Last week booked 2 F seats FRA-DTW using Lifemiles and it could not have been easier! Space was open around 10 days before departure, although I waited until about 72 hours before to book as I had been hoping space to ORD would open up instead. Website even worked perfectly, tickets booked with a few mouse clicks and just minutes later reservation was visible on the Lufthansa site and we could pick our seats.
Ended up being an epic flight as we were the only 2 in F and had the cabin to ourselves. Very happy with that use of 174,000 Lifemiles indeed!

What I did notice was that in the 2 weeks leading up to our flights Lifemiles was showing the same availability as Aeroplan (that was my backup option). At 48 hours prior there were open seats to at least ORD, BOS and DTW that I could see.

I'm in the same exact situation. UA and AC show LH F award availability, but no luck with AV.

Very frustrating :/

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AV is very sneaky about releasing inventory. You need to check all the time. Their inventory rarely shadows UA/AC. It's one of the pitfalls of using AV. If you ask me, I think that they try to limit access (specifically) to LH F because those redemptions don't make them much, if any, money. They probably do better on Y and J.

I am specifically looking for a leg from Erfurt (XIU) to FRA that shows up as a train journey on UA and AC. I cannot get LifeMiles to recognize Erfurt when typing in the city or the airport code. Is there any chance calling will be helpful here in getting them to see this city and the train journey?

BTW, I believe they have blocked F again. I bought a oneway LH F award earlier. Now all LH F space has disappeared.

Thanks for letting me know Ohiosux. I finally bit at the latest promo for buying miles and so am having my first experience with Avianca redemptions.

Is anyone seeing any LH F from Germany to IAD in the next 2 weeks? I am not.

Thanks again. The 72 hour mark is helpful to know. I was able to book LH F yesterday for travel on Wed. so that fits. I appreciate your tips on the peculiarities of LM!

One close-in pattern I've noticed is that if there are only 1 or 2 seats showing on AC/UA, LM will often not show the space unless it's extremely close to departure; there need to be 3 or more for a seat to show.

I'm seeing the same pattern for business- 4 seats showing on UA shows availability on LM, but 2 does not show. Interestingly Expertflyer shows availability for 2 only for the flight that UA shows 4 tickets available for. So it seems like UA has access to additional inventory.

I've noticed this sporadically as well -- inventory that pops up on LH but disappears from EF/LM that remains bookable on UA.

Does LM ever show US-Europe F? If so is it only 72 hours out? What route to/from the US usually releases the most F space? What route in general releases the most F space through LM on Lufthansa?