In late 2022, Lufthansa’s Miles & More program got into the business of selling miles, with an interesting backstory. Lufthansa has just launched its latest promotion on purchased miles. 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 an extra small, small, medium, or large bundle.
For purchases through Monday, September 30, 2024, Lufthansa Miles & More is offering a 50% bonus on its Bundle&Go packages. The pricing for these bundles is as follows, assuming your account is registered in the United States:
- You can buy an extra small bundle with a 50% bonus; this gets you 4,500 Lufthansa miles for $100; this comes out to 2.22 cents per mile (in USD)
- 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 in line with the best promotions we’ve seen from Miles & More for buying miles. In March we saw a 30% bonus, in April we saw a 50% bonus, and in June we saw a 30% discount (equal to a ~43% bonus). So the 50% bonus we’re seeing now is excellent.
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 launched its latest promotion 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?
Looks like they ended the offer early.
Can confirm that LH and LX availability for business class is much greater for Miles & More members than Star Alliance programs, particularly when booking far out.
The problem is you can only use their search engines IF you have at least 7,000 miles in your account. So if you wanted to check for some availabilities BEFORE you bought the bundle - too bad, you can't. Yes, it will be similar to what United is offering... but if your goal is to get something further out than 2 weeks you're SOL. Honestly, it ruins the incentive to spend $2k on miles if you can't check the website before.
Just to add: You could use SeatSpy.com - they show Lufthansa availability and the co-pays are ASTRONOMICAL. Like over a $1000 each way.
Lufthansa shows 302,000 miles required for N. America to Southern Africa in first class.
Does anyone know, is that each way? The chart doesn't say.
Lufthansa first class aside, does Miles & More still have better/different award availability for Lufthansa group airlines in business class?
For example, back in the day Miles & More used to show availability on Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, etc. that partner airlines like United and Air Canada did not have access to. That gave Miles & More a bit more value, particularly on days when awards were hard to come by.
Anyone know if...
Lufthansa first class aside, does Miles & More still have better/different award availability for Lufthansa group airlines in business class?
For example, back in the day Miles & More used to show availability on Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, etc. that partner airlines like United and Air Canada did not have access to. That gave Miles & More a bit more value, particularly on days when awards were hard to come by.
Anyone know if that’s still the case? (I’d check myself, but think you have to have 7,000 miles to even search)
I bought a bundle last year to fly LH F, and in playing around with searches found tons of EVA availability for multiple seats on many dates! It’s a reason I’ll probably do this bundle deal again.
Yes ist definitily has more availability. Especially for inner-Europe Layovers. Additionally you can waive the surcharges for 15k miles, so you get to ~70k Bussines
First time I see the waive of surcharges by miles. Could you please advise how does that happen exactly? Like in which step throughtout the booking?
Thank you
You can find much more Business availability on LH/LX/OS using MM vs. any other *A partner. It's not wide open any day, but the availability is much better. There are also instances that seats show up in partner programs but you cannot find it on MM.
The account does not need to be registered in the US to get those USD prices. Switching the country on the M&M site does the trick already. 1960 $ is quite a bit cheaper than the 1750 CHF offer I got first displayed. And yes, I was too lazy to check the offer in other currencies ;-)
Can I just open a new account and then buy the miles?
Interesting deal! Is there more information on Mileage Pooling? This feature has been not working with Miles & More for quite some time.
Ben - thank you for always posting these promotions. The Bundle&Go is my go to purchase to top off my LH account and get great deals to Europe.
Miles and more have a 50% bonus offer 2-3 times a year, so nothing to get too excited about. Its possible to get good value on LH First (or Swiss first if you are Senator) but does require you to be pretty flexible on your dates. I bought miles with a 50% bonus in December last year. Will probably wait for the next time this comes around.
Also, note that the conditions say "until...
Miles and more have a 50% bonus offer 2-3 times a year, so nothing to get too excited about. Its possible to get good value on LH First (or Swiss first if you are Senator) but does require you to be pretty flexible on your dates. I bought miles with a 50% bonus in December last year. Will probably wait for the next time this comes around.
Also, note that the conditions say "until stocks last" - and they wont say when stocks have run out. Which means that that at the time of purchase there is no guarantee that you will get the 50% bonus. I know of a couple of cases where people paid for the base miles and didnt get a bonus with no support or resolution from Miles & more, Points or LH.