neches

OK here is my question. I have my miles applied to continental onepass for my lufthansa flights. My tickets are coded H. Can your continental silver or gold status earn you upgrades on lufthansa flights or do I need to be having my lufthansa miles applied to lufthansa miles and more instead of continental.

-Heathcliff-

Welcome to FT, neches!

So what you are asking is, to which programme do you credit your miles in order to eventually spend them on upgrades?

Any Star Alliance frequent flyer programme allows you to upgrade on Lufthansa, provided you have sufficient miles for the upgrade, your booking class is eligible, and there is award availability on your flight. Your elite status or otherwise on CO OnePass should make no difference, whereas Miles&More Senator (and HON Circle) status will often result in better award availability. You certainly do not need to be an M&M member or credit your miles to M&M in order to upgrade on Lufthansa flights, though.

NewbieRunner

Welcome to FT, neches!

My interpretation of neches's question is somewhat different. neches bought a ticket for Lufthansa flights and plans to credit miles to his/her CO OnePass account. He/she is wondering if miles in the OnePass account can be used to upgrade. No?

You can only upgrade *A flights with OnePass miles if you have economy tickets in booking classes B or Y. H is quite an expensive booking class but unfortunately not enough for upgrading with miles. Lufthansa doesn't upgrade people just because they have silver or gold status. They will only upgrade passengers because they have "paid" for upgrades with miles or vouchers, or if the cabin they are booked in is full and their seats are needed.

neches

Thanks for the responses thus far.

NewbieRunner

But we still don't know what your question is.

-Heathcliff-

If neches happens to have a Miles&More account with enough miles in it, s/he can use those to upgrade from booking class H on LH flights. This is quite expensive, though. 50,000 miles are needed to upgrade from H on a Europe to North America (or vv) flight, and that's just one for one leg.

You're most welcome!

+1

neches

As I said I am new to this. What I am looking to find about is upgrades with Lufthansa and how they work using Continental onepass or would I be better off adding my Lufthansa miles to Miles and More. I fly monthly round trip from the states to Egypt for work so I get a good amount of miles annually.

Do you get better treatment with upgrades for Lufthansa using there miles program or what? I guess to be more exact I am referring to complimentary upgrades. One fellow gent I work with is getting complimentary upgrades because of his miles and more status with Lufthansa.

-Heathcliff-

Thank you for the clarification.

Lufthansa does not generally do complimentary upgrades on availabilty based on status. They only do operational upgrades (op-ups) when they really have to, i.e. the cabin is oversold. Most likely your colleague happened to be on such oversold flights and having status with M&M, was one of the first to be upgraded when the need arose.

Who gets those upgrades is decided by means of a grading list, which ranks eligible passengers based on status and booking class. Some of the lower (as well as award) booking classes are excluded, and M&M/Star Alliance elites outrank non-elites and non-members.

In theory, Star Alliance Gold (*G) members are supposed to enjoy similar ranking to LH's own Golds (Senators) and Star Alliance Silvers (*S) to LH's Silvers (Frequent Travellers), though members of this forum have observed that FTLs are often given preference over non-LH *G. Similarly, there have been occasional reports of upgrades from non-eligible booking classes and even from award bookings, mostly (but not exclusively) from Senators and HON Circle members, LH's top elite tier.

Your chances of being upgraded increase with status and higher booking classes, but there is no way to make any reliable predictions. The only safe assumption is that unless your cabin is oversold, you won't be upgraded.

Having said that, H is one of the upper mid-range booking classes. Coupled with CO *G/*S, you do stand a much better chance than a non-member on an L fare, although there will certainly be SENs/HONs ahead of you on the grading list. Then again, sometimes the grading list is not even followed at all and upgrades are done ad-hoc.

Given your travel pattern, SEN status with M&M can be fairly easily achieved by crediting your miles to M&M (although, if you start now, it might still require a mileage run or two by the end of the year), and, despite some recent devaluations of the programme, it still does get you better treatment on LH, especially when it comes to irrops and op-ups - as well as better award availability should you decide to spend your miles.

NewbieRunner

OK, now I understand. @:-)

As -Heathcliff- explained H booking class may be upgraded with M&M miles but not with OnePass miles. However, upgrading Economy to Business with M&M miles is very expensive and not the best use of miles. Upgrading H fare to Business costs 50k miles one way between the US and Germany (forget about Germany to Egypt which costs 35k miles one way!). You can get a return Business award ticket with 135k M&M miles (plus taxes and fuel surcharges). So upgrading with miles usually only makes sense if your employer is paying your fare and you want to use miles to fly in a higher class.

If you fly monthly between the US and Egypt you will soon be FTL (*S) and later SEN (*G) with M&M. Your chance of op-ups should increase.

Whether FTL comes before *G is unclear but SEN should definitely come before *G. Otherwise I agree with -Heathcliff-. I'm afraid I don't know much about OnePass (and it will inevitably change when it becomes Mileage Plus) but believe there's an advantage in having status with the airline you fly most frequently.

-Heathcliff-

If you base your M&M account in Egypt using e.g. your local office address, one-way upgrades between Egypt and Europe are only 15,000 miles (works both ways), and flight awards ex-Egypt are treated as if ex-Europe (105,000 miles ++ for a return Business award to the US, or 60,000 miles ++ for LH/LX First Class to Europe, but must originate in Egypt). @:-)

So once you've hit FTL status and the elite bonus kicks in, each H fare US-Egypt round trip "pays" (in terms of miles) for a one-leg upgrade between Europe and Egypt.