Effective May 9 Lufthansa is making changes to their award chart. You can book at old rates until that time. In general premium cabin awards are going up around 6% or so, which isn’t terrible relative to trends in much of the world and that the chart has been constant for some time.
Here’s the current award chart and here’s the new chart.
Key awards that interest me from the perspective of an American:
- Domestic premium cabin awards on United go from 35,000 miles roundtrip to 40,000 miles
- Business class awards to Europe go from 105,000 miles roundtrip up to 112,000 miles
- First class awards to Europe go from 170,000 miles roundtrip to 182,000 miles
- Three zone and round the world awards go up 10,000 miles in business and 20,000 in first
Something we’ve seen consistently is that programs which go revenue-based for mileage-earning also make their award charts cost more. That fairly well rebuts the idea of being more rewarding for high spending customers.
(HT: Frankfurtflyer)
Seems like an across-the-board round of devaluations is underway. Next off the rank will probably be Avianca LifeMiles. They are closing their site for nearly a week for some unspecified IT work, and I would bet that it will return with some unwelcome ‘enhancements’ to their partner redemption rates.
Also, it would not surprise if the much diminished Alaska MileagePlan tightens the screws too. Already a shadow of its former self, there seem to be some there that think it’s still world-leading. It isn’t.
Oneway US-EU in C goes from 52k to 56k. I’ll take that any day. Compared to what other airlines have done in the past I wouldn’t even call this a devaluation.
Interesting the award chart price is still below the saver awards offered by UA and other *A partners but of course that is offset by the less generous earnings structure as well as the heinous “surcharges” or whatever nonsense that LH charges on TATL award tix.
It is hard to find a reason for those outside Germany to select M&M as a primary program, excluding those with HON status.
Normally I would have been most upset about the 35K to 40K increase for domestic United F, but since those seats are never available anymore (really, at anytime) I guess the increase is irrelevant
I wonder whether their mileage bargain prices will go up as well…? The 55k return deals to/from Europe are pretty nice.
I wonder if their mileage bargain prices will also increase…? 55k return in business from/to Europe is a pretty nice deal.
I agree there is a recent trend of increasing points. Still haven’t seen anybody report on the fact that most of the American AAnytime awards increased in January. Many went from 110k to 135k and from 135k to 180k. I saw this on many routes and others are reporting it as well. That’s a much bigger increase.