Today there is news (only in German as of now) that Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines are "downgrading" miles flown with Turkish Airlines in their frequent flyer program "Miles & More". Customers who fly with Turkish Airlines on will only get a quarter of the flown miles as status miles. Austrian has canceled the code sharing with THY altogether effective summer 2014. Also Lufthansa is thinking about reducing their code sharing with THY.
This looks a little bit like Lufthansa being in panic mode. In the last two years, there have been multiple opportunities for Lufthansa to set up a wide ranging partnership with THY to fend off the three large gulf carriers. But the Lufthansa management seemed to be confident to go their way without it. Now that Turkish Airlines expanded in Germany big way, flying to 14 destinations today and just announced another one (Kassel-Calden) and many customers including business class customers flying to the Far East prefer THY due to prices and service, Lufthansa reacts.
The only way this move makes sense is that LH has another big plan on the table. Last week there I saw there were news that Lufthansa and Emirates are talking to each other ... could there be another alliance a la Emirates/Qantas in the making?
It looks like a dog eat dog word out there in the airline business. Lufthansa still is one of the best in Europe, but the Middle East carriers are coming hard trying to take a bite out of the Lufthansa customers, specially the business fliers which is where airline make their best profit. For a number of years now, THY has been upgrading its offer with newer aircraft and upgrade service also getting a piece of the business flyers of Europe. It might get ugly for Lufthansa to compete against Emirate, Qatar and Turkish Airline all at once. Although Lufthansa has been getting new A380 and B747-8 the last couple of years, the aforementioned three airlines can counteract with their brand new B777 when the demand for that many passenger is not required making it the more difficult for LH to be competitive on some routes.
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