Book Lufthansa First Class For 40k Starpoints

As mentioned millions of times before, Lufthansa First Class is my favourite way to fly. There’s just no other airline that offers such a consistent experience in First Class – both on the ground and in the air.

Lufthansa First Class is usually expensive as it costs a number of miles and also most often you’ll pay fuel surcharges (if not, you’ll pay a lot of miles – e.g. United). There, however, is a way to book Lufthansa First Class for 40k Starpoints plus fuel surcharges… which I think still is a great deal for such an amazing product, especially if you manage to book Lufthansa First Class on the A380 or B748.

• Lufthansa First Class A333 Munich to Dubai
• Lufthansa First Class A346 Munich to Los Angeles
• Lufthansa First Class A388 Frankfurt to San Francisco
• Lufthansa First Class B744 Seattle to Frankfurt
• Lufthansa First Class B748 Chicago to Frankfurt

 

It’s no secret that we all love Starwood Preferred Guest and their incredible points currency, Starpoints. Starpoints transfer to a number of airlines at a 1:1 ratio and for every 20k Starpoints you transfer, SPG will include an additional 5k points when converting to miles. Therefore when you convert 40k Starpoints to miles, you will have 50k miles total.

The real value of booking Lufthansa First Class is exactly using this method, and more specifically, you’ll want to transfer 40k Starpoints to Asiana Airlines Asiana Club, and you’ll end up with 50k Asiana Club miles. Here’s their award chart for Star Alliance flights. Prices in the table are round-trip; one-way awards cost half of the mileage listed.

As you can see, a round-trip award between USA/Canada and Europe in First Class costs 100k miles; 50k miles one-way or just 40k Starpoints. Asiana does impose fuel surcharges on Lufthansa, so you will pay ~$450 USD when flying from America to Europe or about ~$250 USD when redeeming from Europe to America.

How hard is it to redeem Asiana Club miles? Well, you do have to call them and speak to two departments – one to create the reservation and the other to issue the ticket. More information regarding Star Alliance redemptions can be found on their website, but it may involve you calling multiple times to get your award priced out and ticketed correctly.

In my experience, I had to call three times before an agent was able to find availability on the flights I wanted (they were available, I checked using Aeroplan and United), then once I had the reservation I was simply transferred to a different Asiana department to issue the ticket. The ticket was issued right away and I could select my seats on the Lufthansa website. The entire process took under 1.5 hours – for sure worth it.

All in all, if you want a fantastic way to book Lufthansa First Class, I’d say this would be the best way to do it. Yes, the process isn’t as easy as booking with Aeroplan or United, but if you have some time and would like to save thousands of points, I’d say it is worth it.

Happy flying – Lufthansa First Class for 40k Starpoints!