A little more light was shed on the future of British Midland and their Diamond Club mileage program at the Lufthansa Investor Day in Frankfurt on Monday.
Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, BMI’s CEO presented this.
There’s a lot of info packed into the 17-slide presentation, but a blurb on Diamond Club particularly caught my eye.
Roadmap for integration „Diamond Club“ in M&M agreed
I was not at the presentation, but I can speculate on what this means. Here’s my thoughts on the future of the Diamond Club:
1. Time to burn your BD miles
Consider the difference between the cost of an award on BD versus the cost on LH. Lufty will charge you almost as many miles for a trip in economy class as British Midland charges for a trip in business class. Both airlines levy fuel surcharges on awards.
2. Pool your miles into a family account
Like British Airways, British Midland allows you too pool your mileage accounts (up to 8 people). Take advantage of this while you still can.
3. Re-qualify this year
Diamond Club will roll into Miles & More next year. While the re-qualification threshold on LH is high (100,000 miles for Senator [Star Gold] status; 35,000 miels for Frequent Traveler [Star Silver] status), status is good for two years, so those who re-qualify for Gold or Silver status on BD this year may be comped status on LH that will be good for another two years. Of course, stingy Lufthansa may not comp status and you’ll be looking at the daunting task of flying a whole lot of miles to re-qualify on LH–not recommended for U.S. flyers.
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I am sad to see the demise of Diamond Club, but the news does not come as a surprise: I expected the migration would have already occurred by now.
(tip of the hat to Kevin’s Ghetto IFE)
UPDATE: Musings of the Global Traveller reports that BMI program will be fully integrated into Miles & More by mid-2011.
My BD requalification year ends in 10/10. I have already credited enough to requalify for Star Gold. Do you think that the integration will happen before 10/11? I suspect that I won’t be able to fly enough to keep up my UA 1K and BD after this year. It would be great to keep LH SEN until 10/12. (Flying is getting significantly more expensive… so I’ll be lucky to keep 1K for 2012.) If I were to fly enough to requalify early enough in my 10/10-10/11 BD requalification, I certainly would try to get another year in before the integration but I fear that would jeopardize 1K for 2012. Anything that I am missing here?
@Tom: I’m in a similar predicament. I do think the integration will happen before October 2011 and there is a good shot that you’ll have Senator status for a couple years.
My plan is to re-qualify for BD this year (currently I’ve got about 90K on UA, 0 on BD [and my year ends in late December]), and do the same next year. I don’t know what my travel will look like next year, but UA is always my priority.
With the elimination of UA’s cheap ONT-TPA First Class fares and the tightening of routing requirements, re-qualification is going to be a lot tougher on BD.
I’ve thought about forgetting BD, crediting all my miles to UA, and just paying for RCC membership. But if I can get Senator status for two years, it would be worth it to get the BD miles.