Lumo recognition, freebies and soft perks
 

With Lumo being around for a while, I believe we can dedicate a thread to what does Lumo-hood really look like.

First in - today on ATR route I saw a Lumo was served before others. This time it saved 1-2 minutes. Some other time it may actually be more than just a nice gesture from the crew. Any observation on this being a rule or just a crew-dependent service concept? It has happened twice to me as a Plat, but that was definitely crew-dependent.

So far the soft perks seem quite poor. Seat reservation in the lounge and early on-board service privilege aren't really much memorable. AY, please step-up the game!

What are your observations / experience?

A lot of fuss about nothing..what would you all Lumonatic like to see AY to do here...?

They don't even guarantee a paid long haul J seat, which would be a REAL benefit, and as they did for Plats earlier.

2nd drink and 4th snack and 5th newspaper and 10 purser greetings inflight..?!

Oh yes! Imagine the awkwardness. I'd go for Lumo straight away if this was it. :D

I would be happy with same-day stand-by and / or ticket change fee waiver, as well as with seat-block whenever possible in Y. My post really wasn't to celebrate Lumo, which I think is clear from it. Just take it easy...

I would not crucifice AY just on this. Soft-perks? I think honestly you are asking too much. Think about how much they can do things in the SOFT-perk way, I doubt much... Bur rather, they can much better control tangible things such as below Nowindowseat mentions.

Just my opinion, which can be of course totally worthless: if I had a Lumo card, I would be quite confident that, when calling their Lumo-hotline, asking nicely about a fullfare J ticket on a fully booked flight, they would kick out a pax and make room for this Lumo person. Just my 2c.

BTW this thread has a risk of filling with lots of posts but very litttle data points. I have nothing against that, but then it will be difficult to find the relevant data points when time goes by. Recommend a wiki about true data as soon as data points start to appear.

It is just nonsense to think about bits and pieces, whatever "soft" perks.

The real Lumos fly so much that if AY really wanted add something useful they should offer Lumos unlimited, availability permitting, J upgrades on short haul, period. It is only 100 people so just pennies. You get the snack, the drink, the newspaper, the seat block all in one package. Same day standby or whatever, only useful on very rare cases for most/many pax, Finnair really doesn't have the network to offer much choice, maybe some dom/nordic feeders but that's more or less it. That they should have for Lumos for sure, costs them nothing.

These snacks and papers etc. whatever freebies people are so hungry for are ok for thousands and thousands of customers..like us Plats, but Lumo is not a tier, it is an exclusive club and things given to these guys should be something more than a 50c snack bar...

If I was running AY, I would:
1. Kill the possibilty to exchange points to reach Lumo, only by flying
2. New requirement to have min. 4 AY long haul flights in paid J per year, otherwise no cigar
3. Unlimited SH upgrades. Lumos get so many vouchers and points anyway that they can upgrade most of their long hauls, if they even book Y on long haul to start with (not easy to get 450k points by flying cattle)

Up until this it seems like a foxes drooling under rowan full of rowan berries and howling: too sour anyway ;)

It's difficult to say if it was a Lumo recognition or not, but as I mentioned somewhere else a HKG upgrade cleared immediately when it showed no availability.

The flight must be quite full, as OTAs didn't offer it when searching for paid C, only the earlier one and the AY site just crashed on the search (Eur-HEL-SIN//HKG-HEL-Eur), though matrix showed availability. An email to the Lumo service with the matrix screenshot sorted my (revenue) booking out quickly AND for the same price!

And the CS reminded me, that my passport on file will expiry in few months, so if I change it before the flight, lease let them know the new number. Personalized service or what?

Adding some data points from my Lumo journey so far:

Upgrade requests cleared when using vouchers: 100%
Complimentary / operational upgrades when flying with economy ticket: 0%
Special offers for Lumo members only: 0
Service before other customers in Y: Once
Free drink and snack proactively offered in Y: 100%
Personal greeting: On all flights except one
Empty seats in Y next to me: 50%
Free Tumi suitcases: 1
Award ticket booking success when no availability was shown on self service tool: 100%.
# of AY Plus points earned on top of what I would have earned as a Platinum: 0
Invitations to events: 2 (Lumo launch, new lounge event)

1 - if you were to use the normal rule of exchanging no more than 50% of the required points, you would need to exchange 675 000 points. Not many people have that many points unless they fly a lot anyway, and then they most likely would qualify for Lumo anyway.
2 - Seriously, how many people anyway earn 300.000 AY+ points without flying long hauls in J?
3 - Agree completely. However, on flying long hauls in Y, that happens even for frequent flyers when on vacation. How I would view this is "provide vouchers for confirmed upgrades" (eg when flying with family), and proactively offer complimentary upgrades on all flights where available. Complimentary upgrades are very common with many other competitors.

You are not my friend, are you? :D (I'm probably the only one so far that went down that route)

Having said that, the Lumo rules also say that 350k must be flown on AY and (IMO) that cannot be reached otherwise than BIS. So this option would be open to people with at least 350ktier points, all on AY = double-Plat+ How many of such members there are? And how many are ready to throw up to 300k points towards reaching Lumo? 10?

Yeah, cannot disagree, my view is just so that Lumo is something that you wouldn't be able "buy" your way into, even partly..there are people who commute with corporate fares on dom/short haul where AY makes something like 30-50ish eur per segment (after taxes) and those people can get to Lumo and don't bring much at all to AY, even compared to many lower tiers. Another option would be to kill the segment requirement, that would serve the same thing.

I hope we are still friends, in your shoes would have done the same w/o any hesitation! 350k AY is a good requirement, the cheap segment only -commuting is what I'm after here more..that is not worth Lumo in my eyes.

Anyone asked AY how many Lumos now flying?

One more by the end of this week :)