But simply having miles is only part of the equation. There is collecting them, and then there is knowing how to use them. The difference can be considerable: the same balance that disappears quickly on an unremarkable redemption can deliver significantly more value with the right route, airline and timing.

Miles & More sits at the centre of many of these opportunities. As Europe’s largest frequent flyer programme, with over 39 million members and over 30 partner airlines, its scale creates plenty of opportunities to turn miles into meaningful travel. But getting the most from them requires knowing where the real value lies.

The good news is that you do not need to become a loyalty points specialist to use your miles well. A little knowledge goes a long way. Whether you are new to miles or already a seasoned frequent flyer, this guide looks at how to get more from them, with real flight examples, practical strategies for savings on Business and First Class redemptions, and the costly mistakes to avoid!

To get the best value from Miles & More, it helps to first understand how the programme splits its airlines into two main groups.

The name Miles & More may bring Lufthansa to mind first, but your balance can open the door to many other airlines.

Integrated Group Airlines are the native carriers that use Miles & More as their primary loyalty programme, including Lufthansa Group airlines such as Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings, alongside co-issuing partners such as LOT Polish Airlines.

Star Alliance Partners, meanwhile, include reciprocal alliance partners such as United Airlines, Air Canada, All Nippon Airways (ANA) and Singapore Airlines, allowing Miles & More members to earn and redeem miles across their global route networks.

Why does this matter? Because the airline you usually fly may not offer the best way to spend your miles. Another carrier might have a more convenient departure, better award availability or considerably lower cash charges. 

Think of the network as a choice of routes to your destination. The more of those options you consider, the more useful your balance becomes.

The size of the network is only part of the appeal. Holding Miles & More miles comes with several advantages that can make a meaningful difference when planning premium travel, particularly for travellers looking towards Lufthansa Group airlines.

One of the most important is access. Miles & More's position within the Lufthansa Group gives members strong award availability and routing options across some of Europe's key aviation hubs. 

For travellers interested in Lufthansa Group premium cabins, Miles & More can provide access to award seats that other loyalty programmes cannot offer. Lufthansa First Class awards, for example, can be available well ahead of departure. That makes the programme worth considering if you would rather plan a special trip in advance than wait for a last-minute opportunity.

Then there are the savings worth watching for. Meilenschnäppchen, or Mileage Bargains, can reduce the number of miles required for selected long-haul Business Class awards by as much as 50%. Destinations and availability change monthly, making these offers particularly useful for travellers who can remain flexible about where, and sometimes when, they travel.

There is some welcome flexibility around the miles themselves, too. Award miles are generally valid for up to three years, giving members ample time to find the redemptions which offer the best value. And should plans change after booking, Business Class award flights can be cancelled relatively economically.

Taken together, these advantages make Miles & More particularly interesting for premium-cabin travel: broad access across Europe, earlier opportunities to secure some of its most sought-after First Class seats, substantial savings through monthly offers and enough flexibility to plan ahead without having to use your miles immediately.

A mile does not have a fixed cash value in the way that €1 will always be €1. Its practical value depends on what you eventually receive in exchange for it.

Use a large number of miles for a relatively inexpensive Economy ticket and the return may be modest. Use them strategically towards a costly long-haul Business or First Class fare and the calculation can look very different. That makes the price at which you acquire miles particularly important.

As a general benchmark, buying miles for under €15 per 1,000 represents an excellent acquisition rate, although opportunities at this level are rare. Around €15–€18 per 1,000 miles is an attractive target when planning long-haul Business or First Class travel.

Between €18 and €25 per 1,000, the maths becomes more dependent on the redemption. It can still make sense when topping up an existing balance or when you have already identified a particularly valuable flight. Above €25 per 1,000 miles, purchasing large quantities becomes harder to justify and is generally better reserved for small top-ups.

These are guidelines. The important question is what the miles will allow you to book. 

Consider a hypothetical Business Class journey requiring 62,500 miles, where a comparable cash ticket costs €4,000. If the award carries €200 in taxes and fees and reaching the departure airport adds another €150 in travel costs, the miles are effectively replacing €3,650 of cash expenditure.

