In late 2022, Lufthansa’s Miles & More program got into the business of selling miles, with an interesting backstory. The program has launched its latest promotion on purchased miles, as flagged by Frequent Flyer Bonuses, and it has the potential to be a fairly good deal.
In this post:
Lufthansa Bundle&Go mileage sale
Lufthansa is now selling 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, or large bundle.
There’s currently a promotion on these. Through September 30, 2023, you can receive a 60% bonus when buying one of these bundles (note that these are just redeemable miles, and don’t count toward elite status).
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 60% bonus; this gets you 16,000 Lufthansa miles for $290; this comes out to 1.81 cents per mile (in USD)
- You can buy a medium bundle with a 60% bonus; this gets you 80,000 Lufthansa miles for $1,150; this comes out to 1.44 cents per mile (in USD)
- You can buy a large bundle with a 60% bonus; this gets you 160,000 Lufthansa miles for $2,010; this comes out to 1.26 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 incredibly high fuel surcharges, which greatly 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, which has quite a big bonus at the moment.
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) in recent years. 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.
So 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. So 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 launched a sale on buying miles, in the form of mileage bundles that are being marketed as Bundle&Go. With the promotion being offered for all of September, you can buy Lufthansa miles for as little as 1.26 cents each. That’s quite a good price. I wouldn’t be proactively picking up Lufthansa miles at this cost, but for some people this could be worthwhile.
What do you make of Lufthansa’s attempt to sell miles?
Did anyone ever receive an invoice for their purchase of a bundle?
I did not. Maybe someone can provide an email address of bundle&co (points.com)?
Setting your account country to Germany (can still use English) will lead to prices being shown in Euros, and you'll get a much better price (1750EUR vs. 2010USD for the large bundle).
Ben, Are they processed as Airline purchase?
Lucky, any thoughts about what F availability looks like within the program?
I'd love to fly it someday, but booking within 14 days is pretty tough with such a rigid schedule. For me the investment would be worth it, but only if availability is reasonable enough to find something in advance.
I find the availability reasonable if you book well in advance (i.e. nine months to one year). But getting the credit card is probably the less risky investment. Then you can do your own searches and see how the availability is on the routes that interest you and whether it makes sense to buy additional miles. Furthermore, the surcharges are much less outrageous if the flight does not originate in the US.
Just divested myself from M&M. I have never found any F availability on LH and surcharges are huge on mile’s redemptions. Scored couple of flights on LOT J over the pond and they were quite enjoyable and with low surcharges. Now all flights on LH get credited to AC.
The reason wh Lufthansa does not want a specific price per mileage is not only customer protection laws but also about provisions on the balance sheet. Lufthansa usually only makes 0.80 cents/mile provisions. If somehow the would rise that to 1.4 cents/mile, imagine the impact on their balance sheet….
Yes, it's worth it, for three reasons. First, LH and AF and BA and Aeroplan are what's left, in terms of transatlantic business availability at sane prices. Second, LH has no bank partners, so there is no other practical way of accumulating LH miles. Third, the pricing is genuinely reasonable.
Barclays has a co-branded LH card offering 100,000 mile sign up bonus. Get a better map, Magellan.
Ben
How much do you value M&M miles?
In my experience, they are worth much less than this
Thanks
Which card to use? Is this classified as airfare or points.com?
I'm trying to search for availability with my new M&M account....but since I have 0 miles when I try to search for routes it just says I need a minimum of 7,000 miles to book. Any way to just look at availability before buying miles? They have some good mileage promos to certain destinations.
There very few availability, it's like that from april 2023, I never see that before.
I call and always get clueless agent, online you find almost nothing worth it.
So to buy it and stock... well no.