Long story short it looks like Sir Michael Bishop will be selling his stake in BMI to Lufthansa, which means they’ll basically have full control. Yadda yadda yadda. If you want details on the business end of the deal, check out the Financial Times article.
More important to me is what this potentially means for those of us that have been accruing miles in what many would consider to be one of the best frequent flyer programs out there. Even though many of us never fly BMI, we credit flights under 500 miles to them, use them for double dipping with Hilton, and of course for all kinds of other partner activity such as car rentals.
The good news is that it looks like we’re safe until January 12, the earliest the option will become effective. So, if you have BMI miles to burn, then burn baby, burn! Even if you don’t think you’ll be able to travel on the dates you book, you’re better off booking before January 12 and paying the change fee than paying LH’s inflated award costs.
It’s also worth mentioning that we really don’t know what’ll happen. The announcement was just made today, so it’s way too early to be certain what’s going to happen. That being said, I’m betting we’ll see “enhancements” from the BMI side of things.
Another interesting opportunity to explore is possibly matching to BMI before January 12. BMI is one of the few international airlines that readily status matches to their top tier, which gives you, among other things, complimentary lounge access on all Star Alliance flights, even domestic ones. Considering that the program could very well be merged into the LH Miles & More program, I’m betting we won’t see status matches anymore. Therefore it’s basically a “free” status match, at first to BMI Gold and then if the programs merge probably into LH Senator. Since I just matched to NW Plat I should be able to further match to BMI Gold, which I might just do in December.
Anyway, those are my two cents for the time being. It’ll be interesting to see how this pans out.
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