It has been more than a month since Lufthansa suddenly restricted partner first class awards. As that lockout continues, the news is even more grim: business class awards have also been heavily restricted.
Lufthansa Continues To Restrict Partner First Class Awards, But Also Business Class Awards
I’ve written about the elimination of Lufthansa First Class awards made available to partners like Air Canada Aeroplan and United MileagePlus. On June 1, 2026 a switch was flipped and all space was turned off. Now into July, the “drought” continues, though Lufthansa has refused to clarify what is going on.
While many have focused on the lack of first class awards (which until this point have been one oft he most achievable aspiration awards in the entire miles and points game), it appears to me (based on heavy research when writing this story) that Lufthansa has also restricted business class awards to partners as well.
Check for close-in business class awards which were once fairly easy to score from cities like Boston, Chicago, Montreal, or Toronto and they are gone…regardless of how many seats are still for sale. Economy class is available, but no business class (same on Austrian and SWISS). I could not find a a single day on a single route within a week of travel that had award space made available to Aeroplan or MileagePlus.
So what are we to make of all this? Here are my thoughts and why I still have some hope that this the policy might loosen in the future.
- Lufthansa appears to have cut off all close-in “O” (saver first class) and “I” (saver business class) space to partners, but the poor availability for even its own members suggest that this is not simply a way to preserve space for Miles & More passengers
- The lack of award space cannot be reduced to “full flights” during the busy summer travel season, because flights are going out half full or even mostly empty in first class
- It might be that Lufthansa looked at what United Airlines did (restricting most longhaul business class space to MileagePlus members) and thought, “Why shouldn’t we do something similar?” but it also might be that since Lufthansa charges so much more in both miles and taxes/fees than its partners, that it did this to close a huge gap between Miles & More and its partners.
- That gap may be remedied by dynamic pricing on Lufthansa flights – we could see mileage prices rise even higher when redeeming with Aeroplan and MileagePlus in exchange for a comeback, similar to the high prices Aeroplan charges for Emirates flights
Until Lufthansa definitively says that this space has deliberately been cut off, I will remain hopeful that it might return as Lufthansa figures out its own pricing with Miles & More. If we start seeing a lot more availability with Miles & More, than perhaps all hope is lost, but as long as Lufthansa’s own members also cannot access the “saver” space, it sill is possible that this is temporary.
But however you slice it, it’s bad news for miles and points aficionados…cutting off last-minute business and first class space is a huge blow that has been felt by me and many others this summer.
CONCLUSION
It’s still unclear what is going on yet and I’ll still hold out hope until all hope is lost…but the Lufthansa Group partner award space problem transcends first class awards and also impacts business class awards…they are all gone. Let’s hope things will loosen up a bit this autumn when the summer travel rush is over and flights are going out with open seats, but this indeed may be the end of not only first class awards, but of close-in business class awards on careers like Austrian, Lufthansa, and SWISS.
image: Lufthansa
“The lack of award space cannot be reduced to “full flights” during the busy summer travel season.”
Indeed. Based on my informal tracking, if anything, close in F space is greater in the summer. The “busy summer travel season” skews to families typically traveling in Y and maybe C. Business travel declines in summer as Europeans use their 4,593 annual days of vacation.
Apart from that, Miles and More has uniquely stingy earning opportunities in the US. Can you advise whether this is true in Europe as well? If so, there truly is no glut of Miles and More, which should increase the number of available unsold seats (which are textbook spoiling inventory).
As an EU-based M&M basic member, I do see a lot of availability for flights to North Amercia in C, including decent availability on Lufthansa Group metal (Lufty, Swiss, Austrian, Discover, Edelweiß) in Saver. However, from what I have seen, you must book it round-trip from Europe, not from NA or oneway. One ways from NA are strictly non-saver that come with steep cancellation fees.
As for allegris, these seats are rare (likely also due to the hype) but there’s good availability on non-Allegris flights.
