Booking a Miles&More award ticket: from economy to first here's how much it costs
I admit over the years I have "snubbed" the Miles&More program and the reason was simple difficult to accumulate points in the Frequent [...]
Swiss
Lufthansa
Star Alliance
I admit over the years I have "snubbed" the Miles&More program. and the reason was simple difficult to accumulate points in the Lufthansa Frequent Flyer without flying, is not an American Express partner and there wasn't even a Credit card that would make it easy to accumulate points and bonuses. Now things have changed and so it is only fair to make up for lost time.
How to book M&M award tickets
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The platform is simple, simply log in with your credentials and perform a search via the award ticket section (booking with miles).
The interface is also very intuitive since. as soon as you put in the coordinates of the flight you are looking for, a graph is proposed showing, based on the period, the lower price for the route searched and the cost of taxes. Obviously if you search for the specific date you will have a results page quite similar to when you search for a traditional flight.
Every month, as we often report here at TFC, the Meilenschnaeppchen or more simply the Mileage Bargains, basically LH discounts 50% award tickets to a number of destinations and so you can Flying to the U.S. from Italy with only 30k M&M points round trip. Very intuitive that when searching for a ticket in a period on offer the cost a/r is shown and the presence of the promotion is correctly highlighted.
How much are the fees and surcharges of M&M award tickets
We have explained many times that to book an award ticket you have to use points and pay taxes and surcharges. Unfortunately, these costs with LH are very steep, not at the levels of British Airways, but among the highest in the European landscape.
M&M also has an option where against a higher number of points they reduce or completely zero out the surcharges of award tickets. In the case of intra-EU flights against 15k M&M surcharges are completely zeroed out, while on long-haul, Flex fares are offered that significantly lower the cash cost of the ticket against more miles.
"Flex" offers are there for all flight classes, including First, of course they are never cheap since often the cost in miles required is not even close to the cash outlay required. Above for example you can see how to book a first class ticket and discount €270 requires 24k miles, practically the cost of a round trip economy ticket on the same route.
Some examples of prize tickets
Here is an example of a ticket to fly from Milan to New York. As you can see, I chose a period that falls within the monthly offer period and seats start at 30k a/r, exactly half the normal price. If you want to spend only a few tens of euros in taxes the a/r ticket (at full price) costs 15k M&M more than usual. Of course, the search engine offers all companies in the LH group and beyond, but the monthly offers apply only to flying with Lufthansa and Swiss.
Contrary to what you might think there is always plenty of availability, although of course you always need to be flexible with dates and times, especially when looking for peak season periods.
This example instead compares the cost to fly in business or first Milan to Mexico City. In the first case the cost is 63k miles one way and €336 surcharges, however, if one is willing to invest almost the 50% of extra miles the fees will be lowered by 250€. Obviously, I do not advise anyone to waste 27K M&M to discount only 250€.
The same ticket traveled in first class, aboard the Queen of Heaven, her majesty the 747/8 has a cost of 101k miles and about 335 Of taxes and supplments.
Fees and surcharges with Star Alliance partners
Flying with partner carriers Star Alliance is one of the options for using Miles&More points. For example, it is possible to fly to Bangkok in business class with Thai Airways for 71K M&M points and just under 350€ in taxes and surcharges.
It is possible to search on any airport served by Lufthansa or partner airlines to any destination in the worldwide network, such as flying to China with Asiana, via Seoul, from 40K M&M points plus tax.
Delete a prize ticket
In case of program change, it is possible to cancel/change the award ticket and get the miles credited back against a 50€ penalty fee, however, it is good to remember that award tickets issued with monthly offers are not cancelable.
