Lufthansa has fully embraced the upgrade monetization game with its upgrade bidding system and more aggressive fixed-price upgrade offers.
A client is traveling from Paris to Frankfurt this week. We just booked an “Economy Classic” ticket for her, the cheapest available at the last-minute, and found two upgrade offers when pulling up her itinerary online to assign a seat.
A confirmed upgrade to business class was available for 160USD.
There was also a bidding tool in which a bid could be placed for the upgrade. The lowest bid accepted was 90USD (you could bid up to 250USD, which of course was nonsensical considering a confirmed upgrade was only 160USD).
Frankly, even $90 is hardly worthwhile for such a short flight. I do like the Lufthansa Business Lounges in Frankfurt and it is nice to have the middle seat blocked and small meal, but for an hour-long flight, I can eat on the ground and deal with a seatmate.
I happened to be in Frankfurt myself earlier this week and noticed the following landing page when joining the wi-fi network in the lounge:
The ability to upgrade and even the myOffer upgrade system are not new. But it does appear that Lufthansa is pushing this stream of ancillary revenue more aggressively than in the past. Plus, Lufthansa is offering more last-minute fixed price upgrade offers.
Lufthansa Upgrade Bidding FAQs
Lufthansa has a detailed website about its upgrades here. Theoretically, you can bid for an upgrade on nearly any flight as long as your ticket is issued on Lufthansa stock. No upgrades are available on flights from India and on flights to/from Japan. The rules say an upgrade must be requested at least 72 hours prior to departure and you will be notified 24-36 hours before departure if your upgrade has been accepted. But it appears Lufthansa is now trying to offer more last-minute, fixed-price upgrades as well.
Finally, note that if you are upgraded you will earn miles as if you had originally booked the higher cabin of service and will also have full lounge access.
CONCLUSION
I like business class on intra-Europe flights. That said, I don’t think it is worthwhile if more than about $40/hr to upgrade. On longer flights, I can definitely see where bidding for an upgrade, even if you lowball it, would be worth a shot.
Have you been offered an upgrade recently on Lufthansa?
image: Lufthansa
Hmm if upgrading into business gets you P class that’s not good for crediting the Miles purposes at all.. a clarification there from Lufthansa would be nice..
I don’t have it on hand, but there is a table showing the upgrade booking class matrix.
Some economy classes (advance confirmed cash-) upgrade to business D for example which could make sense if you need the status miles.
Lufthansa miles actual m accrual are the worst and their economy seats are uncomfortable. Stay away from american and European carriers in economy.
Interesting, the land of big people (aka whites) have their carriers with small seats and the carriers from the land of small people (Asian) have larger seats and more legroom.
I’m really shocked that Lufthansa is doing this, but you really have to check United on a flight from Houston to Frankfurt they served dinner w no desert after service they came back w terrible mango ice cream and nothing during flight, for breakfast nothing more than fruit and croissant, no butter, coffee, tea and juice, really bad. 10 times worst than Lufthansa
Quite frankly, until Lufthansa settles with their flight attendants ,I wouldn’t suggest anyone upgrade their fare.
I had truly dismal service twice in F this past fall. I wasted a ton of miles to enjoy easy jet service levels. IMHO
Agreed. I’ve been flying UA DEN-FRA lately (instead of LH on the same route) which is really saying something.
LATAM has upgrade bidding in place from a long time as well. It varies from route to route and except on MIA-EZE flights, I’ve scored upgrades using the lowest bidding options.I paid USD 35 for a 3hr flight from GRU to EZE. and it was nice.
You would have to be pretty naive to pay USD 160 to upgrade a CDG-FRA sector and I doubt anyone would do it twice. If they allowed bids from about €25 it might become worthwhile.
It makes sense. Business class is sold to business people for inordinate amounts. Eg 6-8-10k$ to fly Ord to lhr for work. That’s what my work pays. Fills up half the cabin. But leisure people won’t pay more than 2-3$k. So how do you fill up the cabin without undercutting the full fare people? Sell upgrades (not guaranteed!; make people stay for Saturday’s; sell miles (eg avianca)). All backdoor ways to sell business that business people won’t use. Lovely!
