advice on booking M&M bargain business fare w/o surcharges
 

My wife and I each have 55,000 M&M miles, enough for a roundtrip business bargain fare.

For the first time today we saw a Eurowings flight option listed, featured as "without airline surcharges". It was for flights from a few U.S. cities to Dusseldorf. We tried numerous dates but it did not show up.

We want to go to anywhere in Europe in business roundtrip for 55,000 miles each; the arrival city is less important. Our closet airports, Seattle and Vancouver, are no longer showing up as departure cities in the M&M bargain offers, so we will take any other U.S. city (preferably a northern one such as Newark or Chicago).

Our question is: Are there any strategies we should or can be using to access non-surcharged flights, such as Eurowings. Are there other carriers that would not be charging a surcharge from the U.S. to Europe using M&M bargain 55,000-miles business fares?

Thank you for any help you can offer on this.

The mileage bargains are carrier-specific. So in other words, if you see New York-Paris advertised as a mileage bargain, there is an airline logo next to it. The bargain fare is only offered on that one airline.

LH, LX and OS all have very high surcharges so all mileage bargains on them will come with high fees. LO has lower surcharges. EW has no surcharges.

To avoid surcharges, you need to find a mileage bargain route offered on EW, then book within the given time period for travel within the given time period. Trial & error to find dates.

Also note that the bargain is available for that specific O&D only. So in the New York - Paris example, you can't book a flight Chicago-New York-Frankfurt-Paris as one ticket for the bargain price.

Thank you, airoli; I appreciate the reply.

Given the fact that nothing is showing up for Eurowings (even though the available travel dates are something like Oct.27-March 31), I guess this would mean that a few flights were possibly at some point available, but got snatched up?

I assume there is no way to search for just the low-surcharge airlines (at the bargain 55,000-mile rate), e.g. Lot?

The miles bargains page regarding the Eurowings no-surcharge flights keeps stating "3 days".

I assume this means that there are only 3 possible days/dates that are available; is this correct?

If so, is there any trick to locating the dates? I have tried many, many combinations of dates, but nothing shows up.

Mileage bargains are typically released at the beginning of every month. It is now the end of the month, so it is quite possible that the (few) seats on EW are already gone.

You saw that it's only to DUS, right? So to stand any chance to find seats, you will need to look for non-stop longhaul routes on EW to DUS and search for those. Not sure how many of these routes / weekly flights there are in the winter schedule.

Yes there is. The mileage bargains website lets you filter offers by airline. This month, from the US, LOT it not offered.

This means that you can book it for another 3 days only (most likely - now 2 - until Aug 31).

Thank you both for the replies.

The Lufthansa taxes + surcharges for a business roundtrip to Europe are over $1,300.
I really want to get a Eurowings or Lot flight.
I'll keep trying.

I am back with another question. Thank you to anyone who can offer information and advice.

If my plan to go round trip in business to Europe for the 55,000-mile bargain fare does not work out, then I might end up simply doing a one-way in business. . .but a one-way costs 56,000 miles and I have only 55,000 miles.

I just did some research. I discovered that you cannot purchase Lufthansa miles.

I had read that Hilton and Marriott points could be converted into Lufthansa miles, but when I went to the Hilton and Marriott websites, it seems that that is no longer the case.

So, is there any way that I could transfer points from somewhere to convert to Lufthansa miles? I need just 1,000 more.

But, AFAIK, you can only access those mileage bargains by signing into M&M on the Eurowings website, NOT the Miles & More website. It's a bit strange, but signing in does work. You will probably see them there. Weirdly, there is no way to sign out once finished. You just have to navigate away from the page.

Thanks Concerto.
I went to the Eurowings site. I did not notice anything about M&M bargain offers there.

Would I need to set up a Eurowings account, then log in, then I would see some sort of M&M bargains information?

It is not working for me.

I think you suggested that I log into the Eurowings website using my Lufthansa username + password. I tried that; the username + password did not work there.

Logging into Lufthansa, there was no Your Rewards at the top.

No, you have to log into Miles & More going through the link on the Eurowings site. But I think right at the moment, we are on the threshold of a new month, so there might be a few changes coming there. Maybe hang on a couple days or so until the new offers, if there are any, are loaded. I will have a look myself in a couple of days. These days I am never sure how to or where to find the page that shows the latest mileage bargains.

ETA - looking at it in German, neither SEA nor YVR were listed as mileage bargains with EW and anyway, booking finished tonight. Maybe next month, starting in just a few hours, may have a different offer? Have a think about the Early Bird offer too, which for certain long haul flights can be booked just 30 instead of 90 days out. These are 30,000 miles round trip on nonstop flights in economy. I would leave no stone unturned, check everything out.

Sorry, just checked the conditions for Early Bird and once again neither SEA or YVR are eligible destinations for this offer. Just hand on and see what September brings.

Why not call M&M? I don't think they add a booking fee for award bookings, and from my experience they can see availability that's not visible on the website.