How To Redeem Miles For Lufthansa First Class: Patience & Flexibility Required!

While I wouldn’t say Lufthansa offers the world’s best first class product, the airline offers a solid experience across the Atlantic, at least among products that are (fairly easily) bookable with points. There’s something I love about flying the Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 in first class and visiting Lufthansa’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt or First Class Lounge in Munich.

Perhaps what I like most about Lufthansa first class, though, is how it’s practical to book with points. Really it’s the only transatlantic first class product without carrier imposed surcharges where you can consistently find award availability if you’re flexible and don’t mind waiting until the last minute.

The great news is that it’s very much possible to redeem a variety of points currencies for travel in Lufthansa first class, so in this post, I’d like to take a closer look at the logistics of how that works.

Basics of redeeming miles for Lufthansa first class

Lufthansa offers first class on a variety of routes, including those operated by Boeing 747-8s and Airbus A340-600s out of Frankfurt, and those operated by Airbus A380s and select Airbus A350s out of Munich. One important limitation to be aware of is that the A350s have the new Allegris first class, and you can’t redeem partner program points for that experience.

Lufthansa Miles & More members have access to first class award seats as soon as the schedule opens (roughly a year in advance), but those redeeming points through partner airline frequent flyer programs only have access to first class award seats close to departure.

While it has historically been possible to redeem partner miles up to 15 days before departure, nowadays it seems like first class award seats are made available at most two to three days before departure. If you’re flexible and patient, snagging Lufthansa first class award seats is definitely achievable.

In this post, I’d like to focus specifically on redeeming partner airline points for travel in Lufthansa first class. I’ll write a separate post soon about redeeming Lufthansa Miles & More miles, but I’m not focusing on it in this post because:

• These redemptions have carrier imposed surcharges, which can cost nearly $1,000 one-way in first class from the United States to Germany, which takes much of the value out of these redemptions; I’ll focus on programs without fuel surcharges
• Lufthansa Miles & More doesn’t partner with most major transferable points currencies, so even if you were fine with those surcharges, most people wouldn’t have a practical way to earn those points

With that out of the way, let’s first talk about the best programs for booking Lufthansa first class, and then we’ll talk about general tricks for finding award availability.

Best mileage programs for booking Lufthansa first class

Lufthansa is in the Star Alliance, so you can redeem miles with most Star Alliance partners for travel in Lufthansa first class. Let’s take a look at how many miles you can expect to pay with some major programs for Lufthansa first class redemptions, focusing specifically on transatlantic flights.

The Air Canada Aeroplan program charges 90,000-100,000 points one-way in first class for itineraries between the United States and Europe (90,000 points for up to 4,000 miles of travel, 100,000 points for 4,001-6,000 miles of travel):

• Aeroplan offers lots of routing flexibility, and allows stopovers for an additional 5,000 points one-way
• Aeroplan is transfer partners with Amex, Capital One, and Chase, has the excellent Aeroplan® Credit Card (review) in the United States, and also frequently sells points directly

The Avianca Lifemiles program charges 120,000 miles one-way between the United States and Europe in first class, regardless of the route:

• This isn’t the deal it once was, since lifemiles devalued Lufthansa first class awards several months back
• Lifemiles is transfer partners with Amex, Capital One, and Citi, and also frequently sells miles directly, often with the most attractive acquisition cost for miles
• The program sometimes doesn’t have access to all Lufthansa first class award seats (especially day of departure), so you’ll want to search availability before acquiring miles
• You can score a 10% discount by having a Lifemiles+ subscription, lowering the cost to 108,000 miles

The United MileagePlus program charges 140,000-165,000 miles one-way between the United States and Europe in first class:

• The 140,000 miles pricing is for the East Coast and Midwest, while the 165,000 miles pricing is for the West Coast
• MileagePlus is transfer partners with Chase, has several co-branded credit cards, and also often sells miles directly
• MileagePlus has no change and cancelation fees on awards, so you have the most flexibility for making changes

Now, it’s worth emphasizing that there are other programs that could make sense as well, but the points can be much harder to earn, some other programs have carrier imposed surcharges, and I just don’t think they offer much incremental upside.

Personally my strategy is generally to redeem Aeroplan points, given that the program has the best pricing. I used to mainly use Avianca Lifemiles for these awards, but it’s no longer the best value.

Tips for redeeming miles for Lufthansa first class

As mentioned above, nowadays Lufthansa makes first class award seats available at most a few days before departure, and more often than not, the space is only opened within a day or two of departure (and sometimes even the same day as travel). So the closer to departure you’re looking, the better your odds are of space opening up (this is generally a good tip when redeeming points).

Let’s talk a bit more about the logistics of redeeming for Lufthansa first class, how to determine the odds of award seats opening up, etc.

