How I Paid Business Miles for Lufthansa First Class

As a family, we were supposed to fly Ottawa-Montreal-Zürich-Nice, where I had managed to get an amazing five award seats in Swiss business class during a surprising release of availability.

However, what would have made a great family photo of us taking up a whole row in business class, was not meant to be. Two days before the flight, I checked the tickets to ensure everything was still in order, and while everyone else was fine, I no longer had a confirmed seat! The system had re-ticketed the other passengers in the reservation, but didn’t ticket me. Without ticketing, Swiss dropped my leg. Unfortunately, there was no more Swiss award availability on that flight.

Do you want me to deal with all of Aeroplan’s crap, and plan an amazing trip for you? Submit a request to my award booking service, Awarding Canada.

Aeroplan acknowledged their mistake and did everything they could to resolve it. First, they tried to purchase the flight. Despite me seeing availability online, they said it was completely full and there was no way I could go on that flight (interestingly, they tried to ticket me into P class, which on Expertflyer was showing as zeroed out, but other C classes were available…).

We had been looking forward to trying this Swiss business route, but were offered to have us all go Ottawa-London-Frankfurt-Nice on Air Canada/Lufthansa. While not what we wanted, this seemed acceptable and were about to go this route, when the ticketing lead apparently ran to the agent’s desk and offered to place me and an additional passenger on a Lufthansa first class flight, without the additional collection of miles (Business to First), or fuel surcharges. SCORE!

We met with the family in Nice, and apparently, the Swiss flight was only half-full… oi vey!

Sure, I like Swiss business class, but I far prefer Lufthansa first class, especially when I spend business mileage and no fuel surcharges to do so 😉