greenland moved liked that.

I have to wonder on whose advice A3 has been doing these changes.

Probably Donald Trump - he believes that Greenland should be part of the United States!

The guy in charge of maintaining the regions follows Trump on Twitter ?

At least there are airports in Greenland. And SK used to run seasonal routes to there from CPH, until the late 2000s I think... What I find more bizarre is this:

My first guess would be that they just copied the "List of countries by continent" from Wikipedia or WorldAtlas, but the fact that San Marino was removed means that someone looked through that list, crossed out San Marino, but decided that the Vatican city should stay as M&B members should be able to fly there (?) on *A award tickets at the current intra-Europe rates

Kyrie eleison.

Mr. Mister, this is down the road that I must travel with Aegean miles. At least they didn't prompt a schism with the Vatican this time.

I don't think all the doom and gloom about M+B as a program is quite fair here.

Firstly - I will say that I think it is disgusting that they changed the award prices without notice - that is completely unfair and is far more damaging to the trust that a loyalty program requires to be effective than the increase in prices itself.

That being said, there is no doubt to me that M+B is still an excellent program.

with 4 flights on Aegean (oh no! I am forced to take a weekend away on a greek island!) maintaining Star gold is still a very good deal.

On the redemption side it is still a very competitive program!
Of the changes the most impactful will be the Europe to NA raise... North America one way J 55k miles is not awful! yes yq surcharges on the LH group are high but others can be 100eur or less

in comparison, common Star programs..
United 70k
Aeroplan 55k
neither of which usually pass on the yq
Singapore 65k on partners + yq, 72k on their own planes
Turkish 45k

Oneworld
BA want 63k avios offpeak minimum, 75.5k to the West Coast, including Club Europe leg. And their surcharges are just as high as LH
Iberia 57k avios off peak minimum, way more on their peak calendar, surcharges like if on LOT, UA, TP etc
AA 57.5k and usually low surcharges

Skyteam's programs are chaos but Delta would want 75k and up, Flyingblue would be 60k or so and up, plus 250eur surcharge.

Virgin atlantic for Delta flights 50k and no surchages

The general synopsis is that 55k miles is definitely still competitive from an amount of miles required position, middle to lower of the amounts required.

Other award prices like 65k to Far East, 75k to Australasia, these are all still very reasonable.

The inter-Far East award is a loss for those who like exploiting sweet spots in that sort of way, but for getting flights to places in J/F from Europe, still a very reasonable set of prices on the whole and when you combine that will the easy status, a solid, solid program.