I've just booked two one-way economy tickets from Munich to Heathrow. LH does not sell discounted one-way tickets on peak AM flights so miles are a sensible choice here.

Mileage required with BMI (all miles): 9,000 for 2 pax
Mileage required with BMI (cash and miles): 4,500 + £40
Mileage that will be required when DC becomes M&M: 45,000 !!

Just a polite reminder that if you are planning a redemption in 2009 and have not yet booked it, you have nothing to lose (except the £25 change / cancellation fee) by booking it before the LH takeover goes through in early January. Whilst the risk of LH jacking up redemption rates or scrapping cash and miles on Day 1 is relatively low, there is NO WAY that LH is going to allow a situation like the one above to continue for long! I may be wrong - I probably will be - but don't be under any illusion that you are taking a risk by not booking redemptions before the takeover date.

is the takeover of DC by M&M confirmed?

No, it's not confirmed at all.

And there are no indications of any changes afoot, either. Everything seems to be business as usual at DC.

This moderator is not expecting his FFP to be digested any time soon.

Nothing is confirmed yet. But you can use past examples such as the takeover of Swiss to be fairly confident that diamond club won't be forever.

However, the change won't be instant, there'll probably be at least a year more of DC. However, there's nothing to stop them changing the rules of DC in order to integrate better with M&M.

KLM did something similar. Flying Dutchman used to earn 100% miles in all economy fare classes but a few months before the switch to Flying Blue they introduced 0 miles on the two lowest fare classes. This meant when Flying Blue was introduced the 25% miles offering for the two cheapest classes would look like a genuine enhancement.

And I'm not expecting any re-allignment either, any time soon.

But would you risk missing out on the current rates by not booking flights now which you intend to take anyway?

Arguably it is worth making bookings even if you don't know your exact travel dates. You will still be able to change the dates on existing bookings even if the mileage rates go up or 'cash and miles' gets ditched.

I tend to agree with Raffles on this.

It would be folly to think nothing is going to change soon but sensible to guess that things are going to change.
I would book ASAP in the new year just to be on the safe side.....We saw how quickly and unannounced the LH C&M in F was taken away.

I think that your argument is flawed here. When LH ditched C+M in F, if you wanted to change your booking you had to pony up the extra miles for miles only. There's nothing stopping them applying the same logic to existing bookings next year.

I changed a 'cash and miles' LH F booking recently that was made before the rule changed, and I wasn't asked for additional miles. This was a simple time change, same routing.

Regardless of what may happen with DC I would always say book redemptions as soon as you are sure of your dates as you never know what might happen. However I wouldn't go rushing to book redemptiosn where I'm not quite sure just in case something dramatic changes in the next month or 2 with DC. I personally don't expect as much doom and gloom from the LH takeover as many here. I hope and expect I will be redeemping DC miles at the same rates for the next year at least (so that probably means C+M will be scrapped effective 1 FEB!!)

One more thing to bear in mind is that if there is a stampeed there could be issues with availability, at least on the popular routes.

I'm also with Raffles on this one and plan to make some redemptions when I've got the time and credit available. Not so many that I'll have to pay for a whopping set of change fees should plans change but enough to keep me travelling for a while. Just got to decide where and when to go...and balancing that with requalifying.

I think that you got lucky then, as plenty of people posted saying that they were hit for the extra miles.

And if you want to go for a weekend to Venice in Business from LHR with your partner on LH wait until DC becomes M&M and book on short notice:

Mileage required when DC becomes M&M: 50.000
Mileage required with DC: 58.500

Considering that the regular BD silver earns 4.800 miles on a revenue ticket for this routing with DC whereas the LH silver earns 10.000 miles with M&M, this clearly gives evidence on the superiority of M&M.

Come on, there is good and bad in everything. You took the best DC offer (one way in a Zone 1 to Zone 1) and compared it with the worst M&M offer. I did v/v. And your comparism was not fair either in a different way: The average BD silver earns 1200 miles for your MUC-LHR flight, the average LH silver earns 2500 miles for this flight.

It depends on the date. I found MUC-LHR OW for 70-74 Euros - maybe not very discounted, but BA is 88 Euros.

It was obviously a totally unfair comparison, except that I actually HAVE booked this so I'm not randomly picking out the best and worst of DC and M&M!