Africa & South America: Starting at €1,199 from Madrid with Lufthansa’s Business Partner Special

Star Alliance members Lufthansa and Swiss currently offer a nice partner sale from the Iberian peninsula. If you purchase two tickets for you and a friend/family member/significant other, you can score 10+ hour business class flights for a little more than €1,200. Possible destinations include Bogota, Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo. These fares are possible with departure from Madrid or Lisbon. While the number of destinations is limited, general availability is pretty good.

These are the most attractive destinations and prices per person:

• Buenos Aires at €1,349
• Bogota at €1,199
• Johannesburg at €1,349
• Nairobi at €1,349
• Rio de Janeiro at €1,349
• Tel Aviv at €399**
• Sao Paulo at €1,299

**Choosing Tel Aviv is most interesting when choosing SWISS, as they operate widebody planes from Zurich to Israel in contrast to Lufthansa.

Your journey starts with an inner European flight to Frankfurt, Munich or Zurich. Onwards, you’ll enjoy Lufthansa or SWISS long haul business class equipment. You can read a comprehensive review of Lufthansa’s business class product here.

Search & Book

The fare rules state that this offer will expire on February 24, 2020, but it may run out of availability earlier. The travel period ends on January 31, 2021 – so there is plenty of options to choose from. A rather long minimum stay of six days applies.

You can look for suiting flight dates on Google Flights (instructions) and enter them in our flight search. You may find even cheaper tickets offered by online travel agencies. If you want to book directly with the airline, Lufthansa has set up a landing page. We recommend going this way.

Why is booking with an airline better than with an online travel agency?

More often than not, online travel agencies offer lower fares than airlines do. We still recommend booking with the airlines directly. There are two main reasons for that:

Better Customer Service
In case any problems like delays, cancellations or missed connections arise, you can communicate directly with the airline. The airline has to take care of you because you have a contract with them.

If a travel agency issues your ticket, you may have to reach out to them first. You also depend on your OTA to forward information like flight changes instead of receiving them directly from the airline. In many cases, you may get a prime exhibition of responsibility shifting rather than problem-solving.

This especially applies to premium tickets. You don’t want to spend more than €1,000 to wind up with some budget OTA’s telephone hotline in case anything goes wrong.

Baggage and Other Fees
Economy fares not including hold luggage are industry standard by now. In most cases, travel agencies charge much higher baggage fees than the airlines themselves. If bags are not included in your fare, airlines are often the cheaper alternative.

This also applies to other things like food services, insurances or priority treatment. In almost all cases, you pay less for additional amenities when booking on the airlines’ website.

Mileage

Lufthansa and Swiss issue tickets in booking class P. While there reward structure is very similiar, you might prefer one or the other, depending on where you want to credit your mileage. A trip to Johannesburg with Lufthansa via Frankfurt shall be credited like this:

While a SWISS business class roundtrip accruals the following mileage: