RobertHanson

With the number of miles it takes to get a LH award ticket, I'm not spending $89 and doing $1K of spend for a mere 35K miles.

LH economy and even business class are nothing special. Their FC is pretty good, and the First Class Terminal in Frankfurt is phenomenal. We will be doing that for the second time next Summer, thanks to having gotten the LH card twice with the 50K bonus.

But LH FC takes 85K miles, and 35K is just a drop in the bucket for that.

chestnutmt

If one holds a Miles & More credit card issued by a European bank, then gets the US Barclay version, then cancels the European version...do the miles earned from the European one expire?

Assume a few months of overlap with the two cards being open at the same time with monthly charges on both cards.

bodiddely

Looks like the first link in the Wiki still takes you to a 50k offer.

kaiotes

My LH/Arrivals apps' hard inquiries were combined as one per CK

pointspinnacle

I agree in a way. I need 30k to make an even 85k in my account thats why I was waiting and prefer this offer now. I got the 50k a yr or two ago.

I guess if Redcard was still around I would prefer the 50k offer

RobertHanson

In that case, absolutely go for the 30K card. Otherwise you will end up 20K miles stranded in your MM account, which won't do you much good.

We just booked LH FC from Frankfurt to Newark, changing in Munich since they wouldn't give out the non-stop to JFK on miles. Three observations:

There is far less availability for a FC award than even a few months ago. We got lucky and only had to book just one day sooner than we would have liked. But there was nothing else open in FC for a week in either direction. Non-stop to NYC was only available in economy and business. And this is booking for next September, so a full 11 months in advance.

While around half of the dates in August thru the end of booking in late Sept had FC availability for 2 seats, almost all of that is for flights departing between 8 and 10 am. Which is pretty useless for anyone who is flying LH FC primarily to be able to use the fantastic LH FRA FC TERMINAL. Getting up very early in order to only have breakfast there, and missing out on the wonderful Filet Mignon in the restaurant, not to mention the plethora of @$200 a bottle whiskies, rums and cognacs at the bar, would be a real shame. Especially since the food in the Terminal is so much better than what they serve on the plane.

The latest flight we could get to EWR is at 14:15. And looking at every day from Aug 1st thru end of Sept booking, only 3 or 4 days had that available. Everything else in FC is early morning.

The combination of taxes and fees are $355 per person !

The website was showing FC award availability FRA-MUC-EWR. But when I tried to book it online I kept getting an error message. It turns out that FRA-MUC does not have a FC, only Y and J. So the website wouldn't book it. I had to call the Miles and More service center. And the number for that on the LH website for "tech support" actually gets you the LH reservations department who can't help at all. After several calls I finally got the correct number for MM, which is 1-800-581-6400. They booked it for me without an additional booking fee, since online booking wasn't an option.

We booked our flights with miles from our second Miles and More card sign up bonuses, plus SPG points. The SPG points were transferred on Sunday, and posted to our MM accounts on Wed morning. The advantage of using SPG points, instead of doing extra spend on our MM cards, is that 20K SPG transfers as 25K miles.

Based on the two points listed above, both the declining availability of FC, and the high cost in $, we will most likely not be getting another MM card.

pointspinnacle

Yes the 35k offer will only strand me with 6k orphaned miles after i make a booking.

I think September is tougher availability to Germany due to Oktoberfest.

I debated transferring spg points to get my remaining miles but glad I didn't due to the merger, im dumping all mine to marriot for travel package instead!

RobertHanson

Could be if one was flying over for that. But we are flying over TPAC on KE, Asia to Europe on SQ, and then LH back to the states 10 days before Oktoberfest starts. Just like everyone else LH is cutting back on awards. I'm counting us lucky for getting a flight only a day before what we had hoped for, not to mention being able to stay in the Terminal until almost 2pm. But I can see how things are going, and I'm not very hopeful about what will be possible if we were to get another MM card a year from now expecting to book for 2018.

oliver2002

M&M doesn't charge a phone booking fee, calling them doesn't generate any additional costs. Only certain discounted awards (that usually are offered only for C & Y) can be booked online.

LH isn't cutting back on F awards, availability is roughly the same. What you are noticing is the fleet changes: the 744s have no F cabin anymore.

Finkface

I'm having a similar problem and wondered if it was just me or there really is no way to book a multi city award with segments in different classes. Similar to the poster you quoted, I see availability in C on the TATL portion but only Y for the short intra-European flight (connection only, not a stopover), which is fine but I can't find a way to book it. It seems it's all in C or nothing. Is there really no way to book a 2 segment trip with one leg in C and one in Y on the website? I've never encountered this with any other airline. All the others allow mixed class itineraries on award bookings. If you pay for the highest cabin award, you can mix in lower class segments if that's all that is available. Not so on the LH site and one must call in?

RobertHanson

That's exactly what I posted. Online it showed FC FRA-MUC-EWR, but in fact the FRA-MUC flight doesn't have FC, only J and Y, so it wouldn't book online. It just gave me a error message along the lines of "fare not available".

When I called in the CSR said you can't book that online since it's two classes, but she could book it for me.

BTW, she offered to put it on hold for me to think over, but the rest of my trip was already booked and I needed this flight, so I just went ahead to paid for it on the spot.

RobertHanson

Au Contraire. When I checked a few months ago, I could book 2 FC award seats on the 17:15 non-stop 747-8i flight FRA-JFK on at least half of the dates I checked. Yesterday day I checked every day from August 1st thru the end of booking in Sept, and that flight was not available for a FC award on even one day. On the day we booked our FRA-MUC-EWR flight they are quite willing to sell me 6 FC seats on that flight for 7,260 Euros each. 6 seats is the most you can book at a time, and it's almost a year away, so most likely the flight is currently totally empty, but it's no longer being offered with miles, only $. If you want to fly with miles, you have to fly J to Munich, change planes, and to go EWR instead of JFK.

Finkface

That's crazy. Every other airline I have booked awards with offers mixed class itineraries when you search. Sometimes too many and that's all you see (I'm talking to you, AS) and you have to weed out the long haul Y offerings. I just couldn't see a way to do it on LH, figured I was just stupid and then I saw your post. I knew both flights were available as I could see the shorthaul Y segment when I searched separately but couldn't figure out how to book both flights together. I guess I'll be calling in.

EmailKid

Mr. Oliver can speak for himself, but his post states that F is going away on 744, while you are posting about 748.

oliver2002

Bavaria has school summer holidays July 29-Sep 11, 2017. http://www.schulferien.org/Kalender_...en_Bayern.html

LH is dropping F from all A330 stationed in MUC in phases.