Lufthansa will devalue the Miles & More reward chart – book now

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• John says:

  26 Jan26 January 05:27

  Seems like AY thinks leaving the EU is going to lead to more LHR-HEL traffic then?

  Well at least, no longer need to decide between the A320 or paying for another hotel night in order to take the A350

  • BJ says:

    26 Jan26 January 07:15

    I would expect the decision was driven by cargo, not pax.

    • Stu N says:

      26 Jan26 January 09:39

      BA are dropping their afternoon/ evening flight at the same time so they will only have a morning rotation to HEL now; this will be a way of keeping capacity without using an extra slot pair.

      • BJ says:

        26 Jan26 January 10:22

        Thanks, useful to know, so it seems it’s pax driven after all.

      • Lady London says:

        26 Jan26 January 13:09

        Is that kind of cooperation legal? Basically this would make it sound like British Airways and Finnair have agreed not to compete?

      • Riku says:

        26 Jan26 January 20:23

        lady london – look up “joint business agreement” with regards to finnair, JAL and BA. they not only agree not to compete but pool ticket revenues and share them between the three airlines.

• Concerto says:

  26 Jan26 January 06:03

  As for Lufthansa Group, it is now a monopoly in much of Europe and it has been downhill all the way since Air Berlin has died. I’m glad the changes are not big, but I reckon it’s going to be incremental, eroded away bit by bit. As I wrote elsewhere, devalue it just a bit more and they might as well just close the programme.

  • Pangolin says:

    26 Jan26 January 11:27

    Sadly this is true – the LH Death Star has swallowed up most of the competition in Central Europe and around. Even Ryanair got crushed when they tried to take on Lufty in its home market. Ryanair had eaten the lunch of other domestic full service carriers, like Alitalia, but Lufthansa used their enormous economic and political clout to swat them away like a fly (I remember seeing O’Leary losing his rag and going into a massive rant about how they’d been unable to get slots at various German airports).

    • Lady London says:

      26 Jan26 January 13:18

      Dirty tricks from Lufthansa getting local German authorities and airports to mysteriously be unable to find slots for Ryanair? Surely not.

      Ryanair would be the best thing to happen to Lufthansa and its customers.

• TGLoyalty says:

  26 Jan26 January 08:31

  Think they would need to rejoin oneworld. I’m sure that will happen at some point

  • Vasco says:

    26 Jan26 January 10:45

    BA can award tier points in BAEC to whoever they want. If EI joined oneworld that would mean all OW airlines would have to.

• James Ryan says:

  26 Jan26 January 09:34

  Lufthansa F classiest in the sky? I’m surprised at that.. I’ve only done BA F but from what you see from Etihad, Singapore Airlines etc I wouldn’t expect you to say Lufthansa beats those products.

  • marcw says:

    26 Jan26 January 09:39

    It’s a very classy product. Importantly, their service is consistently very good.

  • Rob says:

    26 Jan26 January 11:07

    Bad seat, very classy service, caviar etc.

  • BJ says:

    26 Jan26 January 20:44

    It’s all in the service. I’m trading in a MTP hotel cerificate to get another shot at LH F. The only decent breakfast I have ever had on a plane was on LH F.

• Mr. AC says:

  26 Jan26 January 11:05

  Is there a way to conveniently check what aircraft is flying a given route 6-12 months out? Some arcane Matrix magic perhaps?

  • Rob says:

    26 Jan26 January 11:12

    Should show in the booking system, try an Expedia dummy booking or airline site. Often hidden, eg Finnair makes you click the flight number during booking.

    • Mr. AC says:

      26 Jan26 January 12:34

      Right, but that requires putting in the dates the dates. I’d rather love to get something like “all the dates a 787 is operating on this route in the next year” in a nice overview or table. If it doesn’t exist, maybe I’ll take a look at the available APIs myself…

      • Graham Walsh says:

        26 Jan26 January 17:24

        Just do it on a Tor browser in Private mode so no trace on your device of looking up the flight

  • Roberto says:

    26 Jan26 January 11:12

    Dummy booking will show it…

• Pangolin says:

  26 Jan26 January 11:17

  I’d been expecting far worse in terms of the M&M devaluation, so this is almost a relief, especially if you compare it some horrorshow devaluations from 2018, like Qatar.

