Guys, I’m trying to help my dad log into his Lufthansa Miles & More account, and if this were any more complicated, they’d rename the frequent flyer program Allegris (or Bilt? Too soon?)…
In this post:
I had an epiphany with my dad’s Miles & More account
As is presumably the case for many in the OMAAT community, I manage frequent flyer accounts for my entire family. Earlier this month, I came to an interesting realization.
I had written a post about my take on Lufthansa, addressing whether I’m a fanboy or hater. As I explained in the post, Lufthansa had a fond place in my heart in my childhood, given that my family is from Germany, my dad worked for a German company in New York, and he flew Lufthansa all the time.
After writing that post, I realized something — my dad had high tier elite status with Lufthansa Miles & More for many, many years (we’re talking about the 1980s and early to mid 1990s). Then I realized “hey, Lufthansa has since introduced lifetime Senator status, so I wonder if dad actually has that status, without realizing it.”
Miles & More only introduced lifetime elite status within the past several years, and my dad hasn’t really been actively engaged in Lufthansa’s loyalty program in nearly 30 years. But lifetime status is supposed to consider lifetime activity, and he did credit all of his flights to the program (as far as I know), and he did a ton of premium cabin transatlantic flying.
It sure would be nice if he had lifetime Senator status, since it would get him Star Alliance Gold status, and would get him access to SWISS first class awards (okay, I’m also looking out for myself here). 😉 Let me of course add that I have no clue how many lifetime qualifying points my dad actually has — he could’ve more than qualified for lifetime status, or we could be totally off.
So I figured “okay, let’s look into this.” My dad isn’t terribly high tech (to put it politely), and he had absolutely no clue what his Miles & More number is. So I set out to get that information, and figured a quick phone call would solve everything. Well, weeks later, let me share how that’s going…
How hard is it to recover a Miles & More number?
Let me start by acknowledging that I’m sure a lot of these complexities have to do with German consumer protection laws, or something. Anyway…
My dad and I called the Miles & More service center, thinking they’d be able to help us with getting his Miles & More number. They stated they could only provide his Miles & More number if he knew his five-digit PIN, which he no longer knows.
They said he’d have to submit his request through the Miles & More website, including uploading a copy of his ID, to prove his identity. Fair enough! We submitted the request on January 3, and finally heard back on January 21. Yay, right?
The email contained his 15-digit “service card number,” and the email encouraged him to log into his account with that and his five-digit PIN. There was also a link to reset the PIN, which we followed. However, after entering the account number, the message said “a technical error has occurred.” I tried a different browser, tried clearing cookies, etc., and no matter what I did, the same thing happened.
We phoned up the Miles & More service center, and their solution was that we needed to again submit a form on the Miles & More website, for the PIN to be reset, because there’s nothing they can do by phone.
So I suspect it will now be another roughly three weeks before we hear back, and then let’s see if the PIN reset actually works. Either way, I’ve gotta say, this has to be the most complicated and drawn out system I’ve ever seen for trying to recover frequent flyer account details.
Sorry, I realize this is maybe anti-climactic. But I’ve become oddly invested in this, and I’m checking his email account multiple times per day waiting for a response. So to finally get a response after roughly three weeks, to then only have to start the process all over again, is sort of frustrating.
I’m just curious to see how many qualifying points he has over the course of his lifetime. It could be not that many, or it could be more than enough for lifetime Senator. Or it could be that his activity just didn’t track correctly, due to how long ago it was? Funny enough, my dad has million miler status with Delta SkyMiles, despite not having flown the airline much at all in the past 30 or so years. He really only learned about this on a recent flight, when he messaged me the below.
He doesn’t even remember flying Delta a lot back in the day, which is why I’m sort of optimistic about his Lufthansa situation, since he flew the airline constantly back in the day.
Bottom line
I recently started wondering if my dad might have lifetime elite status with Lufthansa Miles & More, given how frequently he flew the airline back in the day, combined with the airline retroactively rolling out lifetime status. Since he didn’t have his Miles & More number anymore, the adventure over the past few weeks has been trying to recover that.
Unfortunately it looks like we’re (best case scenario) halfway through this process, so please cross your fingers for us, that there’s some meaningful number of qualifying lifetime points in his account. If anyone is interested, I’ll report back… or maybe y’all can just tell based on how quickly my dad and I take a SWISS first class flight. 😉
On the bright side, Lufthansa is quite modern in German standards and let you submit the request via a web form and provides a response via email.
I had numerous occasions in Germany when I needed an account access to be restored, the only way to do it was via phone and letters to/from a German address ! Everything takes weeks not days.
Well, it took you and your dad more than 30 years to find out about his former Miles and More account, maybe you should be a bit more patient to get this fixed at MM, if possible at all. Of course they need at least SOME information from you since you don´t even know the most important thing which is the membership number. Data protection is taken seriously not only in Germany but at least...
Well, it took you and your dad more than 30 years to find out about his former Miles and More account, maybe you should be a bit more patient to get this fixed at MM, if possible at all. Of course they need at least SOME information from you since you don´t even know the most important thing which is the membership number. Data protection is taken seriously not only in Germany but at least all over western Europe and I think it´s quite O.K. I would not want that anyone could just call a company and say: „Hey my name is Mr. X, I forgot everything, don´t have any PIN, but please restore an account on my name with all associated data and miles.“
Correct. Especially, because they had a lot of problems with fraud.
Because of GDPR they don't even tell you your own email. They're not allowed to.
And then, one has more than one Service Card Number anyway. I have three. The one when I became a member, the one when I became FTL and the one when I became Senator.
This post should have started with a trigger warning.
Ben, take deep breaths and find your happy place. The likelihood that your dad has neither Delta status nor Lufthansa status is, um, let's just say "nonzero".
@ DenB -- Hah! In fairness, I have confirmed my dad has lifetime status with Delta. I had even told him about it before (since he wasn't aware), but clearly he didn't remember. :-)
If your Dad flew Pan Am a lot he might have received Delta status that way. I did. Pan Am World Pass miles transferred over to Delta's frequent flyer program when Delta acquired Pan Am's routes, which included German domestic routes.
It is part of a larger problem.
Many older folks are not tech-savy and run into issues when they cannot access banking or administrative services.
lol I'm shocked Luftkafka is making a process difficult. shocked!
Ben, Are you sure the account wasn’t closed for inactivity? American Airlines pulled that BS with me and I lost all my past lifetime flight miles and had to create a new account.
Your dad just casually finding out about his Million Miler status is hilarious and adorable!
Lufthansa doesn't seem to keep Miles and More numbers very long for inactive accounts. I signed up in 1998, flew and redeemed an award last in 2013. Upon checking in 2025, the account is gone. I have my old number but could not get into my account.
So Ben's father might be in a similar situation. Activity up to maybe 2000 then nothing?