Normally Swiss first class awards are only available to Miles & More Senator and HON Circle members, and those elites must book by phone. However right now Swiss first class awards are wide open, bookable online, by anyone using Lufthansa’s Miles & More miles – no elite status required. Note that this space is generally still not available to partner airline frequent flyer programs.
The award space is not bookable if you search just to or from Zurich. Instead you need a connection. So Chicago – Zurich – Munich works. Frankfurt – Zurich – Dubai works. Frankfurt – Zurich – Tokyo works. Availability is really good for December and January, and also October 2023. Reader Joachim pointed me to German-language blog Meilenoptimieren.com which was first to notice this.
Occasionally we’ve seen Swiss first class bookable more broadly than official policy.
- Swiss first class became bookable with partner miles briefly in 2016
- And in early 2017
- However later in 2017 when this happened again Swiss cancelled Aeroplan-issued tickets as a mistake
- But they do make partner first class awards available on their fifth freedom São Paulo – Buenos Aires route.
- And over the summer Newark and Boston – Zurich and Zurich – Singapore were bookable using partner miles for same-day and next-day travel.
I cannot say how long Swiss will make first class redemptions available to all Miles & More members, or even that they will not have ‘sellers remorse’. There’s no discount here, of course, just a redemption opportunity they do not normally offer.
This is cool! But I don’t have any miles in my Swiss Air or Miles & More account and to look at award flights, a message popped up telling me I need a min of 7k miles in my account just to look at award flights.
Do you know any workaround for this?
@ Gary — Been M&M Senator and have never seen a Swiss First Class seat open, so it is a myth that these are made available to Lufthansa M&M members.
@ Gary — Been M&M Senator for several years…
@ paul — I dont follw why you would care? If you dont have 7,000 miles, you also don’t have the 91k+ miles neded for a one-way F redemption.
@gene I would guess we have miles to transfer however before doing that would like to see availability. Not willing to transfer 7K just to get access to look at flights.
@Gene, you have to call normally….
@ Omar — That explains, thanks!
Saw the comment about needing 7K miles in account to view flights.
I may be able to transfer the miles. What’s the typical mileage cost for a USA -> Munich (with connection) award? 90K-ish each way?
@Mr Obvious – can’t transfer to M&M, from any program whatsoever. Can’t be done.
I can’t find anything using M&M from west coast USA – UK or Germany in any of those dates.
On Thanksgiving, I saw a same-day SWISS award in first class via United (SFO-ZRH). No idea if it was a mistake, phantom availability, or what. I would have booked it if I had enough United miles, but I don’t. Aeorplan didn’t show it, unfortunately.
You can buy now m&m miles through your account with them, best deal is 130,000 miles for $1,840 till January 31, 2023, max 250,000 miles w/o bonus per calendar year, I just did it.