Please post your M&M award booking experience
 

I would like to start a thread to gather award booking experience with M&M for middle and long-haul flights in Business and First class:


- Which route/airline did you book and which class?
- How many pax and how many award miles?
- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?

First class on LH to GRU
 

- Which flights did you book and which class?
all flights on LH: FRA -(F)- GRU -(F)- FRA -(C)- STR

- How many pax and how many award miles?
2 persons, 270.000 miles (SEN companion award)

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
10 days before departure

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
Yes

- Overall: Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
I had booked the FRA-GRU-FRA online and needed to call SEN service to add the flight to STR. I was not able to get the flight to STR in C online. Overall good award booking experience.

- Which flights did you book and which class?
LHR -(F, Singapore Airline)- SIN -(F, Singapore Airline)- BKK -(F, Thai)- LHR

- How many pax and how many award miles?
1 person, 180.000 miles

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
8 months before the flight

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
No but acceptable (flight to sin was one day earlier than wanted

- Overall: Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
I called SEN service several times until I preferred airlines were reserved.

- Which flights did you book and which class?
M&M C class Star award: SIN -(C, Singapore Airl.)- SYD -(C, Singapore Airl.)- SIN

- How many pax and how many award miles?
2 persons, 180.000 miles

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
travel was in 12/2005; booked in 7/2005

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
yes

- Overall: Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
Reservation by phone. First agent had no clue. Called again afterwards and other agent was helpful.

Which flights did you book and which class?
M&M F class award: DRS-FRA-SIN-FRA-DRS

- How many pax and how many award miles?
2 persons, 270.000 miles (companion award)

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
about 9 months

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
booked the flight first, then the hotels, so I no fixed travel dates

- Overall: Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
Reservation by phone. Worked with the first call, got my prefered seats.

Never had a problem using LH miles for premium class awards on most carriers. And I've alomost always got my first choice of dates too. (Usually book about 2-3 months in advance, but have also booked at 14 days notice.)

Some recent redemptions this year include:

LHR-FRA/x-DEL // BLR-FRA/x-LHR (LH F)
LHR-FRA/x-YYZ-FRA/x-LHR (LH F)
LHR-NRT-HKG // SIN-LHR (NH and SQ F)
LHR-DEL-LHR (9W J)

- Which route/airline did you book and which class?

All business class:
on OS: BRU-VIE-SYD//MEL-SIN
stopover at SIN, then continuing on LH: SIN-FRA-BRU

- How many pax and how many award miles?

2 passengers, 240,000 miles (SEN companion award)

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?

327 days before outbound, 354 days before inbound

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?

more or less, not all flights were available.

- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)?

had to book by phone due to open jaw and stopover, but it was painless. Booking was first put on hold for 3 weeks, during which I confirmed and got it ticketed. During initial booking, the last leg was not available at the time requested, but only a flight 2 hours later. When confirming the tickets, the better flight became available.

- How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
Checked availability myself before calling using M&M website. When I called, everything went smooth (and the agent was surprised that for each of the long-haul flights, I got the last two available tickets).

SmilingBoy.

- Which route/airline did you book and which class?
LH on FRA-MIA RT once or twice a year, 1999-2001 in Y, since 2002 in C
- How many pax and how many award miles?
2 pax or 4 pax, recently 135K miles for two in C or 315K miles for four in C
- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
As a SEN I finally made outbound reservations ~359 days ahead and kept the reservation for 14 days in order to make my inbound reservations ~359 days ahead. I learned from SEN lines, that they got flights on their computer about 359 days ahead for the first time. Since I was almost always looking for first day of school holidays of my kids (Eastern holidays or Autumn holidyas) I was always in for VERY popular travel days on that route. As a HON this problem disappeared. ^
- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
Yes, when following the strategy mentioned before. 10 month ahead it was not possible, all C awards were gone and all Y awards as well in the old days.
- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)?
Yes, after I learned, that I must be quick.
- How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
Twice, once for outbound reservations and 14 days later for inbound reservations and booking confirmation.

Ouch
 

[QUOTE=SleepOverGreenland]- Which route/airline did you book and which class?


For this year the awarad statisticss are:


LH: IAD-MUC-ZRH-MUC-IAD in C (1 passanger) HON two weeks 90K

LH: IAD-FRA-TXL//HAM-FRa-IAD in C (2 passanger) HON / HOC two weeks 135K

US: DCA-LGA/LGA-SYR-LGA-DCA in C ( 2 passangers) few weeks (actually 4 days in the end as I changed the flights yesterday as I can leave earlier on Friday) HON / HOC 50K

Four months ahead to coordinate three out of four for dates in August:

LH: JNB-IAD-MUC-FRA-JNB in C (1 passanger) SEN 90K

LH: JNB-FRA-INN//MUC-FRA-JNB in C(1 passanger) SEN 90K

MIX: JNB-FRA(LH)-MUC(LH)//INN-VIE(OS)-ZRH(LX)-GRU(LX)-GIG(RG)-GRU(RG)-JNB(SA) in C (1 passenger) SEN since then RG folded but I protected on GOL 160K

LH; IAD-FRA-MUC-FRA-IAD in C (1 passanger) HON 3 weeks



LH: IAD-FRA-FMO-FRA-IAD in F (1 passanger) HON (Christmas time) 140K

LH: JNB-FRA-FMO-FRA-JNB in F (2passangers) SEN/SEN (Christmas time) 210K



sponsored advanced upgrades FRA-JNB-FRA Y>C 4 times (MM) e-voucher

own upgrade in advnace IAD-FRA-JNB-FRA-IAD C>F once (HON) e-voucher

All through the HON circle all via email (with email / phone follow up by HON circle)


Except for Christmas only once.