@Max, what are your thoughts on this whole thing? I suppose it can be annoying to see so many Americans in Lufthansa First and Business class using their miles, but I feel like LH is being stingy because it can get away with charging so much more via M&M for the same thing….the new pricing is a major devaluation and LH doesn’t want to make the pain even worse by rubbing in the bad value to LH’s own loyal flyers.
I suppose it’s one of the “great while it lasted” moments.
Miles & Points are, in my experience, very much a niche hobby in Europe whereas I got the sense that it is much more of a business in the US (heck, in Germany, the only way (except flying) to earn M&M miles is to read the newspaper while you have much more options in the US). So it may be that Lufthansa got fed up with people booking flights only to cancel them later (as we have seen with the steep cancellation fees imposed on the “flex” cash tickets). Thus, the great US demand MAY have made it more difficult to book flights on LH metal, which could have posed challenges for those loyal customers in Europe that actually fly LH a lot (i.e. that fullfill “loyalty” to LH and not just to a credit card like AMEX). I get the sense that actual loyalty is important to LH and is rewarded (ie only Senators being able to book Swiss F with miles etc).
And as a member of M&M, it was always difficult to book on non-LH metal through M&M – it may be that LH is now reciprocating?
As for the price of a C ticket to NA and back: I find them to be fairly reasonable from Europe. You have to fork over the fees (which are roughly equivalent to an economy class ticket) and between 55-110.000 miles per flight. Alas, the fees are roughly the same to before the updated system, and the adjusted mileage structure means that you can book now flights that were previously unbookable because the “award class” fare type had been sold out, albeit now in the more expensive categories. If you can’t be flexible but want to book with miles, it is still much, much cheaper than to pay cash (I always joke that I fly C to NA and back for an economy class price, since I’d be reading the newspaper that generated my miles anyhow).
Something odd seems to be going on. This morning, I was checking one of my future UA flights on US.com to see if any saver award availability had come up, and lots of LH, in business and first, and LX in business, came up, but when I tried to book any, I got a message “Flight availability and prices with other airlines are subject to real-time availability verification. Unfortunately, this option is no longer available.” So the system did something last night.
Incidentally, it shows up on point.me as well. But clicking through, you can’t book any of it. All phantom, at least now.
Lots of options today to JFK and DC around July 11th and 12th.. so the faucet appears to be back on
Booked I space from muc-sea 4 days in advance via united. It’s confirmed 🙂
This looks like it was an overnight change. There was tons of availability yesterday even out of LAX and SFO for this week, now there’s none.
There wasn’t space yesterday – I check every day and saw zero.
jeder tag wirklich? können sie hier postet? welches routes? einmal habe ich für united gemacht https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-airlines-mileageplus/1930886-domestic-economy-award-pricing-3-routes-over-time.html
Just tried to book a flight from Europe to US with only a flight within Europe on LH. It did not go through.
They need to actually open up availability; otherwise, this program is just built on lies.
FF Programs are treading a fine line of alienating loyal members if they don’t open up seats for redemption. I’m Star Gold with THAI ROP and over the last year have have issues. Thankfully I was, in the last few days, able to upgrade to Business using Gold Upgrade voucher. My partner was unable to change a business class award ticket sector last year and it was totally wasted. It maybe policy or traffic but they have to allow rwdemotions even when revenue seats are still available. Look at Virgin redemptions now in upper class, of which I’m Also a member, upwards of 300,000 miles one way!
This is truly a massive hit to points travelers, making it nearly impossible to book these flights without huge surcharges… Das ist überhaupt nicht nett, LH!
My big issue with all this is less that Lufthansa cut off award space abruptly or even that they did so with zero notice but that they refuse to offer any kind of explanation. Therefore nobody knows what to expect.
And I think LH genuinely things they do not owe us any!
Yesterday my friend booked 3 j class tickets zrh-jfk on lx for July 24, 80k mileage plus pojhts each. Confirmed ticketed, no issue. I booked a one way lx zrh-iAd j class ticket. Mileage plus miles. Confirmed/ ticketed as well. No issues.