Reader Question: Lufthansa Miles&More Mileage Credit For Multi-Leg Flights?

A LoyaltyLobby reader sent us an interesting case of how Lufthansa’s Miles&More credits miles for flights flown, and how it heavily skews the credit for the last segment flown, regardless of its distance. Readers are encouraged to send us questions, comments, or opinions by email, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. […]

May 28, 2025 - 06:45

A LoyaltyLobby reader sent us an interesting case of how Lufthansa’s Miles&More credits miles for flights flown, and how it heavily skews the credit for the last segment flown, regardless of its distance.

Readers are encouraged to send us questions, comments, or opinions by email, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. We’ll cover them here several times a week.

You can access Lufthansa’s Miles&More here.

Remember that Miles&More is the frequent flyer program for Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, Brussels Airlines, and a few others.

Reader’s Email:

I fly quite often out of different European airports to take advantage of the much lower fares in C and F.
I usually try to fly the last leg as part of a later trip, which does not always work due to LH’s often outrageous fees for rebooking of single legs…
When I looked at credits for M&M miles, I noted that the last leg always receives the most credit, whereas the long distance legs even when in F-Class get only a minor share. This is clearly meant to punish those who don’t fly the last leg. Since they introduced price based accrual, the logic should be different: i.e. most miles for the leg which costs most, right?
Miles & More hide behind an „automatic algorithm“ that is responsible for the correct distribution, but I wonder if this method is justified in view of their terms and conditions… as a matter of fact, for those trips where I couldn’t make the last leg, I lost a significant amount of reward miles. It feels unfair.
Curious to learn what you think about this.

Reader Sent Us The Following Calculation:

These certainly appear to be heavily skewed for the last segment.

I decided to have a look at the lengths of these flights and how much of the revenue should be attributed to the last segment.

Ticket 1: Lufthansa assigns 46% of the miles for the last segment when it represents 7% of the trip length

Ticket 2: Lufthansa assigns 61% of the miles for the last segment when it represents 3% of the trip length

Ticket 3: Lufthansa assigns 50% of the miles for the last segment when it represents 3% of the trip length

Lufthansa has transitioned to a revenue-based system for tickets that it or one of its owned airlines issues, while others are based on distance and fare class.

I don’t think that Lufthansa has clearly communicated that they will assign the majority of the ticket value for the last segment, rather than distributing it equally for each flight based on the segment length.

You could certainly argue that this is not the correct way of doing it, and it may also have something to do with how these miles are accounted.

The miles are not issued and the liability created before they are deposited into member accounts. This way, by assigning a high percentage of the value to the last flight, they can delay it by weeks, if not months, or forgo issuing it altogether if passengers’ plans change.

Conclusion

I am not aware of whether there have been court cases in Germany on how Lufthansa controlled Miles&More assigns the values for these flights, but it seems that they (the courts) are a good way to get these companies to make things right, and consumers often win.

I, like the reader, always try to fly tickets as they have been issued, as failing to do so might result in significant debit memos for the agencies that have issued them. Big ones such as Expedia’s and Trip’s of the world can fight them, but small independent agencies can get into trouble.

And yes, I have also started paid Lufthansa first class trips in Paris and saved thousands compared to beginning them somewhere else in Europe.

It is truly remarkable how much you can save by adjusting your departure point a bit…..

Source