Exceptional service

Down to calling me about changes and other options


I think that's it ... might have forgotten one or two ...

PS just totaled this up ... eeeek went through 1.055 million miles in a year ???? :( and 18 e-voucher ???? ouch

- Which route/airline did you book and which class?

1.) LH/SA MUC-FRA-JNB-FRA-MUC C
2.) Any Germany-DEL-Germany C (without success. Tried LH/OS, AC via ZRH, AI from FRA, QR)

- How many pax and how many award miles?

1.) 1 / 90'000
2.) 1 / n/a

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?

1.) 3 months
2.) trying since April for November, specific dates +/- 1 day for each way

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?

1.) yes
2.) no

- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?

1.) Yes, happy, once
2.) No, unhappy, every 2nd week since April. Will probably fly TK if no seat will be confirmed until deadline.

The darkside of the M&M-awards are the high taxes/charges/whatever. MUC-FRA-JNB and back costs me additional 251 EUR.

Patrick

Hi

Booked TLV-ZRH

7 days before and on fly smart in business (25000 miles ) 2 Pax. All online and very happy, got the exact dates I wanted.

Only pain Baby on LX needs a paper ticket to fly along so thats complicated to add had to call twice since first person had no clue but.....

- Which route/airline did you book, which class, how many pax, how many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?

LH: FRA-JNB//JNB-FRA (F, 4 Pax, 11 months)
LH: FRA-NRT//NRT-FRA (F, 2 Pax, 3 weeks)
LH: LAX-FRA//FRA-LAX (C, 1 Pax, 1 week)
LH: YVR-FRA//FRA-LAX (C, 2 Pax, 3-4 months)
LH: FRA-CPT//CPT-FRA (F, 2 Pax, 11 months)

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?

More or less, but eventually found acceptable dates. However, populuar destinations at popular times do require planning a year in advance.

We would have preferred the 4 F tickets to CPT (served by a 340) rather than JNB (a 747), but we were too late for this.

- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?

Used Expertflyer and the M+M online booking engine. Usually made the booking through phone to keep the reservation for 1-3 weeks before confirming them.

- Which route/airline did you book and which class?
1. ROC-ORD-DUS//DUS-ORD-ROC C for me in November
2. ROC-ORD-DUS//DUS-ORD-ROC C for my wife in December

- How many pax and how many award miles?
1. 1 pax 81K (10% off voucher)
2. 1 pax 90K

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
1. 8 months
2. 7 months

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
1. Yes. Interestingly, the LH site showed no award availability for the outbound leg on friday. I called LH and they told me that there is a seat available (opened up one?). At that time there was no availability ROC-ORD-ROC (BTW: try to book a flight to ROC on LH.com, impossible! For LH.com "ROC" does not exist :mad: ). I called some weeks later (after ticketing) and after one hour on the phone they managed adding on the domestic legs. Interestingly, they charged me twice for the $ 40 service fee (hmm, should call them). It appeared like they booked another new ticket that they cancelled afterwards.
2. Yes. No problems.

- Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)?
Yes, very much. I never booked an award tix before and I was surprised about the opportunity to put the booking on hold for three weeks and the flexibility of the tickets. I was really glad with the good service (CPT :) ) for the add-on. They also were able to assign me a seat next to my wife (I will be on a paid ticket). The only thing that sucks a little bit is that there is virtually no chance to get a domestic F seat on UA. The problem is that UA does not waitlist *A award tix. Once the seats are opened -ratz-fatz!- all the UGSs/1Ks will get their u/gs unununununn-feddich! I could not even get a E+ seat for my wife.

- How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
The C seats were available right away in both cases. [/QUOTE]

- Which flights did you book and which class?
all flights on Singapore Airlines, C class: FRA - SIN - DPS - FRA

- How many pax and how many award miles?
2 persons, 240.000 miles

- How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?
2 months before departure

- Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?
Yes

- Overall: Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)? How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?
Called SEN line, reserved two seats. Reservation was hold for 2 weeks. Then I booked hotels and confirmed flights. Very happy with award reservation.

> Which route/airline did you book and which class?

LH HKG -> FRA
upgrade from Y to C, one way

> How many pax and how many award miles?

1
65,000

> How many days/weeks/months did you book in advance?

Called directly after booking the economy class seat, 4 weeks before the flight. Was set on a waiting list because the contigent of seats eligible for Miles & More awards was already fully utilized. Then a few days later apparently the contigent was increased and the upgrade went through.

> Have you been able to book your preferred dates of travel?

Yes.

> Were you happy with the award booking procedure (e.g. online/by phone)?

Yes. Some time after I had already discovered that the upgrade must have succeeded (because the miles were deducted from my account), I received a kind call from Lufthansa informing me of that.

Naturally, although I appreciate the necessity of contigents, I would prefer there was no such thing.

> How often did you have to check/call until you got the seats?

Twice.