Crampedin13A

I'm sure you will always be a :-: in Lufthansa's eyes weero

weero

How so? Others commented on BA but SQ Gold is dirt easy to achieve. Especially if you mostly do not fly SQ.
Sure it is as worthless as SENhood but it s easy to do.

KSA_USA

this star thing is really silly. reminds me when I was in elementary school. when the teacher gives me a star I jump of joy. my parents, relatives and friends would tell me Bravo keep up the good work.

is LH treating us like kids?

Dear LH: I really enjoyed traveling with you but I guess good times don't last forever. you keep your stars and i'll keep my cash. wishing you all the best

weero

Maybe yes, even though the expensive pre-regulation past is mostly a myth. Anyhooo - when M&M was launched, flying was dirt cheap, especially flying 100% earning coach fares. I remember that vividly.
Maybe the UA management is just myopic or dimwitted ... but MP does not penalized or discourage serious Mileage Runners, it simply hates on elites.

If you fly 300K miles at 3.3 cents per miles, you get 14 systemwide upgrades and 600K+ MP miles and an undefined amount of RPUs. And these GPUs will now be worth a lot more than their current USD 250 Ebay price tag.
But none of the US legacies suffers from the delusion that they can sell longhaul travel without a feeder network.

If you live in say provincial BER rather than close to Yahweh in FRA. You then are not facing the decision for a EUR 1300 ride on EK or an EUR 2400 ride on LH but rather an EUR 2800 ride on LH (as it is now a nonstop ex FRA) plus a non-guaranteed connection from Air Bielefeld or whichever LCC will carry you to Terminal 2 in FRA. And on the way back you get the full cavity search in T2 by ex Soviet military rather than the pain free transfer in an Asian or Middle Eastern port.
Which retard will inflict that upon themself?

KSA_USA

Thanks for the laugh. I am in New York right now and I really laughed at you post. I feel your pain. LH was my #1 airline always fly them in paid business class even when they are more expensive than competitors. SEN for the past 6 years. in 2013 I did not purchase any revenue ticket from LH instead I am using my miles for F class seats. all the revenue went to EK/UA and soon BA

mat_bkk

This changes remind me what AF did few years ago with their FB program.
They cutted the mileage for economy classes even for the "expensive" one.
THey also cutted the access to F class reward for non-Elite status depite that they have earned their mileage on regular basis.

Now they losing money and cutting jobs every years...
Yesterday they announced 2800 jobs cuts.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24143392

LH should continue in that way it worked well for AF !

SuperFlyBoy

Apparently you are not thinking clearly - requalify for SEN or 1K??

LH has just shown you that they are enhancing away their program. Unless you spend all your time on LH metal, then I would gladly take the UA GPUs and benefits!

Well, in my case I didn't have many M&M miles, so it really didn't matter. I (usually) spend them quickly. However, recently I haven't been able to upgrade my P and Z classes into F, so that is why they still remain.

Now LH is being more and more explicit that they don't want our business, and the benefits are almost zero. So now we have seen the light - time to burn all miles and other instruments and then look elsewhere.

However, since some of us are with other *A programs, we might find ourselves (as I am sure I would sometimes) on LH aircraft, but I will now look for the best product and only transit FRA when I need to do shopping.

^

ShikaSenbei

So let me get this straight and ask you guys.
If I book a W class fare and credit the flight to my UA account, I will only get 50% of miles next year? What if I book a codeshare ticket?

more4less

LH/M&M is giving less and less miles for flying and more and more miles for buying magazines, newspapers, petrol...

This thing of the stars is one of the most pathetic things I have heart in my business life. Can you imagine telling your customers "I will charge you more but the invoice will come with some gold stars printed on it"?

Lack

I've made 1K several times with UA and PLT with DL since the death by thousand paper cuts festival started with M&M. That doesn't prevent me from taking LH when the schedule and price fit my needs though, which is increasingly rare nowadays, and I often spend more just to fly with other carriers.

SuperFlyBoy

Nobody knows at present.

I would guess that UA will also have to lower the W-class earnings on LH next year - when exactly, we do not know. They may even propose to keep the 100% earnings, but I doubt it.

ShikaSenbei

Thanks
Ahh the murkiness of mileage programs continues. I thought the operating carrier determines the amount of miles earned. But like you said, we'll just wait and see where we end up.

onepostwonder

Dear All,

I have been lurking here for years, and would like to say a big thank you for the many, many useful contributions over time, and some very entertaining exchanges. This latest M&M development has brought me out of hiding, although I expect that this will be my first and last post.

First about me: Based in FFM, head of a medium-sized company (80-odd employees). I fly a lot (though not as much as in the past), mainly C to the Middle East and Asia. I have perhaps 15 or 20 colleagues who follow a similar pattern, sometimes with the US thrown in. We have a lot of Senators amongst our number, and occasionally one or two of us has made it to HON, though there is none at present. LH has always been the carrier of choice, Star Alliance in those cases where LH is unavailable.

