Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Did you know Lufthansa Miles & More offers a 25% miles discount for children?

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The Lufthansa Miles & More scheme is certainly not perfect, but it does have some good reasons to use it.  As I covered in an article about my trip to the Middle East over Christmas 2020, Miles & More offers good value on this route.

One of the odder quirks of the Miles & More scheme, which can make their redemptions better value than you think, is that they offer a 25% discount on the miles required when you redeem for a child.

A child is defined as someone aged 2-11.

Did you know Lufthansa Miles & More offers a 25% miles discount for children?

This only applies to flights on Adria Airways, Austrian Airlines, Air Dolomiti, Brussels Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Eurowings, LOT Polish Airlines, Lufthansa, Luxair and SWISS, but that is enough to be going on with.

The discount is automatically applied when searching for redemptions on the Miles & More website.  Click to enlarge:

It is only applied for participating airlines. If you fly just one sector on an airline that is not listed, the discount will not be applied at all.  For the booking above – London to Dubai, one way – an alternative routing with EgyptAir did not result in the 25% saving.

For a family, this makes Miles & More redemptions attractive.

Let’s take a Miles & More business class redemption from the UK to the Middle East:

  • British Airways wants 120,000 Avios return on a peak date, so 480,000 Avios for a family of four assuming no Amex 2-4-1 vouchers
  • Lufthansa or SWISS, with a change of plane in Europe, only wants 70,000 miles return – the reward chart is here (PDF) – so you are already ahead.  The discount on the two child tickets means that the total required is only 245,000 Miles & More miles rather than the 280,000 you might initially expect.

Unfortunately, if this sounded attractive to you, the UK Lufthansa Miles & More payment card closed to new applicants two years ago.  Unless a replacement appears, your options for earning Miles & More miles from routes other than Star Alliance flights are slim – they have virtually no transfer partners, either from financial or hotel programmes.

Comments (7)

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  • Peter says:

    Adria Airways went bust around 2017ish

  • Greenpen says:

    Worth remembering that LH has a harsh expiration rule for its miles, three years and they go unless you have status. I managed to get an F redemption from them but that was because the Diner’s card removed the rule. But without it every time I have to credit to Miles and More I fear losing them.

    • Jonathan says:

      It’s hard to understand why they’ve implemented this hard expiry policy, the amount of disgruntled people they’ve almost certainly had from Germany alone who’ve lost large balances from it, then decide that they’ve had enough of them because it, the numbers must be quite high.
      BA have had many people vowing never to fly with again following numerous controversial scandals over the last few or several years (not BAEC / other loyalty programs that can be earned via BA flights related), so airlines need to understand that loyalty programs have too be good to keep customers coming back, and not needlessly harsh like Miles & More, KrisFlyer, Skywards, etc.

      Does anyone know when this Miles & More (hard expiry) policy was implemented and their reasons behind it ?

      I remember only a few weeks ago, a reader incorrectly thought that by booking a cash ticket in any fare code would safeguard their points from expiry, until being told how unforgiving the policy is…

      • Rob says:

        Hard expiry was more common than a BA-style policy, although a lot of people have softened in recent years, eg Etihad. Air France KLM now has a weird hybrid policy which is even dafter – you lose all your miles from flights if you don’t take a cash flight every 12 months, and your miles from partners if you don’t earn from a partner every 24 (?) months.

        • Jonathan says:

          The Air France – KLM policy makes a bit more sense (than hard expiry), it’s a bit out of the ordinary, but it encourages people to use cash tickets and not just redemption tickets !

          Etihad’s point expiry policy was changed heavily when a former Avios boss went over to them, I’m almost certain

          Virgin used to have a BA style system, until scrapping expiry of points altogether, as well as making them useful for people who’d never book a plane ticket

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