How to gauge odds of Lufthansa opening award seats

Lufthansa has a complicated algorithm for releasing award seats, so there’s not some easy rule-of-thumb policy I can share that will always be accurate. That being said, there are some general ways to determine your odds of seats opening up.

Lufthansa has eight first class seats on the 747-8, A340-600, and A380, so that means at most eight seats will ever be for sale. The first thing to do is to figure out how many first class seats are still available for sale on the flight you’re eyeing.

You can use Google Flights for this, and just search the exact route and see how many first class seats are still for sale (by progressively increasing the number of tickets you’re trying to book). Alternatively, you can use a site like ExpertFlyer to view the number of seats for sale.

Let me share a few very general trends I notice, and of course let me emphasize that these are just trends and not rules:

• Nowadays simply don’t expect Lufthansa to open up first class award seats to partner programs more than three days out
• Lufthansa makes award seats available until the very last minute, so don’t be surprised to see first class award seats made available as late as the day of departure
• Generally the last one or two first class seats for sale won’t be made available for awards
• Sometimes there are just quirks with award availability based on a variety of factors, as there are lots of other considerations as well; for example, it could be that even if there are first class seats for sale, business class is oversold, and the airline is anticipating having to bump people up, so may not make award seats available

The best way to see award availability at the last minute is to use Seats.aero, which has a Lufthansa first class finder, showing the routes with award availability at the last minute. Just keep in mind that inventory isn’t always real time, so you’ll want to cross reference availability directly with an airline program as well.

There’s still value to searching directly with airlines, since you may see availability sooner, and there’s often lots of competition for those seats.

My approach is pretty simple — I ideally find flights with at least four first class seats for sale a few days before departure where business class doesn’t appear to be sold out, and then I religiously search availability.

Lufthansa uses married segment logic for awards

Lufthansa uses married segment logic for award tickets in all cabins, including first class. Rather than explaining this in great detail and complicating this unnecessarily, let me just share the takeaway.

Essentially Lufthansa will make different numbers of first class award seats available depending on whether you’re connecting or not. For example:

• Lufthansa might not have first class award availability on a Chicago to Frankfurt flight if you’re simply booking a ticket between those two airports
• Meanwhile Lufthansa might have first class award availability on the Chicago to Frankfurt flight as part of a larger itinerary, like if you’re connecting to Paris on the same ticket

So if you want to maximize your odds of finding first class award availability, search for a connecting itinerary. Sometimes significantly more award seats are released in those cases. And I also find that often availability is opened up for connecting itineraries before point-to-point itineraries.

Not all Lufthansa gateways are created equal

Ultimately the odds of first class award availability opening depend on how many seats are booked. However, if you observe availability over time, you’ll notice huge disparity in terms of the number of seats that open up by market.

Exact Lufthansa first class routes vary over time, though broadly speaking, if you’re looking at availability between the United States and Germany:

• You’ll find the most availability to the Northeast and Midwest, with Boston (BOS) being the easiest, and Chicago (ORD), New York (JFK), Newark (EWR), and Washington Dulles (IAD), also being pretty good
• The West Coast can be challenging, but you will sometimes see a decent amount of availability to San Francisco (SFO), and slightly less so to Los Angeles (LAX)
• Nowadays I find that the Miami (MIA) is actually the most difficult for availability; that’s not to say it’s impossible, but it takes a lot of flexibility, and I typically only see seats within a day of departure

How to make a last minute booking practical

Understandably, a lot of people may say “well how am I supposed to wait until a day or two before departure to plan travel?” We’re talking about long haul travel here, and most people want to make plans. So assuming you’re not super spontaneous, what’s the best way to go about this?

Well, nowadays many loyalty programs don’t have change or cancelation fees on award tickets, so my approach is typically to always lock something in that I’m happy with, and then keep trying to improve it as the departure date approaches. So that strategy applies to switching to an award to Lufthansa first class, just as it applies to any other last minute changes.

I’m pretty good at gauging odds of first class award availability opening up, so if I have a gateway where I’m confident availability will open up, I might even book an easily changeable positioning flight to that airport, in anticipation of that working out.

Bottom line

Lufthansa offers a solid first class product, and it’s bookable with partner program points close to departure. While it can take some work to find availability, and while the timeline isn’t ideal for those who like to plan in advance, it’s the best and most readily available way to cross the Atlantic in first class using points without paying carrier imposed surcharges.

Realistically speaking, I wouldn’t expect seats to open up more than three days before departure, so that’s when I’d start searching. The closer to departure you are and the more first class seats are still for sale, the better your odds of finding award availability. I pretty consistently find a way to cross the Atlantic in Lufthansa first class, though sometimes it requires routing through a non-ideal gateway.

If you’ve redeemed miles for Lufthansa first class, what was your experience like?