Lufthansa First Award seats availability [for partner FFPs outside of M&M]
 

My apologies if this has been previously discussed (to death).

I understand that *A partners can no longer redeem into LH F for TATL except within 14 days of departure. Is this also true for miles from LH's own M&M? Does it matter what status level you have?

I flew the A380 for VCE-FRA-SFO in F once. It's hard to go back to UA after that.

That seems to be the general consensous although not officially reported by LH (for Star Reward Availability)

The thought was that they were improving their product and as such it would be in greater demand.

Star Alliance Reward Availability Vs Miles and More

Thanks for the reply. I checked out that thread. It contradicts itself a few times, not surprisingly.

My main question is whether I could see different availability if I were booking LH using M&M instead of via *A (KVS/ANA, etc). I have a lot of points with SPG which I can transfer into M&M, but once I do that I can't get them back out, and the process takes a week, so I won't have any guarantee of availability.

LH's 170,000 miles for TATL F is a bit painful, but then again so is $13,000. 8-)

Yes, you should definitely see better F award avalability on M&M than on other sites such as ANA, AC and CO/UA. If you have an M&M account why don't you check for yourself? You should be able to see LH awards that are available with M&M miles.

I do have an M&M account, but since I've never accrued any miles into it, it is a temporary account and does not permit me to check miles-based flight availability. I would have to call LH directly to have someone there check for me.

I concur that it is almost impossible to grab a F class award on LH unless you are M and M.. I am HON and even though this is their highest status, I have had trouble securing F award seats.. HOWEVER they have been confirmed 8/10 times this year... good luck...

There is a thread floating around about miles and more booking experiences.

It seemed that many people did not experience any difficulty in redemptions (vs Star Alliance) . Mind you, this was before the claw backs.

I would conclude from this that there are different levels of availability, with greater inventory for M+M.

I can quote a very senior LH manager on US Air miles (and others): "We kicked out all this garbage from our First Class".

But they may consider their own M&M members to be a higher class of garbage than the general *A garbage, with USAir members and their 2x mile buying being the lowest garbage. 8-)

It looks like they are trying to keep everyone without full fare F ticket out of First.
I even had trouble getting A class tickets confirmed, even though not a single F seat had been sold on that flight ... They've lost the plot IMHO.

No F availability from next year????
 

within this year i have no problems to find F seats to various destination in Asia, even for two people its quite easy to find seats... However when i start looking from next year, there is only business or eco left... why is that? has it something to do that FTL's cant book F award direct on the M&M page? its very annoying

thx for your answers

lx343

It's a shame that Star Alliance puts up with this.

SQ has been getting away with this type of behaviour for years.
LH is just following the SQ road.

See post 14 here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...2-changes.html

LH is staying within *A rules and offering a certain number of F seats to *A partner FFPs, just not at 330 days out as it used to be and not as many as it used to be when you had 16 seats in the UD. Also on certain routes they are aware that mileage millionaires are lurking in the shadows waiting to redeem at short notice (ORD and NYC are notorious for UA plats / 1Ks changing their award tickets for free to grab O seats that are released a day before departure to enable business travellers to upgrade for miles at the airport).

I think LH is still quite generous with award seats. You get plenty of C (I) seats on TATL routes and great availability on flights within Europe.

AC/US C TATL awards are very rare and even 330 days before departure I did not find a single C (I) seat for YYZ-YYC.