In late 2022, Lufthansa’s Miles & More program got into the business of selling miles, with an interesting backstory.
At the beginning of April, Lufthansa launched its latest promotion on purchased miles. Halfway through the promotion period, the value proposition of this has been improved — now you can get a 50% bonus, rather than the initial 40% bonus (thanks to Frankfurtflyer for flagging this).
This has the potential to be a good value, especially given that this is a points currency that can otherwise be hard to accrue.
In this post:
Lufthansa Bundle&Go mileage sale
Lufthansa sells Miles & More miles. The airline isn’t flat out selling miles like most programs do, but rather is selling mileage bundles. These bundles are branded as Bundle&Go, and you can purchase a small, medium, large, or special bundle.
For purchases through Tuesday, April 30, 2024, Lufthansa Miles & More is offering a 50% bonus on its Bundle&Go product. The pricing for these bundles is as follows, assuming your account is registered in the United States:
- You can buy a small bundle with a 50% bonus; this gets you 15,000 Lufthansa miles for $280; this comes out to 1.87 cents per mile (in USD)
- You can buy a medium bundle with a 50% bonus; this gets you 75,000 Lufthansa miles for $1,120; this comes out to 1.49 cents per mile (in USD)
- You can buy a large bundle with a 50% bonus; this gets you 150,000 Lufthansa miles for $1,960; this comes out to 1.31 cents per mile
As you’ll see, these bundles come with extra perks, including bonus miles when you book through the Hotels&Cars platform, bonus miles with Avis, and discounts on Priority Pass memberships.
The nice thing about Lufthansa Miles & More miles is that you can use them to redeem for Lufthansa first class more than 15 days in advance, unlike when booking through partner programs. The catch is that Lufthansa Miles & More has fuel surcharges, which limits the value of the miles.
Still, it’s nice to be able to top off your Miles & More account balance, since there aren’t otherwise many ways to do that. Miles & More doesn’t partner with any major transferable points currencies, though the program does have a US co-branded credit card.
For what it’s worth, this is the best offer we’ve seen from the program this year. In March we saw a 30% bonus, in early April we saw a 40% bonus, and now we’re seeing a 50% bonus. Who knows, at the current, maybe we’ll see a 60% bonus in May, and a 70% bonus in June. 😉
Why Lufthansa is being creative with selling miles
Lufthansa is one of the few major airlines that hasn’t directly sold miles to consumers (at any cost) up until recently. That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not because Lufthansa doesn’t see value in it.
Rather it’s because Germany has strict consumer protection laws. This has caused issues in the past when Lufthansa directly sold miles, since the company faced lawsuits over mileage expiration, etc.
Lufthansa is obviously being very strategic here, and is selling these bundles in a way that doesn’t assign a direct dollar value to the miles. While the added perks with Avis and Priority Pass are probably not worth anything to most people buying miles, this allows Lufthansa to avoid legal issues associated with selling miles at a specific valuation.
Bottom line
Lufthansa Miles & More has improved its sale on buying miles, in the form of mileage bundles that are being marketed as Bundle&Go. With the promotion being offered at the moment, you can buy Lufthansa miles for as little as 1.31 cents each. While I wouldn’t be proactively picking up Lufthansa miles at this cost, that will definitely be worthwhile for some people.
What do you make of Lufthansa’s attempt to sell miles?
Remember Miles & More is moving to dynamic pricing at some point during 2024 so the value of miles will significantly change (likely for the worse)
I used Lufthansa points/miles ”two times”
first and last time (I did not buy them).
Lufthansa award tickets aren’t worth anything due to very high surcharges.
I think this is a reasonable proposal. I bought 130K in March so had waited, at this a First Class FRA/MUC IAD is ~$1500. Not like the old days, but doable.
I’ve also bought MM miles through ASmallWorld.
Safe Landings
How do you search for award availability before deciding to buy miles?
Avoid like the plague. Last time they did this I only got base miles and not the 50% bonus. No support from miles & more or Points to resolve. Bait and bail scam.
I think I posted this before, but it might make strategic sense for miles and more to relocate to the one of LH group’s subsidiaries’ home countries (Switzerland/brussells/austria/italy) where the rules would again allow them to partner with one of the transferable currency credit cards.
I've shared this feedback time and time again. This is just a copy and paste recycled article that you use every time LH does a sale like this.
You could make this article infinitely more useful, if you decided to couple it with a post on booking via the Miles & More program. There's not as much info on it. If you detailed how the booking process works, what availability looks like compared to partners, etc.
Agreed. Will have to do some of my own digging, but initial reading from elsewhere suggests I could effectively "buy" a one way ticket in F between US and Germany for ~2K, even with fuel surcharges. That would be crazy.
$1.5K but no need to spread news on this like crazy.
I've explained to this kind of feedback time and time again.
This is just a copy and paste recycled article but good for SEO.
SEO understands updating pages.
SEO doesn't understand couple it with a post on booking via the Miles & More program.
You ARE the product he sells to advertisers.