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Note: Some of the offers mentioned below may have changed or are no longer be available. You can view current offers here.
Update July 1, 2014:
The current offer on the Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is 20,000 miles after first purchase and payment of $79 annual fee.
- Earn 20,000 award miles after your first purchase or balance transfer
- Earn up to 15,000 award miles with balance transfers (1 mile per $1 transferred) within 30 days of account opening
- Earn 2 award miles per $1 on ticket purchases directly from Miles & More integrated airline partners
- Earn 1 mile per $1 on all other purchases
- Annual Companion Ticket after first purchase
- No foreign transaction fees on purchases made outside the U.S.
- Redeem miles for flight awards and upgrades on Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, SWISS, Star Alliance airlines and other partners
- $79 Annual Fee, waived for SEN and HON Circle Members
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When United Airlines devalued its award chart earlier this year, one of the silver linings was that it left the redemption rate for transcontinental BusinessFirst at 25k miles each way. Now, 25,000 United miles for a flat bed seat on a flight from New York to California is a great value, but did you know that you can actually book the same seat for just 17,000 Lufthansa miles?
Lufthansa miles have access to all the same Saver award space that United miles can access, there are never any fuel surcharges on domestic United flights booked with Lufthansa miles, and the miles price is 32% less with Lufthansa miles than United miles.
The Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is currently offering 50,000 bonus Lufthansa miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days. The card has a $79 annual fee. This offer expires June 30, 2014, and the normal offer on the card is 20,000 bonus miles.
The current bonus is enough for three cross-country flights in a flat bed.
- What makes 17,000 Lufthansa miles for a cross-country bed such a great deal?
- What is United BusinessFirst Premium Service like?
- How do you search availability?
- How do you book the award?
High Value Lufthansa Redemption
United offers their highly rated BusinessFirst Premium Service (p.s.) onboard their 757’s from New York-JFK to both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Since United is a Star Alliance member you can use miles from any Star Alliance member to book this flight.
Lufthansa charges the fewest miles, only 17,000 miles each way, and Lufthansa does NOT impose any fuel surcharges on the flight, so you will only pay $2.50 in taxes.
Lufthansa charges 35,000 miles roundtrip for flights within the US mainland in United Business Class or First Class on two cabin planes.
For one ways, Lufthansa always rounds the price down to the nearest thousand, so you will be charged 17,000 miles. Yes, that does mean that booking a round-trip as two one ways would cost only 34,000 miles, saving you 1,000 miles.
Lufthansa’s rate of 17,000 miles is a steal compared to other Star Alliance partners like Singapore (20k miles), Avianca (25k miles), or United (25k miles), all of which have access to the exact same Saver award space on United’s flights.
United BusinessFirst P.S.
While I have never flown United’s p.s. product on a transcontinental route, I have flown similar flat beds in United BusinessFirst on international routes and was impressed with their hard product as well as their service as you can see here: London to Los Angeles in United BusinessFirst.
The hard product United offers onboard their 757s for the Premium Service routes between New York and California is essentially an updated, and slightly wider, version of the hard product I reviewed above.
The highlights of the product include a seat that transforms into a fully flat bed which is 6 feet 4 inches long, and 21 inches wide. You are served multi-course meals which you order from printed menus, and you can enjoy hundreds of movies and TV shows on your personal 15.4 inch monitor.
Finding Award Availability
United flights are not displayed on the Lufthansa website, so you have to use united.com to search for availability. Lufthansa has access to the exact same Saver award space that United does, so if an award is available with United miles, it will be available with Lufthansa miles.
On the United homepage, simply enter you origin, your destination, and your departure date, then select “Award Travel,” and click “Search.”
Blue and green dates on the resulting calendars indicate days with award space in United Business class on the p.s. flights.
Currently, the availability on these routes is fairly scarce, but the one bright spot is flights within the coming week, which makes this a great value for bookings made on short notice. As opposed to United–which adds a $100 fee for awards booked by non-elites for departures within 21 days–Lufthansa does not impose these charges.
Booking the Award
Since you can’t even search United availability on the Lufthansa website, it should come as no surprise that you cannot book your flight on their website either. The good news is that Lufthansa does NOT charge phone booking fees, the wait times are fairly short, and the agents are competent.
In order to book the award you have to call Lufthansa’s Miles & More Center in the United States at 1-800-581-6400 from 8AM to 8PM Monday through Friday.
Recap
United offers a great transcontinental Business Class product, and the cheapest way to get yourself a seat onboard is with Lufthansa miles for 17,000 miles each way.
Award space is scarce on the routes at the moment, but United is famous for opening up last-minute award availability in premium cabins. Fortunately, Lufthansa doesn’t charge fees for booking tickets at the last minute.
The Premier Miles & More® World MasterCard® is currently offering 50,000 bonus Lufthansa miles after spending $5,000 in the first 90 days. The card has a $79 annual fee. This offer expires June 30, 2014, and the normal offer on the card is 20,000 bonus miles.
The current bonus is enough for three cross-country flights in a flat bed.
Just getting started in the world of points and miles? The Chase Sapphire Preferred is the best card for you to start with.
With a bonus of 60,000 points after $4,000 spend in the first 3 months, 5x points on travel booked through the Chase Travel Portal and 3x points on restaurants, streaming services, and online groceries (excluding Target, Walmart, and wholesale clubs), this card truly cannot be beat for getting started!
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