My brother-in-law and family had been collecting miles on Lufthansa Miles & More, at my behest, or maybe coercion. Lufthansa Miles and More now allows Mileage Pooling: two adults and up to five children can combine their miles in one mileage pool. Miles are automatically redeemed according to the earliest possible expiration date. But the miles still expire based on the source individual accounts from which they were added.
I was able to set this up for all of them together. But a batch of miles was close to expiry. Mileage Pooling made it easier to redeem from across accounts. Looking at the number of miles close to expiry, I zeroed in on redemption to Jordan.
For the outbound journey, we would fly Ethiopian Airlines from Mumbai to Addis Ababa and then connect onwards to Amman.
| Date | Flight | From | At | To | At | Airline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRI 03 APR | ET 611 | MUMBAI, IN (BOM) | 04:05 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 07:00 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
| FRI 03 APR | ET 430 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 10:15 | AMMAN, JD (AMM) | 14:14 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
For the return journey, we would fly from Amman to Addis Ababa and then back to Mumbai.
| Date | Flight | From | At | To | At | Airline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TUE 07 APR | ET 431 | AMMAN, JD (AMM) | 16:00 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 19:45 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
| WED 08 APR | ET 610 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 00:20 | MUMBAI, IN (BOM) | 08:30 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
Unfortunately, with the geopolitical situation in the middleeast, we decided to change our original travel dates. I called the Miles & More service center for this. The original miles used for booking the award tickets had expired, so if we were to cancel the tickets or try to rebook to another destination, the miles would expire as soon as they were creciddted back to the account and become useless/non-existent.
With this constraint, the only option left was to reschedule which wouldn’t jeoperdize the expired miles used. The change fee could/would be waived only if the original flight was cancelled. Ethiopian was cancelling flights to Jordan but less than a day in advance. I decided to pay the change fee and had our tickets reissued for October hoping that the situation would be better by then for us to travel. In all that confusion I ended up miscalculating the dates and added one more day to our travel plan.
For the outbound journey, we would fly Ethiopian Airlines from Mumbai to Addis Ababa and then connect onwards to Amman.
| Date | Flight | From | At | To | At | Airline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRI 02 OCT | ET 611 | MUMBAI, IN (BOM) | 04:05 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 07:00 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
| FRI 02 OCT | ET 430 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 10:15 | AMMAN, JD (AMM) | 14:14 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
For the return journey, we would fly from Amman to Addis Ababa and then back to Mumbai.
| Date | Flight | From | At | To | At | Airline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WED 07 OCT | ET 431 | AMMAN, JD (AMM) | 16:00 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 19:45 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
| THU 08 OCT | ET 610 | ADDIS ABABA, ET (ADD) | 00:20 | MUMBAI, IN (BOM) | 08:30 | ETHIOPIAN AIRLINES |
With that, we were all set for our trip to Jordan, thanks to Lufthansa Miles & More, and of course my brother-in-law and his family. We were sincerely hoping that the plans would come to fruition with the new dates.
70000 miles redeemed | 1 country