SFO777

Miracles do happen. Our DEN-FRA 447 tomorrow was just changed to D-ABVL and New First.

dsquared37

If calling the 1-800 number it's completely free.

chinatraderjmr

Gotta say - I am saving ALOT of money this summer with last minute LH F JFK-DXB awards. I just got my 4th one way F LH award in 6 weeks for travel within the next few days.

Its been a CRAZY / RIDICULOUS sumer with me flying back and fourth between DXB and New York at least every 10 days (sometimes adding Singapore into the mix. I would normally buy either a R/T ticket in F on EK or a multi segment / multi airline DXB-SIN-JFK-DXB. But thanks to great availability with the FRA-DXB flights and last minute JFK-FRA flights as well, I was able to

MAY - JFK-FRA-DXB (LH F AWARD)
MAY - DXB-JFK (EK Paid)
MAY - IAD-DXB (UA paid)
June - DXB-SIN-JFK (SQ Paid)
JUNE - JFK-FRA-DXB (LH F AWARD)
June - DXB-JFK (EK paid)
JUNE - EWR-MUC-DXB (LH F AWARD)
July - DXB-BOM-SIN-JFK (EK/SQ paid)
JULY - JFK-FRA-DXB (LH F AWARD)

***Only once was I able to get JFK at booking the other 3 times I took what was available(IAD/BOS/ORD) but was able to get JFK when it opened (which it did every time)

Different people calculate what they save with upgrades / awards different ways. Some say they saved $15,000 by getting a free F ticket and others say, no, you only saved what you would have spent on the ticket you would have bought.
WE calculated our ACTUAL savings to be just South of $35,000 with these 4 tickets based on what we would have spent on EK had no awards been avail on LH....GREAT SAVINGS!!!!!!

NA-Flyer

Using Skype YES it's free.

blitzen

Less than 21 days out / all seats in F still available / but nothing on UA

Edit > should read less than 14 days

WineCountryUA

By on posted experiences, typically it appears 7-14 days is the high probability zone for release of LH F award seats.

demosthenes1

Just grabbed ORD-FRA x2 for tomorrow. It's the new first, and our first experience with LH F.

Blootch

Just snagged JFK-FRA-HKG for this Fri-Sun! Get to try the 748 as well as upper deck on the 744. Never flown on the upper deck and first time on the 748 as well.

mre5765

Heading to TXL the last week of July. Originally booked a J one way saver on LH, DEN/FRA/TXL. Grabbed an F one way saver today, DEN/YYZ/FRA, on UA/LH. Had enough miles that I could book the replacement trip, wait for it to be ticketed and visible on lufthansa.com, and then cancel the original.

The return is still a standard J one way on UA, TXL to the U.S., but will be looking again 14 days out; really want to try the FCT. Return date is flexible.

This surely remains one of the best benefits of M+.

jasonvr

How are you getting to TXL on your outbound? Is it not on the same ticket anymore? If it is, I assume if is on LH metal. If so, and if you have the time, you can use the FCT on the way to TXL by virtue of arriving into FRA in LH F.

mre5765

I purchased a separate ticket (under $200). While there was F saver space to FRA,and J saver space from FRA to TXL, for some reason, united.com won't show it, and I didn't want to mess around dealing with a human who would fat finger my other reservations.

I am going to Germany on business; corporate policy doesn't allow J, and use the separate ticket is going on my employer's dime.

jasonvr

You might still be able to get into the FCT, not sure about with the separate ticket though. Might want to ask here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...-fct-faqs.html

Tracer_SEA

Enjoy. New first on the 744 is great. The 748 is a nice airplane, but FWIW LH's F seat (and cabin) on the A380 is nicer, IMO, than the 748 which is narrower and less well laid out.

terpfan101

Just thought I'd add a datapoint, I apologize in advance for the lengthy post!

