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What do rubber duckies, Porsche rides, fine wines, gigantic beds on airplanes and your own private airport terminal have in common? Who cares, you get them all when you fly Lufthansa First Class! The only thing better than flying up front is doing it for nearly free, in this case, just 40,000 points, instead of about $10,000. That’s a trick worth knowing…

The Trick

As you may have guessed, we’re not just going to use Lufthansa’s miles. The pleasure of flying in first class using those would require over 100,000 one way! Asiana, an airline partner of Lufthansa, allows you to use their (Asiana) miles to travel on Lufthansa at shockingly low rates, just 50,000 miles one way for First Class, rubber duckies, Porsches and all. You’re right, 50,000 is not 40,000, and you really only need 40,000 to get this done using one more little trick and transfer. More on that next…

What’s The Trick? How Can I Get These Asiana Miles..

You can earn Asiana miles while flying on almost any Star Alliance airline including Lufthansa, United, Singapore, Avianca, Swiss and more. That, however, will require a bit of flying and quite a bit of cash booking all those tickets. If on the other hand you want to do this basically for free, you can transfer Starwood Preferred Guest hotel points to Asiana.

Starwood Points? Why?

Starwood points transfer at a 1:1 ratio and for every 20,000 you transfer, you get a 5,000 bonus. Hazaaaa! If you’re good at math, you just figured out why you only need to use 40,000 points to book a 50,000 point ticket. Starwood Preferred Guest offers a credit card in almost every country, which comes with a minimum of 10,000 welcome points, plus one point or more for every dollar you spend, so even if you’re at zero today, you can get the points just for every day spending. Some bonuses start higher in the 30,000 plus range! They also are currently selling their points at a large discount, allowing you to buy them instantly for much less than the cost of a first class ticket. Buy HERE.

Booking This Luxury First Class Flight…

Once you’ve got your 40,000 Starwood points ready to transfer to Asiana, or you just happen to have 50,000 Asiana miles laying around ready to go, you’re going to need to find available seats in First Class using miles. I recommend ExpertFlyer. Anyway, you can search on your own by creating a free frequent flyer account at Aeroplan.com, and searching routes from Europe to the US (and vice versa) aiming for Lufthansa First Class space at the lowest “saver” level. Once you’ve found space, which generally only opens up the week beforehand, you’ll simply call Asiana and give them the flight numbers. On the phone to reservations,  you’ll feed the agent the flight numbers, get everything set up, and then ask to be connected to Asiana Club to pay using your miles.

Expert Tips + Getting Your Sweet Porsche Ride…

As a tip, wherever you start or end, you’ll want to route through Frankfurt to take advantage of the Lufthansa First Class terminal. It’s truly amazing.  These flights will run you 40,000 miles plus $204 in taxes, and If you want to save on the taxes added to the flight, you’ll do best start from Europe, notably Dublin, Oslo, Madrid, Barcelona, where out of pocket costs are around $204. For $100 more you can start just about anywhere else in Europe, including Frankfurt.

Oh, and the Porsche ride. All Lufthansa First Class passengers can get a free ride directly from the lounge to their flight in a Mercedes or Porsche. They’ll even come and get you when it’s time to go, so you can sip extremely expensive champagne until the very last minute! Enjoy!

Gilbert Ott

Gilbert Ott is an ever curious traveler and one of the world's leading travel experts. His adventures take him all over the globe, often spanning over 200,000 miles a year and his travel exploits are regularly...

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