Don't worry — you can still book Lufthansa first class to Europe with partner miles

Lufthansa first class has been challenging to book with miles for years. Unless you have Lufthansa Miles & More miles — which are hard to earn stateside — you're restricted to booking within just a few days of departure. This window has gotten smaller over the years, dropping from 15 days to just three days before departure in most cases. So to book a first-class Lufthansa ticket, you must be flexible.

Recently, however, rumors started circulating that Lufthansa was no longer opening first-class award space from the U.S. to Europe for partners like Air Canada Aeroplan and United MileagePlus. While it's true that booking these awards has become more difficult over the past few months, rest assured that you can still do so.

Points Path — a browser extension that runs on top of Google Flights to show award pricing — tracks Lufthansa award space from the U.S. to Europe and vice versa for its Lufthansa first-class dashboard. Available to Pro subscribers, this gives you a one-stop shop for finding available Lufthansa first-class seats.

Points Path shared 30 days' worth of Lufthansa first-class award space with us, going back to late April 2025. The data shows us that while it's indeed easier to book Lufthansa first-class awards from Europe to the U.S. with partner miles, it's still possible to book U.S.-to-Europe awards.

In fact, at the time of writing, we're seeing available award seats from Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) to Munich Airport (MUC) and O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Frankfurt Airport (FRA) bookable with partner miles.

Historical data from Points Path shows that over the past month, most routes from the U.S. to FRA and MUC have had open award space at one point. This includes farther-flung West Coast airports like San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to FRA and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) to MUC. However, flights with the new Allegris first-class product are still not bookable with partner miles.

Points Path's data also shows that there was a five-day period during which there was no Lufthansa first-class award space from the U.S. to Europe — this may be when the rumor about Lufthansa blocking first-class award space from the U.S. to Europe started. During this time, Europe-to-U.S. awards were still available.

If you're looking to book a Lufthansa first-class ticket for yourself, you'll typically find the best deals with Aeroplan and MileagePlus.

Related: Lufthansa's new Allegris cabin — with its swanky 2-person, first-class suite — is headed to the US this spring

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Bottom line

While there were rumors that Lufthansa began blocking first-class award space to partner loyalty programs, these are largely unfounded. Our friends at Points Path shared a month's worth of Lufthansa first-class space, and — while there are more Europe-to-U.S. awards — the opposite still appears consistently. That said, you will still only be able to book three days out from departure.

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