Indeed. BMI has excellent 'cash and miles' redemptions (eg I have just booked Copenhagen-FRA-Hong Kong-FRA-CPH in LH First for 50,000 miles plus GBP470 cash / taxes) and, if its important to you, allows one-way redemption bookings on all *A carriers for half the normal rate instead of LH's 75%.

Hey flysurfer,

enjoyed the EK F-Suite on a 345 between SYD and DXB last year ....sweet ....best flying experience I had so far...largest monitor....gigantic VOD-Database...Dom Perignon vintage as much you like :p .....ahhhh to bad they are not with *A.

cheers
HON_Hunter

Gotta....book....NOW...

sounds like I should give it a try, too @:-)

Again: I could not agree more. I ask the overall value an airline gives me and the FFP is at the very bottom of my personal evaluation.

- Network in-Europe and ex-Germany
- Reliability
- Seats (in F) on long distance
- Partner Airlines
- On board and ground service
- FFP

Greetings paffendorf
While I do agree with your aspect of the post, I do not agree with your
high opinion on QF.

Dreadful domestic Y and C experience (just survived - barely - the latter
to PER) and a random selection of seats on longhaul flights.
Plane interior is much more immaculate than LH agree but seats and IFE vary
between divine and stone age. And its FFP is basically nonexistent at
least after the recent seizure of improvements.
It might still share the throne with BA for being the safest airline ever but
they can improve .. a looooooong way.

Much of our split opinions here come different paradigms:
Who cares? I never have to go to LA, let alone via MUC.
Ok, I air a narrow pov as well here. But my cirtique to your or Flying Lawyer's
view of the world is that LH is an international carrier not a large Germany
hub to the world.
And while LH is luring more and more super-cheapo pax from all over the world
through their gateways, at the same time they preclude them from the
benefits of the FFP.
But then the amateur, dirty-under-the-nails status Senator is still avaible
for all *A flyers or almost all, so we probably have to be thankful :confused: ...

All I care about when choosing an airline are my own travel pattern, my personal tastes, my specific demands and my priorities. And as long as, when it comes to pick an airline, everybody cares about him/herself and makes their decisions accordingly, everybody is taken care of ;) Why should I care what LH is (or should be or might be or may not be) to you or, even worse, to the entire rest of the world? I'm not running the company, and so far, LH hasn't offered me a monetary incentive to think about it.

I really believe that the problem with many, many threads on FT is the urge to generalize everything into some "one fits everything and everybody every day" consensus. I guess I'm capable of making my own decisions, hence I'm less interested in opinions/rants as I am in getting access to plain facts that I can base my own decisions on. Luckily, FT also provides a lot of useful facts, as well.

I totally agree with you. ^ It's a personal decision which airline one chooses. Their is no airline and probably will never be (because that's what capitalism is like), which will benefit all pax or at least make all satisfied.

What do you expect LH to do? Shall they give all perks to everyone? Than it wouldn't be perks anymore?

Has you know I think witn it's new "improvements" LHs is on a wrong way, but at least they had to do somethink (e.g. we still complained about the crowded Sen lounges in this thread)

...I have to say... have you ever tried LX or SQ.... that is a real IFE... not just like LH's main screen (one for all). When are they going to upgrade their planes?... :mad:

I think there are two seperate issues here- one is which airline to fly (which at least I make on the basis of schedule, comfort and cost) and another one which FFP to credit miles to.
Of course, FFPs influence the choice of airline to some extent. I never used to fly EK because I could not get miles, even though EK F from Europe is cheaper than C of many European carriers when booked through Amex. And I had flown RG while I could have flown TAM just because RG belongs to *A.
At the end of the day, since I do not want to spend too much time in the air, it boils down to what gives me overall utility maximisation- which means SQ LHR-SIN, BD LHR-BOM, BA LHR-JFK, CO or AC LON-IAH and SK LHR-OSL/ARN are my carriers of choice in those routes I fly regularly. Since I have one leg still in Europe, I use LH as my long haul carrier to the occasional long haul trips I make (such as LHR-LOS, OSL-IAH or LHR-JNB).
The FFP of course is a different story- my *A miles mostly go to BD (because I am an LH SEN until 2009, there is no point in putting any more miles there as I get no benefit unless I become HON, SK EB is a joke compared to M/M or DC), my OW miles go to EC and ST miles to CO (which are mostly CO miles anyway).
And the only instance where I am treated differently because I belong to an FF is with CO domestic where we get upgrades to F when we fly cheap weekend Y trips. In all others, you get what you pay for, and I am not complaining as I am making a conscious choice rather than blindly follow an FFP.

LH has AVOD and wireless Connexion broadband Internet access in C and F, and as we all know, is in the middle of a process to upgrade their entire longhaul fleet to this new IFE. LH's AVOD hat not as many channels and programs as KrisWorld, but the selection is certainly sufficient. There have been numerous reports about system glitches, though, but AFIAK, the situation has improved recently.

Live TV (like it was just announced by SK) may be in the works as a future system enhancement, because as I understand it, this is basically an upgrade to Connexion. Maybe you refer to that?

Yes, I have tried SQ in F, but haven't been interested in LX so far, because they weren't offering nonstop flights to any place I needed/wanted to go - and they weren't in *A. At least the latter is about to change, so you never know... :)

As for LH longhaul Y: It's terrible, we all know it's terrible, we all keep repeating it's terrible, and we keep suggesting to everybody that it's to be avoided. So I'm at a total loss about the existence of posters who keep complaining about it. It's like preaching "Don't put your hand in the open flame" and then: "Mommy, I burned my hand!" :rolleyes:

Well, by posting this, I was hoping somone would say: LH is going to upgrade IFE in Economy Class. But apparently not. I cannot understand how they can sell longhaul tickets with such a bad product. I really prefer connecting somewhere in Europe to get an 8hour flight with IFE (in the case of leisure trips).

...whatever mummy said about the fire.... if you don't complain about it, you'll never get someone to extinguish it...

Anyway, that's not the topic of the thread :)

Wasn't there Swissair quite a while ago? :D

LOL! ^

But it's best to complain to LH and, even more, "complain" by not buying (avoiding) the product.

As you mentioned was... So now they have M&M, too or will get soon to be correct. :rolleyes: