goliath

M&M press release:

Source

Great news! If I can also use all pooled miles for "SEN awards" (i.e. companion awards and LX F awards) - awesome news!

Best "enhancement" in quite a while. ^

Lewis42

Sounds good! I hope there are no booby traps.

Curious if the pooling of 2 adults requires anything special. For example if the 2 are not married. Or if they have two different addresses...

lefrid

M&M from the US are sharpening their teeths with the pooling of their gazillions of miles from their credit cards sign-up bonus.

Grog

I may have the first booby trap for you.

If taken as written, this would mean that if one adult had 50,000 miles and the other adult had 20,000 miles, the redeemable amount of miles would not be 70,000. It would only be up to 50,000 miles if taken from adult #1's account only, or up to 40,000 miles maximum if taken from both accounts (20,000 miles from each account "in equal measure").

Having said all that, Lufthansa's English is poor enough that one can't really be sure how it's handled until one tries to have it handled.

Lack

I'd guess that equal measure would mean the person with 20k can drain both accounts.

Grog

That's the problem with the term "in equal measure"--sometimes it simply means "both" as in "either/or" (which would give credence to your interpretation that both adults have full rights to remove any or all miles from either account) and other times it means "in equal amounts" (which would mean the same amount of miles would need to leave both accounts). I have to wonder sometimes who does the translating for Lufty. The English terms they use are far too often ambiguous.

goliath

The text in German says:

i.e. "both adults have the equal right to..."

I wouldn't read too much into this part.

yurtripper

This is one area where it's usually more reliable to run Google Translate on the DE version... until someone who understands German can give a definitive answer.

https://www.miles-and-more.com/online/portal/mam/rowr/general_information?nodeid=12396738&l=de&cid=10001

What Google Translate says from this is: "Miles earned together can be redeemed by both adults on an equal basis for all bonuses available in the Miles & More program".

So it seems that the restriction mentioned above does apply - and the award would be limited to double what's in the account with the smaller number of miles.
It seems an odd restriction to place on pooling but maybe we shouldn't be complaining given that it's Miles and More we're talking about.

Update: goliath posted German text while I was composing my message.

Raffles

Wonder what happens to expiry? If I pool with my wife do my (protected) Miles also protect hers?

Lack

'In equal amounts' would mean amounts both adults can redeem are equal. If it was limited to the an individuals balance (times two) then wouldn't it be in the line of 'equal to amount'?

Sounds like it's adhoc pulling, so miles would probably still carry their shelf time.

Grog

I had only seen the English earlier, but with this German text it should now be clear. Thank you!

eefor jfp

The way BA household accounts work, it's on a percentage basis. So If I redeem an award ticket from my household account, each person is charged proportionally. For example, if I have 100,000 Avios and my spouse and three kids each have 25,000 Avios, then together we have 200,000 Avios. Now suppose one of us wants to redeem an award ticket for 100,000 points, (i.e. 50% of the total balance we all have together) then each account uses 50% of their points (so my account is charged 50,000 and each of the others is charged 12,500). I would assume that M&M would be similar, but we'll have to wait and see.

For our family, this is a really positive development. Our kids travel less and so they are sitting on awkward balances, It will be nice to be able to pool miles when redeeming, especially since M&M doesn't allow you to buy miles to top off accounts and the kids don't have credit cards in their names to earn or transfer miles. Basically we've just been given 45,000 extra miles to play with (15K times 3).

p.s. There are downsides to Household accounts. At least with BA and Asiana, you can only get tickets for those people who are in the household, so gifting tickets to friends becomes impossible unless you dissolve the HH account (which can only be done once a year or something like that). Also, miles are not protected by a single person's status--each person has to maintain their own status to stop miles from expiring. Which actually makes it harder in some ways to keep from losing smaller amounts of miles, since theoretically you would have to totally zero out all your accounts in order to use the last little bit of miles from accounts which are going to expire since everything is proportional.

goliath

Yes, you can book tickets for people not in your household with BAEC.

From the first page explaining household accounts on the BA website:

You can have 5 people on your F&F list and they must remain on the list for 6 months. That should cover most cases.

You can find more details in the FAQ following the link above.

goliath

Apparently, it is going to work differently with M&M.

Somebody reported over at VFT that they stopped by at the M&M booth at ITB and was given further details:

=> If you redeem an award, you will always use the oldest miles in the pool first.

Lack

That is a very good news.