denhaagflyer

I guess one important question is still the issue of availability vs. costs. Just booked 4 C-Class awards AMS to HKG for July/August on LH - no availability whatsoever on BA for these two months. I guess with the increase in the number of miles out there chasing awards, a price increase is the only way out for airlines. Higher C- and F-award prices is obviously also consistent with expected increases in 2011 for cash fares for C and F.

For a family with 2 kids < 12 yrs and a Senator in the family, M&M is still a good option, where we pay only for 3 awards for 4 pax. As long as this stays, it is attractive, at least for me. Now, if they could only improve the C-product (both soft and hard)...

Finally, I found the anouncement on the M&M web-site pretty straight forward (apart from the embarassing issue of not linking the new award chart). They made it clear that there are good and bad news and referred clearly to "increases" not "adjustments" or "enhancements". I wonder whether they had planned to come out with this a few days later and were "forced" into more rapid action due to discussions on FT, which explains their somewhat odd wording and IT glitches.

Rambuster

That's why I highlighted it.
So now they want additional miles for award tickets for 2011 which have already been issued ?

"Sorry Sir, we cannot check you in until you cough up another 30k miles!"

TRAVELSIG

An excellent point.
LH will certainly be able to say "people complain but we still get their business". For me- when travelling to Beijing- LH is by far the best option. However- destinations like Australia, South Africa- Emirates provides a very solid second choice.

NewbieRunner

OK, I got it. It was far too early in the morning.

"And we need your HON/SEN/FTL/M&M card and the PIN!"

Rambuster

The German version is correct:
"Diese Änderungen gelten für alle Flugprämien, die ab dem 3. Januar 2011 gebucht werden. Zu einem früheren Zeitpunkt gebuchte Prämienflüge, die erst nach dem 3. Januar 2011 stattfinden, werden zu den bisher gültigen Konditionen durchgeführt."

TRAVELSIG

Rambuster- are we going to have meet up in the DXB lounge now?

NewbieRunner

And links to the revised award chart. I'll stick to the English version, thank you very much!

-Heathcliff-

The English version is equally correct - and rather unambiguous, I might add.

This is saying exactly the same as the German version. No room for interpretation here.

Rambuster

DXB, BAH, DOH or AUH sound like good options to me !

NewbieRunner

Much as I would like LH to consider FT as one of the main vehicles of communicating with its customers, let's face it they have their own social media presence such as Facebook and Twitter with over 100,000 "fans" for the former and 47,000 followers for the latter. FT may have a much higher proportion of status members represented but we simply cannot compete with the more "popular" social media.

It's true that LHrelate sometimes posted advance notices of special offers and sales on FT, but as far as I understand LHrelate and LHconnect are on FT to respond to FTers' questions and forward problems to the appropriate sections of LH rather than to act as a mouthpiece for LH/M&M.

Even if LHconnect wanted to post something on FT I don't think she could have done so until the official announcement was made on the M&M website and by that time more information (which turned out to be accurate) was available on FT than she could have posted in any case.

LonLH

EK may not be in the same league as SQ and CX, but so far I had good experience with them in F. With a price difference of GBP 2000-3000 per pax and a much broader schedule to choose from LON (7 flights a day), it is getting more and more difficult to justify flying LX (which is a much better F than LH).

So more and more of my business travel is leaking to CX and SQ (fares are 20-30% lower than LH family) and my lesiure travel is switching to EK. And Mrs LonLH, who is a major decision maker in terms of which carrier to choose for our leisure travel (2-3 trips per year in F for 3 typically) is of the opinion that she would prefer EK F to LH F any day. LX and BD are primarily only for intra-Europe travel these days.

During my last SQ flight (where I was the only pax in a 777ER), the purser was complaining that SQ is seeing major loss of Europe- Asia/oz premium traffic to EK (and to a lesser degree EY).

TRAVELSIG

Good points NewbieRunner.
However- over the CO board for example there has been great information from COInsider.
Starwood Lurker is very helpful.
Andrew Yiu from Air Canada is also great.
LH dropped a ball here- at least this morning there could have been a "don't shoot the messenger" type of communication.
When I have met with LH executives- they are extremely familiar with FT- this is where they learned about the PJ HON unwitting promotion for example.
Or what about an email to status members today stating "if you want to book at the lower redemption levels please do so by 31DEC2010".

TRAVELSIG

Yes- and so the obvious response is to devalue your frequent flyer program.
To London, BA provide a quite good service- and they just increased the value of their frequent flyer program- as a lowly Silver member I can use the lounge for example- and I will arrive at Gold with the new Tier Point adjustments.
To Germany, Air Berlin gets better every day with very realiable direct flights.
Spain- Even Iberia is improving.
LH- The cost of tickets has increased considerably this year with Z being frequently unavailable.
CX service is excellent and nonstops from MXP are great for the NE Italy market.
SQ the same as CX with extremely agressive pricing.
EK- I don't know how they do it, but you are right that F almost always costs less than LH C.
Now if only there was a good option to France...

moebod

On the old award chart, if the adress was in Israel, Jordan, Egypt.... one was able to fly for the european rate Business 45000, Economy 30000 in case the ticket started in that country.

old chart:
3) For members residing
in Algeria, Egypt, Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon, Libya,
Morocco, Syria and
Tunisia, the award
levels for Europe apply.
The journey must start
in the member’s
country of residence.

This little 3) is gone on the new chart. Does that mean that this benefit was also "enhanced" ?

Yemona

I would say that this kind of balanced communication is better than the previous "enhanced" language used, it does not try to conceal any bad news and does clearly say that some things will get worse (will require increased mileage levels). But yes, they only highlighted the positive news in bold which might be a job saving exercise for any marketing person.