Flying business Class

Hi Sharon, I joined their Miles and More program and subscribe to their newsletter. They send out offers like this via email. I think their sale of the moment is still on until the end of May. You can go to their website and click on the "Offers and Ideas" tab. I can't say enough of how great their service is.
What we are doing this trip wis use our miles to fly into Newark or New York (Miles and More miles used on United flight) and from there jump on Lufthansa Business. Pricewise with the sale it was a better deal. Enjoy!

Hard to answer here. You'll just have to call United and ask. It totally depends on what they are willing to offer. For example, we have tons of miles on Alaska, but for trips to Europe no upgrades are available--only full tickets. United also offers a combination of miles and a copay for some upgrades. So I think you'll need to call them and ask lots of questions. Don't forget to ask about taxes and fees, which many airlines do NOT include in the "free" FF ticket.

Make sure you understand their upgrade rules. We have done this on British Airways, but we have to buy an "upgradable" ticket, not simply a regular priced one. I do the "book and upgrade" as one transaction. Once I tried to upgrade later, on tickets for an internal flight (London to Madrid) and I was not allowed to do it as the tickets were not in the right fare class. I don't know how difficult it is on United. On British the upgrades are limited, so I have to book way early, rather than waiting and hoping for a better price.

I believe the same applies to Lufthansa. You have to buy an upgradeable ticket. We flew to Vienna last Christmas Lufthansa Business Class (they had a 1/2 price sale). Big, big difference! I am 6'4 and could stretch out completely. Seats almost fully lie flat, so when we arrived at Frankfurt from Denver to switch planes we were fully rested and not cramped in the least. Food and service was outstanding. For short hops in Europe Business is okay but not as good as the long haul flights. We are heading out again this August to Zurich, Austria and Italy. Lufthansa had another sale for Business Class so we could not resist. Believe me, once you have flown a long haul in Business, you'll never want to go back to economy!
PS Lufthansa has a great free mileage program that is affliated with United through Star Alliance.

Alex, how do you get tapped into Lufthansa sales?

Are you exclusively United? With American we had to buy the regular coach tax and then paid extra for the upgrade. I think at that time it was $250, but not completely sure. British Air also offers 1/2 sale on business class occasionally if you sign up for their e-mails.

Thanks, Patty. We have been exclusively United and their partners (only because we had their miles), but we wouldn't have to be. I will look into the options you mention too.

Hi Sharon (fellow Santa Rosan), Also feel the pain on the 11+ hour flights to Europe, even with the extra 5 inches. And we too accumulate a lot of United miles. I've looked for upgradable tickets on United search function, and options seem to be few and far between for upgradeable tickets and seem to be very expensive for the ticket, an extra $1000 RT per person plus 40,000 RT per person (total cost of $4500 + 80K miles for two people). For an additional 120K miles, you can find more options for 2 RT Business Saver fares if you look out 10-11 months. Depending on how many miles you have, several things we've done or looked into to accelerate our total to over 200K miles over the past couple of months. 1) We purchase EVERYTHING on our United mileage plus card (except Costco Gas), 2) Just received a United Explorer card (55K miles), and will retire our old mileage plus card. 3) I travel on business almost monthly so try to fly United if competitve, stay at Hiltons to get miles, and car rental miles. 4) If either you or your spouse have a small amount of miles, you can pay to transfer those miles to your account with the "big" miles. ($15 per K) 5) Buy miles- If you have 100K miles, an additional 100K miles would cost you ($35 per K) $3500, Which is less than 2 RT upgraded tickets. Or only about $1000 more than 2 economy tickets.
Hope this helps.

Thanks, Karen! Great ideas for us.