I finally blow my Miles & More miles, as I remember some benefits I had forgotten!

This is a long story. It starts some time after October 2018, which was when Lufthansa launched a charge card in the UK.

This was the most bizarre reward card ever launched in the UK, perhaps even globally! It came as a double pack with a Diners Club card (!) and a prepaid Mastercard.

The prepaid Mastercard was automatically loaded from the Diners Club card whenever you paid with it. As I said, bizarre.

I had no Miles & More miles at the time and ignored the card at launch. A couple of months later, however, someone posted on HfP that the prepaid Mastercard could be used to pay HMRC.

Now it got interesting, especially for a self-employed guy who had large chunks of income tax, VAT and PAYE to settle ….

Obviously the party couldn’t last long and the card was closed down within two years. I’d run up a decent pile of Miles & More miles in that time though.

Miles & More miles usually expire after three years of earning them unless you have elite status. This is a hard expiry which activity on the account does not stop. However, Lufthansa generously put a hold on expiry for five years for ex-cardholders, albeit no-one knew at the time whether it would carry on from quarter to quarter. I sat on my miles, apart from the odd short haul redemption.

In June 2024 Lufthansa launched a status match for SAS EuroBonus Gold members, when SAS left Star Alliance. Rhys and I had SAS status from a media event the previous year so we jumped on this. My Miles & More Senator / Gold status was only valid to February 2025 but could be extended for a year by taking six flights, which I did.

I’m taking my son to Tokyo

Fast forward to this week. I still had 250,000 Miles & More miles, Senator (Gold) status until February 2026 and a 14-year old son who wants to go to Tokyo for the food and the manga culture. With my daughter tied up with A levels for the next nine months, we’re looking at a period of father-son trips.

(Long term readers may remember that my son has actually been to Tokyo before, in 2017, but as he was only six at the time he claims it doesn’t count!)

An Avios trip to Tokyo in the UK school holidays in business class isn’t happening with British Airways or Iberia, at least not with only six months notice. I could possibly have done it on Japan Airlines, Qatar Airways or Cathay Pacific but it would be pricey without a 2-4-1 Companion Voucher.

Lufthansa had reward seats on the exact Saturday to Saturday dates I needed but looked too expensive. Under the new semi-dynamic pricing model, which is actually pretty decent, it would be 195,000 Miles & More miles + £700 of taxes and charges per person.

I had forgotten two things though:

• Senator (Gold) members of Miles & More get ‘buy one, get one half price’ on redemptions with Lufthansa, Austrian and SWISS. Not a one off, not once per year, but EVERY TIME. This meant that two business class seats to Tokyo wouldn’t be 390,000 miles for my dates, they would be just 292,500 miles.

• You get a free 50,000 miles overdraft as a Senator member. This was not part of the original SAS status match – it is never offered during a status match – but unknown to me it was activated when I extended my status after taking six flights.

This meant that my 250,000 miles were enough. Well, they were enough as long as I didn’t mind going overdrawn. I booked.

My son and I have our business class tickets to Tokyo, and I have until the end of February to find a way of paying off my miles overdraft. In the worse case scenario I’ll buy the miles but I’d like to avoid that.

Even if neither aircraft is swapped from its current non-Allegris configuration, we’ve got some interesting flights on the way:

• top deck seats on a Boeing 747-8 (Lufthansa, Korean and Air China are the only passenger airlines flying the stretched 747-8, with Lufthansa having 60% of them)

• ‘throne’ seats on a SWISS 777-300 (these normally come with a hefty reservation fee but it is waived for Senator / Gold members)

Neither are cutting edge but both are a little special.

Conclusion

Miles & More gets a bit of a bad rap in frequent flyer circles, but for a Senator the ability to go overdrawn and the ‘buy one, get one for half price, unlimited times’ redemption benefit on Lufthansa Group airlines can’t be knocked.

It’s a shame that Lufthansa never found a way of getting back into the UK credit card market. It really tried – hence extending the miles validity of old cardholders for five years, to keep them loyal during the wait – but couldn’t make the maths stack up.

It is also impossible (for legal reasons in Germany) to transfer miles into Miles & More from any partner except Heathrow Rewards. All hotel partner transfers were scrapped.

This Japan trip may be my Miles & More swansong. I won’t retain Senator status beyond February 2026 unless I get an extension from my ITA Volare status when ITA joins Miles & More, and I take far too few Star Alliance cash flights to build a balance.

It is, however, great to go out in style with a special trip with my son.