Using United Airlines miles to upgrade on Lufthansa
 

So, I bought my ticket from Newark to Paris on Lufthansa (via Frankfurt). I call United Airlines to see if I can use miles to upgrade. Good News! I can! The agent informs me that the upgrade will cost 30,000 PER transatlantic segment and 15,000 per European Segment (I am also going to London). Thats 90,000 miles to upgrade.

A free business class ticket with miles costs 80,000 miles.

I live in Zurich and fly within Europe a lot. IMO it is not worth upgrading for intra-European flights. The planes are generally smaller and the business class seats are not really bigger than coach. The flights are so short that you barely have time to sit down anyway. Finally, you generally do not get priority boarding so you wait in line with everyone else. Lounges are not that great either. All in all, save those 15,000 miles towards business class on an international flight.

Sorry, I of course meant use the 15,000 for a trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific flight, or a coast to coast flight in the US.

I'm always curious about the "actual" cost of a frequent flyer mile. That 30,000 for example..how many tickets and how much did those tickets cost to GET that 30,000? Any idea?
Knowing that would, of course, give a much better idea of the true cost of the upgrade vs. an outright buy of the ticket. I think the answer, in some cases, is suprising BUT I'd use them up...someday they may not be available!

Well to get the 30,000 miles it would have cost about $1,500 considering 5 round trips between New York and Los Angeles at $300 each.

I paid $525 for my Newark - Frankfurt - Paris, Paris - London, London - Frankfurt - Newark ticket.

For a business class ticket on the same route it costs $ 6705.70

Flying economy with my 100% bonus miles (Star Alliance Gold) I get about 18,000 miles.

If I use those miles for an international business class ticket then those miles can be worth .075 per mile or $1,350 considering a $6000 business class fare.

For a $525 international economy ticket those miles are worth .01 per mile or $180.

For a $400 domestic trip those miles are worth .016 per mile or $288.

To calculate a miles worth, divide the dollar amount of the airfare by the reward amount for example...

$6000 business class fare divided by 80,000 miles to get free ticket. Thats .075 per mile.

So basically I paid $500 for my round trip to Europe and the miles I earned are worth...

$1350 - If I use for European business class to Europe

$180 on a European economy fare

$288 on a North American domestic fare

Does that make sense?

Topman - It depends on what kind of fares you pay, whether you're an "elite" member of a FF progam, and of course where you fly.

For example, if one is a Premiere Executive level member of United's Mileage Plus, he can get 100% bonus miles. Say he goes from Miami to Bangkok during off-seasons, that's a $700 deep-discount fare, and earn over 41,000 miles for a roundtrip.

On the other hand, if one flies short segments in the US, and earn the minimum of 1,000 miles roundtrip, then he will have to make over 40 of these roundtrips to get the same mileage. And even at $150 roundtrip, that's $6K of tickets, compared to $700 in the previous example. [Of course, the guy will be an "elite" for the next year and earn more later.]

In my experience Lufthansa does not treat members of its partners' frequent-flyer programs very fairly.
Air Canada is very generous with giving upgrades to its members and its partners' members. Lufthansa will not reciprocate. I was even told on my last Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt-Vancouver that "too many Air Canada people are requesting upgrades" (yeah, 'cause they GET them) and Lufthansa denied my husband (an elite member) an upgrade, despite the fact that only half the business seats were occupied and I was sitting in business myself. They would not even allow us to trade seats. Yet on my flight over to Europe (London) I sat beside a whole family that had been given a spontaneous upgrade (the man was a Lufthansa FF) on Air Canada.
Also, a co-worker's name disappeared from the computer when the AC agent tried to upgrade him Toronto-Frankfurt. She had to change the Lufthansa flight number to the corresponding Air Canada number in order to make the upgrade stick.
So don't assume that just because airlines are partners that you will be treated with the same regard.

I definitely agree that there was NOTHING special about Lufthansa business class on the inter-European flights.
Plus, the Lufthansa lounges in Vienna, Frankfurt and even Athens were grotty.

taggie - Different airlines have different upgrade policies. Being in the same alliance has really little importance. LH's and AC's policies are simply different. Nothing unfair about that. If you want to get free upgrades across the Atlantic next time, try to book yourself on AC then.

So do I have this straight? If we fly Lufthansa round trip LAX -- Rome (via Frankfort) it would cost 120,000 UAL miles to upgrade to business class for the Atlantic segment only, both ways, for two tickets?

rkkwan, I understand what you're saying, and yes I shouldn't expect the airlines to have identical policies. But if one partner treats FF of the other partner as if it's not that of a partner but its own, and the other partner won't reciprocate, then it's not much of a "partnership" is it? I'm just saying that people shouldn't be misled by this "partnership" thing. I sure won't be in the future.

And in this case, the flight for my husband WAS booked on Air Canada, through his employer. We always use AC whenever possible. There was an AC flight number on his ticket - it turned out that the flight out of Europe was operated by Lufthansa. This would not normally have gotten me bothered if I had not known about the family sitting next to me on the way to London on AC, who had been upgraded because the man was Elite on Lufthansa.

And the fact that my sick husband was not allowed to trade seats with me(because I was certainly willing to suffer in economy so that he could be more comfy) really ticked me off. Why can't I do what I want with my seat?
I found Lufthansa to be very, very rigid.
Besides that the 4 flights I took with them on this trip did not impress me much at all regarding their service and facilities. The planes within Europe were DIRTY, and the seats not much better than economy. The only seat that was nice and relatively clean was on the flight from Frankfurt to Vancouver. Food was fine; the wine was OK.
The lounges were dirty too and didn't offer much in the way of refreshments. Frankfurt's lounge was downright unpleasant - we left it.

LAWoman, it is 30,000 miles per transatlantic segment, if you buy an H or M class economy fare. If you purchase a Y or B full-fare economy ticket, then it is only 15,000 per segment. M/H fares are often at least $500 or more higher than the lowest discount fares. Y/B fares are often $1000 or more higher. Anything lower than H is not upgradeable for international travel.

One other little tidbit to know about Mileage Plus award travel on Lufthansa -- as of October 1, you can only use MP miles to book award travel on Lufthansa within 90 days of travel. That is for full award tickets; I was told by the MP desk that this didn't apply to upgrades, but we'll see -- I'm currently in the process of trying to get some upgrades to clear.

ms_go -- thanks for your clear/thorough response, very helpful

Oh yes, one other important thing about using UA Mileage Plus miles to upgrade on Lufthansa:

Code share flights are not eligible for upgrades. That means your ticket has to be a Lufthansa flight number on Lufthansa metal. Tickets with United flight numbers on flights operated by Lufthansa, or tickets with LH flight numbers on flights operated by United, are not eligible for upgrade.

taggie - Airline alliance often really means little to the consumer. And one should really look at the flight numbers on their tickets, and if it's a high number (usually >2000) then it's usually a code-share flight. Alliance or otherwise, it simply means AC bought a bucket of tickets from LH and resell them. Upgrade policy is solely at LH's discrepancy.

BTW, I am definitely not trying to defend LH. I have never flown them, but my family has had poor experience with them last year.

I heart Lufthansa, its the only airline I use to fly to Europe.