After more than a decade as a Senator member (and previously Frequent Traveller), accumulating well over three million award miles through consistent loyalty to Lufthansa Group, I have reached the point where I can no longer justify the ongoing indignity.
The pattern is depressingly consistent and has only worsened in recent years:
The website and app remain chronically unreliable. Repeated "technical problems" prevent even basic access to award availability, let alone redemption. Error messages appear like clockwork, forcing users into endless refresh loops or complete abandonment. This is not occasional downtime; it is systemic neglect of a core customer-facing system.
When the digital channels inevitably fail, one turns to the hotline – a service that exists in name only. Wait times routinely exceed 30–60 minutes (often several hours on premium-rate (!) lines for Gold/Senator-members), only to be connected to agents who are either unable or unwilling to resolve even straightforward issues. Calls are frequently disconnected mid-conversation, promises are made and never kept, and one is bounced back to the same broken online forms that receive no response for weeks or months.
Award miles, painstakingly collected, have become effectively unusable for anything beyond the most restrictive, overpriced routings within the Lufthansa bubble. Partner availability is laughable, dynamic pricing has rendered sweet spots extinct, and the program appears engineered to discourage redemption rather than reward loyalty.
I have endured this decline with the patience of someone who once believed in the value of status and reciprocity. No longer. I will now fly out my remaining miles on whatever sub-optimal options are available – purely to extract the last bit of utility from them – and then I am done.
Never again Lufthansa Group for paid tickets, never again Miles & More for collecting points. There are Star Alliance partners and competing alliances that still treat long-term customers with basic competence and respect.
This is not an emotional outburst from a disgruntled flyer. This is a calm, considered decision by someone who has given far more than he has received in return.
1 star because zero is not an option.
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