This will now change. It will take a little while to implement, but if I have anything to do with it (and I do) we will now shift to OW/EK. I know this will irk some of my colleagues to start with, but I suspect this will pass soon enough once they have status with the new carriers, which won't take very long.

It's the principle of the thing, since these latest M&M changes actually won't affect my employees too profoundly. Even so, I just feel enough is enough, and to be fobbed off with patronising, Kindergarten-style stars beggars belief. They take the cake. LH seems to have completely missed the fact that its frequent flyers tend to be the savvier ones and hence least likely to fall for such childishness. These stars are what locals call a "Verarschung".

Of course, I am not stating anything new if I point out that LH has been running a dedicated campaign to erode loyalty. However this latest round of changes is, for me, the final nail in the coffin.

I do not understand why LH seems so determined to drive away previously faithful customers. While it is easy to write this policy off as sheer stupidity, it must be something deeper than this, a kind of desire for self-mutilation or "Drang nach Untergang".

Whatever the case, I simply cannot be bothered trying to second guess their thinking, just as they cannot be bothered trying to retain my custom. While the loss of my firm's business will cost them <500k p.a. in revenue, if there are 100 other people out there thinking the same way, it will start to hurt. And I hope it does, I really do.

So rant over. Goodbye LH, there was a time I was a true admirer, but there is such a thing as one slap in the face too many - and this has been it.

Thanks once again to all the contributors out there, you have been a wealth of knowledge. I hope to see many of you in future on the OW/EK forums.

SuperFlyBoy

From the UA MP page on LH earning:

"United Airlines and Lufthansa reserve the right to change the eligible fare classes at any time without notice.

Mileage accrual is subject to the rules of the United MileagePlus program and, as provided therein, mileage will be credited in accordance with the terms and conditions of the MileagePlus Program in effect at the time of travel, not at the time air travel is purchased, booked or reserved, and accordingly miles may not be awarded for some tickets or miles may be awarded in an amount fewer than shown." (Their bolding)

San Gottardo

I have professionally dealt with Lufthansa over the past 8 or so years and I have quite good insights into how things work there. I asked one of my buddies on the inside how they came up with these changes and he gave me the real story:

Lufthansa has a partnership with the Fachhochschule Lippstadt whereby they offer internships to students during the summer months. This summer they had an intern in the marketing department, a 45 year old man who has been chosen for his previous management experience: he did run the shampoo aisle at one of the Schlecker markets in Goslar before embarking on his adult education program at the Fachhochschule Lippstadt which is paid for by the unemployment office. Also, his work experience was deemed relevant because he knew about loyalty and benefits ("Mrs. Züller-Trottmann came every week to buy a bottle of Guhl Ei-Cognac shampoo and told me that it was 10 Cents less expensive than over at Rossmann. I knew which day she was coming so I greeted her by name, handed her the shampoo bottle personally, and provided a little shopping cart for transfer to the cashier desk").

He was tasked to apply some of the lessons learned from almost 30 years in customer service to Miles & More. He had rarely traveled on planes other than the odd flight with Pegasus, Sun Turk and Orbest for vacation - a great starting position for someone to think about the issue in a free and unbiased manner.

He then came up with the stars. He said that stars would be a good way for customers to compete against each other about who was a loyal customer since the longest time. And not only would customers feel better when traveling, the stars would also give them social recognition, with wifes of frequent travelers also competing with each other about their husbands many years of loyalty to Lufthansa ("Meiner ist länger!").

The Lufthansa management didn't have a lot of time to look at the changes proposed by the intern. Managers were either on vacation or busy fantasising about perceived unfair advantages of Emirates, Qatar and Etihad. The only thing that was modified in the intern's proposition was the concept of providing private transfer to planes, inspired by what he had done with the private shopping cart for his loyal customer at Schlecker. "We already have that for our best customers, as long as they brave the long lines at transfer security in B or walk through a long tunnel or over the parking lot to the FCT and their flight is operated by Lufthansa but not its franchisees unless they are integrated into M&M but not if integration is the consequence of a 100% Lufthansa equity stake and management control and their transfer time is less than 4h 20minutes".

The other thing the intern did was to rework the mileage chart. He was given a very short briefing about the functioning of the programme, but he grasped it quickly. He felt that it was unfair that only people whose last name started with an F got 300% whereas the few people whose name started with a Y got 100%. Surely it would be difficult to find the perfect solution but in the spirit of creating a little more equality he took the phone book and picked out some letters and last names and then changed the mileage earning of those letters.

The intern then passed on his concept to the Communication department, headed by someone who had learned his trade at the Iraqi Ministry of Information and the FSMC ("F**ck you School of Marketing and Customer Service"). The news was then going to be released by his department last week.

As LH management returned from vacation they got alarmed and summoned the intern. They accused him of having thought of some actual enhancements, enhancements as in improvements. They went on to explain that they did not want to see actual enhancements but "enhancements" in inverted commas. They quickly changed the press release and promised some "enhancements" to be communicated later to compensate for all the enhancements.

So people please, do not blame Lufthansa management. It was the intern.