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Miles & More discount rewards for May launched

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It’s time for our monthly round-up of discounted redemption routes available via the Lufthansa Miles & More programme.

The May list of discounted Miles & More redemptions from the UK is here.  You must book by May 31th for travel by June 16th.

As I say each month, given how high the taxes are, the European redemptions are still not great value.  Neither are the long-haul Economy destinations.

Lufthansa A340

Business class redemptions, on the other hand, do offer genuine value.  Note the reappearance of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha this month.

The following long-haul routes are reduced for May, often sharply, in Business Class:

  • Abu Dhabi
  • Abuja
  • Addis Abeba
  • Beijing
  • Bogota
  • Dallas
  • Doha
  • Dubai
  • Jeddah
  • Johannesburg
  • Khartoum
  • Lagos
  • Montreal
  • Mumbai
  • Muscat
  • Nanjing
  • Seoul
  • Shenyang
  • Tokyo

Whilst Lufthansa’s business class is not the greatest (unless you get a 747-800 with the new fully flat seat), you will also get the discounted prices on Austrian and Swiss where they fly the same route.  Austrian is rolling out its fully flat business class seat and I think Swiss is now 100% fully flat.

Comments (7)

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  • Rohan says:

    Does not sound great. Raffles are you able to offer any insight into skywards at all? Or good ways to earn redeem etc. on emirates. I am going to be flying quite a few times later this year on this for holiday and would like to make it count , even it means transferring it to something else for future use?

    • Rob says:

      Skywards is not a great scheme, the miles needed for redemptions are crazily and the expiry policy is nasty. However, you can now redeem for easyJet flights which lets you cash them out – do a search for my post on this.

      If you go here http://www.emirates.com/english/Skywards/about/partners/our-partners.aspx?showinterim=true you will see that Emirates is partners with some oneworld airlines, who would let you redeem on BA, and a couple of Star Alliance carriers. You therefore have plenty of other options to credit to.

      However, check carefully with each scheme a) exactly how many miles your ticket class earns and b) how many you need for a redemption you can use. In particular, schemes which allow one way redemptions are good as its easier to use up a small miles balance.

      • Rohan says:

        Thanks! Wish i was living closer to london then could fly BA for most of my destinations 🙁

  • Daftboy says:

    Just to add that while economy redemptions usually are bad value in any programme, there are highly discounted redemptions via Germanwings (which flies from LHR and STN) at the moment. 10,000 miles, but only for flights to Stuttgart, Cologne and Hannover.

    For someone with me with a very small M&M balance (just over 10,000) that isn’t likely to increase much/at all, that finally provides something usable (unless anyone can point me to another use for 10k M&M miles)…

    • Rob says:

      There will be chunky taxes, probably £100, on those redemptions. A BA Reward Flight Save is 9000 return plus £30 tax.

      M&M allows one way redemptions, so you could get up to enough for a long haul redemption one way with a transfer from Starwood, say. Or wait for the M&M credit card to come back with a big bonus.

      You can cash out small amounts for Heathrow shopping vouchers via WorldPoints, at 1,875 miles per £5!

      • Daftboy says:

        I just checked LHR to Stuttgart and the taxes/fees/charges are £56 for a return; ca. £40 from the UK, £16 from Germany. The same flights are currently at least £200 to buy (more with bags).

        Again, it is only for those three cities, but if anyone needed to get there then it seems like a not bad value, certainly for what I consider to effectively be orphan miles.

        • Rob says:

          That’s not bad … presumably LH’s fuel surcharges are not yet duplicated on Germanwings!

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