An H fare is upgradeable for 30,000 miles each way between NA and Europe (or at least that was the case when I last upgraded in July). Y and B are 15,000 each way, but those will be much more expensive tickets.

Oh yes, you are correct ms_go, sorry to confuse the issue.

I'm 6'3" and would never sit in a seat in a normal bulkhead row. There is typically not any room to extend your legs which makes it more uncomfortable to me than having my knees wedged against a seatback.

The only exception is when an aisle seat has a bit of room to stretch. I saw this on a LH IAD-FRA flight, in fact, in the first row of coach, but I don't see that seat plan at seatguru.

richardab: I checked and I am gold status (I guess I never looked that far down on the R hand corner!). Anyway, I too fly both UA and LH in order to maintain my status with United. Whatever it takes to keep accruing miles works for me and I will (like you) remain dedicated to both. My preference, of course, is the UA flights. Speaking of fun meals, I had mussels and linguine on a return flight from Milan recently. I was surprised they would try a shellfish of that quantity on an airplane. It still managed to taste good without being rubbery. Hmm...venison, now that's a new one.

Happy travels to all of us!

To update ... My husband and I did not purchase the United tickets we had on hold. Although the non-stop (7 hour, 45 minute) flight was very tempting ... I'm going to take a gamble and hope that tickets get a bit cheaper (possibly March/April).

My husband and I just became United Mileage Plus members when we flew to Hawaii last year ... so he has around 14k miles and I only have around 10k miles ... in other words I don't think we'll be getting any upgrades ;)