That means the 62,500 miles are delivering €58.40 of value for every 1,000 miles redeemed.

If those miles were acquired for €20 per 1,000, they would cost €1,250. Add the €200 in taxes and €150 in additional travel costs, and the total journey comes to €1,600 instead of €4,000 – an illustrative saving of €2,400, or 60%.

It is a simple calculation, but an important one. Finding a good redemption is only half the equation; acquiring the miles at the right price is what turns it into genuine value.

This is where Miles & More becomes slightly more technical and where understanding the system can pay off.

There are two principal award-pricing models within the programme.

Flights operated by Lufthansa, SWISS, Austrian Airlines, Lufthansa City, Discover Airlines and Air Dolomiti use dynamic pricing. The number of miles required varies according to the flight and fare, meaning one departure may cost considerably more or less than another.

Many partner airlines, including LOT, Brussels Airlines, United and ANA, generally follow a fixed regional mileage structure instead. The mileage requirement is determined by the regions travelled between and the cabin selected, which can be particularly useful when cash fares are high.

Neither system is inherently better. Dynamic pricing can produce exceptionally attractive deals when demand is low. Fixed pricing, meanwhile, gives you another benchmark against which to compare those deals.

The trick is to look at both. If Lufthansa is asking for more miles than expected on the date you want to travel, check whether a Star Alliance partner serves the same destination. Equally, a particularly low dynamically priced Lufthansa departure may beat the fixed partner rate.

Miles & More bookings can also be made up to 361 days in advance, depending on airline schedules and award availability, giving those with fixed travel plans a substantial head start.

Knowing that an excellent redemption exists does not help much if you cannot find it.

Flexibility remains one of the most useful tools. Looking across an entire month rather than repeatedly searching individual dates can quickly reveal where availability clusters.

United Airlines' award calendar can be useful for identifying potentially available Star Alliance seats across a broader range of dates. Once you find a promising option, however, confirm the date, cabin, availability and mileage price directly through Miles & More, as inventory can differ between programmes.

For harder-to-find premium cabins, automated tools can do some of the work for you.

Seats.aero, for example, tracks award availability and allows travellers to search across multiple dates and set alerts for desirable seats. This can be particularly helpful for competitive redemptions such as Lufthansa First Class, where desirable inventory may not remain available for long.

Ultimately, the best redemption is only valuable if you can actually book it. The wider and smarter you search, the better your chances of finding the seat that makes your miles worthwhile. 

Dynamic pricing is where some of the most intriguing opportunities can appear. When demand falls during quieter travel periods, mileage prices can occasionally drop to levels that seem almost improbable. In exceptional cases, one-way transatlantic flights have been available for as little as 88 to 90 miles plus standard taxes as was recently reported by AwardWallet.

These extreme drops are rare, of course, and finding one requires flexibility. Rather than searching for one specific flight on one specific day, look a few days either side of your preferred departure and compare each direction separately as well as the return journey. A relatively small change in dates can produce a very different combination of miles and cash.

It is worth widening the search geographically, too. A nearby departure airport may offer a substantially better redemption, but the saving should always be considered in context. Factor in the train, positioning flight or hotel you may need to reach that airport before deciding whether the lower mileage price represents genuine value.

Price should not be the only consideration. Check what the award ticket actually includes, from baggage allowance to the conditions for changing or cancelling your plans. Spending slightly more miles can sometimes be worthwhile if it results in a considerably easier or more flexible journey.

And if the dynamic price for your preferred Lufthansa Group flight is higher than expected, remember the other side of the Miles & More network. Compare the same journey with a partner such as LOT or United, where a different pricing model may produce a more appealing combination of miles, cash and comfort.

The lesson is not to build a trip around the lowest number on the screen. The real opportunity lies in knowing when a lower mileage price genuinely makes the overall journey better, and being flexible enough to find it.

A low mileage requirement can look attractive until you reach the final booking screen. Taxes, fees and carrier surcharges vary considerably between airlines, and this is one of the easiest places to lose value without realising it.

A historical search comparing two one-way Business Class journeys from New York JFK to Paris Charles de Gaulle illustrates the difference particularly well.