  The switch to a revenue-based system is a much bigger deal. The problem with Lufthansa is not devaluation of awards but of earnings. Under the new system, award mile earnings are often 50-75% lower than status miles (which are unchanged). The only people better off are business travellers getting last-minute overpriced flights in premium cabins – i.e. the kind of people who are indifferent to changes in incentive schemes that might cause someone to switch to a different airline.

  • Lady London says:

    26 Jan26 January 13:21

    And that’s exactly the kind of customers Lufthansa has decided to keep @Pangolin ! S** the test of us

• Lady London says:

  26 Jan26 January 13:10

  Is that kind of cooperation legal? Basically this would make it sound like British Airways and Finnair have agreed not to compete?

  • Lady London says:

    26 Jan26 January 13:14

    *refers to Finnair adding another flight to Helsinki daily at the same time as British Airways decides to run one less? Not coincidental perhaps and could look like those two airlines are working together to manage capacity on the route thus limiting competition?

    WordPress keeps deciding to put replies standalone
    …when they are replies

  • Mr. AC says:

    26 Jan26 January 16:47

    They’re one alliance so effectively acting in concert. All of the flights on the route are BA-AY codeshares anyway, so it doesn’t matter much who’s operating them. I’m flying this route next week on a Finnair flight, but I think it’s going to be BA metal.

  • Rob says:

    26 Jan26 January 17:13

    BA and Qatar don’t compete on Doha and beyond. BA and JAL do not compete on Japan. BA, Iberia, Finnair, Iberia and soon Aer Lingus don’t compete on North America. Nice work if you can get it.

    You can download the Aer Lingus submission to join the BA/IB/Finnair JV. Apparently customers have benefited magnificently from the three airlines price fixing for the last 10 years and will benefit some more if Aer Lingus can start doing it too.

    • Riku says:

      26 Jan26 January 20:39

      Finnair are using a wide body on HEL-LHR because the timing of HEL-HKG means the plane would otherwise sit empty all day in Helsinki, so better to use it for a short haul route in europe during daytime. LHR is chosen partly due to cargo demand. The second long haul plane to LHR is due to HEL-HKG going twice daily (BA dropping to 1x daily probably helped them decide to allocate it to HEL-LHR).
      It will be interesting to see what happens to premium economy on these planes when used HEL-LHR since they will for sure not sell premium economy tickets HEL-LHR. Status card holders and paid upgrades from Y probably.

      • BJ says:

        26 Jan26 January 20:57

        I thought the PE on these aircraft were just regular economy seats with extra pitch and sold as economy at a higher price to reflect that. No PE in the sense of BA, AF or SQ for example.

      • Riku says:

        26 Jan26 January 21:31

        finnair do not have premium economy at the moment. I was talking about the premium economy these planes will have once finnair introduce premium economy.. The “regular economy seats with extra pitch” are called economy comfort and that is not the same thing as premium economy.

• Rc says:

  26 Jan26 January 13:45

  OT does anyone know where I can change the frequent flyer membership on an Swiss Air booking. The site isnt the most user friendly…..

  • Lost+confused says:

    26 Jan26 January 23:05

    From memory it’s easy (and obvious) enough to do during online check in.

    • Alex Sm says:

      27 Jan27 January 17:07

      I just did it for my trip to Davos (flights from LHR to ZRH and back). Wasn’t straightforward. My rule of thumb Star All FF programme is A3. But – class L didn’t qualify for points, so had to use SK number for that AT CHECKIN (not possible via Manage my booking). But BEWARE! the last used FF becomes your default option, so for return flight I had to MANUALLY change to A3 again (different booking class, so good for miles). And it gave me Priority status (I assume because I’m Silver with A3). Ugh… this FF world is tough!

  • Alex Sm says:

    27 Jan27 January 21:52

    Also, it’s not been called “Swiss Air” since 2002 or so. It’s just SWISS #Pforpedantic

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