I flew home from my Europe trip with my girlfriend last week. I originally had two tickets booked in UA J from BRU-ORD-DCA but since when I booked the flight back in February, the direct flight had no saver space and it never opened up. Anyway I had my eyes on making a switch to the LH flight either in J or F from BRU-FRA-IAD which would have shaved off about two hours from the total travel time. I set EF alerts and began checking at T-14 (about five days before leaving for Europe). There were two seats in J available on the 748 but I wasn't exactly sure if it'd be worthwhile so held out to see if F opened up. At T-14 there was only one seat selected in F on the seatmap and the fare buckets showed F 6, A5. The rest of the plane looked normal and certainly not like it'd sell out.

Anyway I was in Europe, around T-7 when I received an EF notification that two F seats were available. I thought too long about making the switch and by the time I went to do it they were gone and confirmed by the fact that the two middle seats were now taken. So I decided to wait. At T-4 I decided that I'd go ahead and just swap to the LH J flight and pay the change fee but that I'd wait until the morning in Europe to call. Low and behold the next morning I received an alert saying two F seats were available and thus made the call to the UA call center in France where I spoke to two American sounding people.

I told the first that I wanted to make the change but she said that there was only 1 F seat showing as being available, however this made no sense because UA.com showed two for purchase as an award. However ua.com wouldn't let me change the tickets as it gave me an error after selecting the flight saying I needed to select a segment. I was using a tablet so thought that may have given me problems. Anyway she said no only one F award available so I went ahead and just did the route in J. Later that day I checked UA.com and saw the two F seats were still there so confused I decided to attempt to change my newly changed flight to LH F, however that meant that the BRU-FRA flight would need to change to an hour earlier flight which I didn't really want (since the flight I was currently on had 0 availability in J). I thought that maybe I needed to select each passenger on the change screen instead of just selecting "change for all passengers" and sure enough it worked and went to the next step. So I changed the flights to the earlier BRU-FRA flight and FRA-IAD in F. I checked my credit card and saw another $150 charge so immediately called UA's US call center.

Being in France I didn't want to rack up a huge phone charge so I called my mom using the hotel wifi and Facetime where I asked her to dial the UA call center from the landline and put the two phones next to each other. I knew it worked when asked to speak my mileage plus number and it heard me. So I spoke to a nice agent and basically explained that I wanted to originally change to F but was told not available but confirmed that it was in fact available by making the second change and thus didn't think I should be charged twice. He agreed and issued a refund for the second fee. However when I asked if he could change my BRU-FRA flight back to the one I originally booked he said no since there was no availability, I prodded him a bit more saying how I would have booked it correctly if I could and he agreed and made the change to the exact flights I wanted with the end result being only one change fee ($75 x 2) was charged.

I don't think that experience would be typical as had I had my computer probably would have figured out how to proceed with the change online and gotten it right in the first place. However I was very happy to have such good customer service in processing the change without charge to what I wanted to do earlier in the day. As a recap, the two seats first opened up at around T-7 were snatched up and then again made available at T-3. Once on board I was surprised to see a full F cabin and learn that the plane was full. I was told that they had to op-up people from Y and C and believe there were 2-3 op-ups in F. When waiting for our bags at IAD I asked the couple sitting in the middle pair how they got their seats and if they were the people who snatched the awards I saw and he confirmed he was.

LH First was great. I flew over on BA in their New First class cabin which I thought was excellent, however LH blew BA out of the water on almost all accounts. I didn't get to enjoy a full meal service on BA as it was an overnight flight but felt that the food was actually better on BA, a bit too complicated for its own good on LH. I didn't have BA's new AVOD system but their content was better than LH, and I'm sure Thales AVOD would have blown LH's out of the park. The hard product on LH new first was amazing though. I loved having so many seat controls although it was a bit confusing to work whereas BA's was rather limited. I did find the BA seat more comfortable for sitting, but imagine as a bed for sleeping LH would have been much better especially given its wider nature. Hopefully my tale helps others.

Boogie711

Does Lufthansa release J awards late too?

I was considering changing my flight from JNB-JFK-YYZ to JNB-FRA-LHR-YYZ. The FRA-LHR seat is available, as is LHR-YYZ, but the JNB-FRA seat isn't. Is it likely to open up in Business, or am I better to forget about it?