For the same travel date, LOT Polish Business Class required 62,500 miles plus €111.77 in taxes and surcharges. A Lufthansa Business Class option required 75,393 miles plus €1,269.00 in taxes and surcharges. Choosing LOT in this particular comparison therefore meant spending 12,893 fewer miles and €1,157.95 less in cash.

That does not mean LOT will always be cheaper, nor that Lufthansa should be avoided. Prices, award availability, routing and surcharges vary by journey.

It does mean that you should never assume the first available award is the best one. Before booking, compare the complete cost: miles, taxes, surcharges, additional positioning expenses and the convenience of the itinerary itself. Sometimes ten minutes of comparison shopping can preserve enough miles for another flight entirely.

If your dates and destination line up, this can be one of the programme's most compelling opportunities. Each month, Miles & More releases a selection of Mileage Bargains, or Meilenschnäppchen, reducing the mileage required on selected routes by as much as 50%.

The seat does not suddenly become 50% less comfortable. You are still travelling in the same cabin, with the same lie-flat suites and premium lounges. You are simply using considerably fewer miles to get there.

For September 2026, for example, selected offers included a JFK–Brussels Business Class return at 61,000 miles instead of 125,000, Premium Economy on the same route at 42,000 instead of 85,000 miles, and Los Angeles–Warsaw Economy at 25,000 instead of 50,000 miles.

Participating airlines currently include Brussels Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Eurowings, ITA Airways, LOT and Luxair, although routes, cabins and destinations change from month to month.

There is a catch worth knowing before getting carried away by the discount.

Mileage Bargain bookings are restrictive. Once booked, they cannot be rebooked. If you cancel, the miles and airline surcharges are not returned, although eligible taxes and fees may be refundable. In other words: this is one to book once the diary is settled.

The value becomes clearest when you move into premium cabins.

Take two historical examples.

A Lufthansa First Class journey from Newark to Frankfurt had a quoted cash fare of US$17,059. The miles option required 188,554 miles plus US$1,529, replacing US$15,530 of the quoted cash fare before accounting for the cost of acquiring the miles.

On another journey, Lufthansa Business Class from Frankfurt to Tokyo was priced at US$5,518 in cash, compared with 78,914 miles plus US$499.40.

Assume, purely for illustration, that those miles had been purchased for 2 US cents each. The 78,914 miles would cost approximately US$1,578. Add the US$499.40 in taxes and fees and the total comes to roughly US$2,078.

Against the quoted US$5,518 fare, that is a saving of more than US$3,400.

Of course, the numbers will not look like this on every flight. Cash fares change. Award availability changes. Taxes and surcharges vary. The price at which you acquired your miles matters enormously.

But that is precisely the point. There is no universal answer to whether a particular Miles & More redemption is 'good'. The best travellers do the calculation each time.

Once you understand the exceptional value of miles, the next step is building your balance. However, accumulating enough miles for premium long-haul travel can take considerable time and spending, particularly if your sights are set on Business or First Class.

ASMALLWORLD Prestige Membership gives you immediate access to 250,000 Miles & More award miles, to give members a substantial balance to put towards award travel. 

And the mileage balance is only part of the membership. Prestige combines travel statuses and lifestyle privileges worth more than €20,000 in combined value, including GHA DISCOVERY Titanium, a Hilton Honors Diamond Status Match and Jumeirah One Gold. Depending on the hotel and programme, these can unlock benefits such as room upgrades, breakfast for two, Executive Lounge access and flexible check-in and check-out.

Members also receive benefits including SIXT Platinum, VIP shopping experiences with The Bicester Collection, ASMALLWORLD Premium hotel offers and events, and access to wine and collector experiences through Crurated.

But if you have read this far, those 250,000 miles probably look rather more interesting than they did at the beginning. Because the real value is not simply having a large mileage balance. It is knowing what to do with it.

Today is your last chance to save €1,200 on Prestige Membership. That works out at just €15.96 per 1,000 miles, before counting the additional elite statuses and benefits worth over €20,000!. Secure your offer before the promotion ends at midnight tonight (CET)!