I’ve never found any LH upgrades to be worth even the lowest possible value allowed by myOffer. But I guess enough other people do.
Flew AUS-FRA in November, we booked 2 premium economy tickets and used the bidding system. When we booked our flights about 9 months prior the minimum bid for business was 170 each way. Bid 200 for both ways, the flight to FRA was accepted, but the return flight was rejected.
Not bad at all!
Can I upgrade if I purchased my Lufthansa ticket on Expedia?
If issued on Lufthansa ticket stock (ticket number starts with 220).
REPLY
February 5, 2020 at 9:37 pm
It makes sense. Business class is sold to business people for inordinate amounts. Eg 6-8-10k$ to fly Ord to lhr for work. That’s what my work pays. Fills up half the cabin. But leisure people won’t pay more than 2-3$k. So how do you fill up the cabin without undercutting the full fare people? Sell upgrades (not guaranteed!; make people stay for Saturday’s; sell miles (eg avianca)). All backdoor ways to sell business that business people won’t use. Lovely!
I’d love to see more posts on this topic and for folks to share their experiences- bidding and paying for upgrades.
The phrase that gets me is “a ticket is issued on an airline’s stock.” So does that mean the only way to upgrade a ticket is you have to buy it direct on the airline’s website or use points on the airline’s frequent flyer program to book the ticket?
In this instance, for a Lufthansa ticket, you’d have to use Miles and More to book it or buy it from Lufthansa’s website, and that tickets booked with Avianca Lifemiles, Air Canada Aeroplan, Singapore Krisflyer, United Mileageplus are not upgradable since they are not issued on Lufthansa “stock?” Or am I misunderstanding it?
You are misunderstanding…kinda.
If you book, say, Lufthansa flights RT ORD-FRA on Expedia and they’re sold as Lufthansa flights, your ticket is issued on LH “stock”. If you buy the same tickets, but, say, your outbound is on UA and your return is on Lufthansa, your ticket is likely issued on United’s “stock”, which means you’d be ineligible to upgrade.
There are murkier examples, but if your entire itinerary is on Lufthansa and doesn’t include codeshares, etc, your ticket is probably on LH stock no matter what site you bought it on.
Ditto all that what Matt just said 🙂
Matthew,you are using too often
THAT SAID OR HAVING SAID THAT.
These filler words are extremely annoying please ,do not use them in the future.
And business class on LH is awful,like seat 1A ON RYANAIR.
That answers my question for tickets booked with money.
In that case what about a one-way ticket on Lufthansa booked with United Mileageplus miles? Would that be considered then issued on “United” stock since it was booked with United miles or would that still be on “Lufthansa” stock? I have the suspicion if there are irregular ops issues on a ticket which would require you to rebook, I would assume Lufthansa would tell you to call up United Mileageplus since they issued the ticket…
That would be United stock and I’d say the only chance for an upgrade, with the current technical limitations, would be at the airport.
Others can correct me, but at least according to the rules your reservation must be ticketed by Lufthansa. It does not have to be booked directly with Lufthansa, but if it booked on Expedia or Orbitz it must be ticketed by Lufthansa…and sometimes you don’t even know that until you receive your ticket when there are mixed airlines involved.
I recently purchased a premium economy ticket round trip Boston to Frankfurt. I was able to upgrade my return from Frankfurt to business for 350E. Super cheap considering the bidding started at $600. This was done by asking at their service desk.
hi Nikki that is because all LH flights westward are daytime when it comes to the sleeping comfort i can asure You flying overnight eastward You wont find any bargains…that fills in without problem (before the PLANdemic that is…nowadays not so…which You’d think the aircariers would lower the upgrade asking price …but they dont really…great that economy is so empty You literally can have a row to yourself…)
Service desk over the phone? Or in person?
In-person.