seat 1a

This I have sympathy with , always good to please the shareholders!

Rudi

while I no longer suffer much under (lower) mileage earning rules (being retired I now am burning miles on longhaule flights in first and business), but I wonder what changements will happen to my confirmed life-long Senator status.

(I still am very angry about UA when they just more or less did abandon the silver-wing life-long and paid status. UA's lifelong definition was kind of ''as long as the program lives'' and not my life.)

Egoistically, as long as Lounge access (for my paid short-haul inner-european flights), extra luggage allowance (including golf bags) and the 50% mileage discount for partners on awards stay, I am fine.

Earning more (non-status) miles is still easy without flying (I convert Coop points, and UBS key points into non-status miles).

phipz

After reading a lot of the posts here, I can personally of cousrse only agree. Many of these enhancements will make it quite hard for people to keep their statuses.

But my thought is, what good does this do to LH? How much does an FTL or SEN cost LH? Besides feeling treated like pre-school kids with these "stars", most of the upsentment comes from lower miles earned on flights, right?
I know most of you are more experienced with FF programs than me, but maybe you can help me brainstorm a little: What do miles mean to a customer?

1. Miles to pay for award flights
2. Gaining a Status
3. Lounge Accesss
4. Priority check in and boarding
5. Wait list priorities
6. Reserving better seats
7. Upgrade priority

I am sure there might be a few more but I hope I caught the major ones.

So now, what do these benefits for us loyal customers really cost the airline?

1. There are multiple theories of how much monetary value a FF mile has, but since e.g. with LH for award flights one still has to pay quite a bit for Fuel and Tax, the extra cost for those award flights for LH can not be so tremendously high.
2. What does the status itself cost? Hmm, maybe the CC fee that is waived for SEN? Cant be too much either. Printing the card also not.
3. Lounge access... OK granted, that might be a cost factor. But I assume that lounges just have a high overhead cost and the cost for each pax entering can not be too high, regarding the drinks and food they serve. So if they dont massively close down lounges, I am not sure if this saves all too much money.
4. Priority Boaring and check in? I assume that basically costs LH nothing.
5. Reserving better seats? Also something that should not really cost them a dime.
6. Op-up priority: Well, if they overbook Y or C, they have to bump people up anyway. So where is the cost in that one?

Overall it breaks down to miles and lounge access I assume. And I am really not sure if making these so much harder to acheive for the loyal customers, saves LH that much money. Please share your thoughts with me. Trying to be rational here, in a very heated environment :-)

Thanks for your input!

Furnle

You can also add 8. Extra bags, and consider that as a cost and/or lost revenue by LH

"Short term" is the mainstream in CEOs minds right now. The same happened with ElectroPop in the music 30 years ago: it was the mainstream. Some years later it was "Rock Stadium". Some years later, etc.

I believe this move may (and "may" is the right expression here) hurt LH a bit in the medium and long term. After all, there are much more travellers wich don't have a Frequent Traveller program than those who have.

We can like it or not, but we are a minority. However, some of us (and I don't include myself in that group) have the ability to influence some other people in their decisions related with travel. And if those influence others... it's easy to get the picture.

Even in that case, we are not talking about a lot of people. But we are talking about a people which spend a lot. LH wants to talk only about numbers. They can say: we increased the load factor, we have more travellers, and our yield is better right now. Probably this is true. Today. And tomorrow? Tomorrow it can be the same, but it won't. It can be better or worse, but it will be different.

As TRAVELSIG has pointed more than once, if you begin to use a transactional approach with the costumer, he starts to do the same. And if you break the loyalty (whatever it means to both parts), it will be very very hard to get it back. And at an higher cost. LH is playing a game. But LH should be aware that is not the only one in the field.

jfk747

As ba,af,vs are improving their programs lh makes things worse.

Concerto

These changes are ridiculous and pointless. The frequent flyer programme should actually earn them money, not be a liability and a loser. Now it will become a loser for them, in a big way. Do you remember bmi's Diamond Club? That actually earned money for bmi, as I remember. Surely M&M earns money for Lufthansa?

I have already wandered away from Lufty and M&M, except for cheap economy shorthaul flights, and last year my custom returned to Air France KLM and Flying Blue despite the crapness of that programme. It has been a frustrating experience, however, the Gold card is not worth having, and I have little positive to report about it. Currently, I am developing my status with BAEC, and I am concentrating shorthaul onto airberlin and the LoCo carriers.

N1003U

These are the same enhancements that bit me (and a couple of others here) pretty hard.

As long as they continue to earn 300%, I am going to try to take advantage of what appears to be a recent glut of very low-priced A-fares when they fit my travel schedule. In some cases, they are nearly the same price as comparable C fares with 50% more miles and a much better travel experience. If what I am hearing and what was mentioned in this forum a few times is true, we will see some cheap F until F capacities start to be "adjusted" in the 2015 timeframe.

Hopefully I will have some luck and be able to find some good A-fares that meet my needs. When you can find them, they seem to be one of the few earning bargains left in M&M, plus they include some real customer service that is not completely over-priced...

IAN-UK

High fares and a crappy business class product.
Competitors with superior product and lower fares.

So what do you do?
Start pissing off members of your frequent flyer programme?

Well done lufthansa

LH4116

To show my appreciation to Lufthansa, I have just booked a dirt cheap all K-fare itinerary to Stockholm, leaving me with some nice long layovers to drink them dry on Champagne in the Frankfurt Senator Lounge. Better enjoy those perks before they are enhanced away…

Lack

I was only tallying up the results of meeting the thresholds - 66.6k BIS for UA will give 100k PQM but 183k award miles with class of service and ff bonus.

Of course it's only 44.4k BIS miles for M&M, but the result is only 100k M&M, not even enough for a one way F to Asia.

sp4294

It is truly embarrassing and makes them look incredibly foolish. They are trying to position themselves as a worldclass product and failing miserably with pathetic marketing ploys like these. Improve your product and services - that makes people remain loyal!

htb

While I hate LH for doing what they did, they don't really piss off any business class customers this time...

HTB.

weero

I understood you the first time.

Assuming: 1K, flying paid B or Y.

Then that 1K needs 66.6K BIS to requalify. That will earn then 2.25x66.6=150K RDM.

In Z or P that would be 166.6K, in J,C,D,F,A your 183.33, and in F,A intl. 233.3K ....

NA-Flyer

They have already got their share of enhancements in the past. Nothing left to p*** them off anymore

IAN-UK

The passenger travelling exclusively in business class is, I think, more a marketing paradigm