Lufthansa Miles&More had a longstanding policy of softlanding members to the next lower status level when they didn’t requalify for their current status, but an email I received this week might hint on this having been discontinued.
In the past, Lufthansa always dropped members by one level if they didn’t requalify, meaning HON Circle would go down to Senator level, and Senators would drop to Frequent Traveler.
Since I didn’t requalify for Senator under the Status Match promotion I should go back to Frequent Traveler (which i had anyway before applying) but Lufthansa send me an email last week, saying my status would change to Basic Blue as of March 1, 2025.
I even have a FTL Card that shows my status until 02/2026 but after signing up for the status match with SAS last year it seems to have messed something up.
This is the email I received from Lufthansa:
Lufthansa Identifies the status based on the first 4 numbers, so this definitely means basic member, my LH Credit Card account shows basic member as well and my new card was changed back to the standard M&M Mastercard Gold.
Interestingly, my Frequent Traveler Card from before the match still shows a 02/2026 expiration date:
That credit card is no longer valid as it has been replaced by a Senator credit card in between but at least it proves my previously valid FTL status.
Very odd, to say the least. I have contacted Lufthansa Miles&More to ask them to adjust the status again. It wasn’t noted anywhere that participating in the Senator Status Match campaign would invalidate the achieved FTL status for the coming years.
Conclusion
Has Miles&More departed from their practice to soft-land status customers in general when they revamped the new program? This would be a major devaluation, which I haven’t read anything about so far.
Being able to at least have a lower status for another year (previously two years) was a very valuable perk of the LH M&M program, which has been decimated after the changes that were made to it.
I wasn’t able to complete the status match challenge because Lufthansa took too long to process it and by the time I already left Europe so I couldn’t clock in the 4 segments anymore. Obviously I’m not flying back there just for this. Still, at least I should get my old status back and this is pretty crazy.
