The Uptrip app offers frequent flyers an exciting way to turn collected boarding passes into digital trading cards and exchange them with other users. In practice, however, there are a number of bugs, glitches, and improvement opportunities that disrupt the user flow. Below, I’ve grouped my observations by topic.
Issues and Opportunities in the Uptrip Marketplace
The marketplace is a central feature of the app, yet it suffers from a wide range of small and larger issues:
Missing Card Designs
Many cards—especially aircraft cards—are missing proper designs. This is particularly common with wet lease flights. In such cases, a placeholder card is generated, showing the name of the actual aircraft flown. However, when that card appears on the marketplace, the aircraft type is not displayed.
Example view of an B 737-800 with Eurowings:
Naturally, the missing type designation usually prevents a trade on the Uptrip marketplace. It’s understandable that there’s no design for aircraft outside the LH Group fleet, and it’s a nice workaround that Uptrip offers a placeholder card. But the fact that this card’s name doesn’t display correctly in the marketplace is an unnecessary glitch.
It’s worth noting that Eurowings is expected to operate its own 737s soon—so adding a proper card design shouldn’t be an issue.
The glitch becomes less understandable with aircraft that are very much part of the airline’s own fleet. For example, Lufthansa’s A340 also lacks a proper design. This might be a matching problem in the app:
Some cards don’t even have a type label at all. While this makes them usable in collections, it’s far less appealing for collectors.
Several city cards also lack a design—for example, Mostar, a relatively new Eurowings destination from Stuttgart. Perhaps this one hasn’t yet made its way into the Miles & More database:
Displaying issues prevent trades in the Uptrip marketplace
Some designs exist in Uptrip but are displayed incorrectly in the marketplace. For instance, Moscow and St. Petersburg cards are shown in a way that makes trading difficult – you can’t tell which card is being offered:
Missing Uptrip Cards
Plenty of cards exist in Uptrip’s database but cannot be found in the marketplace search at all. This includes many special cards or Insight Art cards, but also destinations like Hanoi or Jakarta:
Misleading Card Names
If you search for “Mauritius,” you’ll be surprised to find the card is labeled “Plaisance.” That was the name of the airport and surrounding region until the late 1980s. While the airport isn’t in St. Louis but about 45 km away, naming it after a city would be more consistent with other cards.
Take Oslo, for example: the airport is also located far from the city center, yet the card is rightly called “Oslo” rather than “Gardermoen.”
It gets even more confusing with the Verona/Villafranca card. In your collection, it’s called “Villafranca.” Once listed on the marketplace, it becomes “Verona.” In the “offered cards” section you can only find it under Villafranca, but in the “search cards” tab you have to look for Verona, since Villafranca doesn’t appear there. Anyone unaware that the two names refer to the same card has no chance of finding it.
This glitch has existed since the launch of the app – it was one of the first cards I scanned:
Spam and offer flooding in the Uptrip marketplace
Some users flood the marketplace with an excessive number of offers, pushing casual users’ listings out of sight. One well-known user is responsible for more than half of all listings on many days. This makes scrolling through offers frustrating and cumbersome.
Several users have said this has taken the fun out of using the marketplace. They now only search for cards if they urgently need one for a collection.
I believe a daily limit on offers would be a short-term fix. Longer term, Uptrip will need to figure out how to keep the marketplace attractive—since it’s currently the app’s main monetization feature. As it stands, a lot of potential is being lost, both for Miles & More and for users.
Smaller Bugs, Glitches, and Miscellaneous Issues
Integration of ITA Cards
ITA has not yet been integrated into Uptrip. According to the product owners, this is due to complex IT connections and a lower priority within the Lufthansa Group.
Upload Bug When Listing Cards
When uploading card offers to the marketplace, the app sometimes freezes and needs to be restarted.
Eurowings Cards
Scanning Eurowings cards has often been problematic. For months, many users couldn’t scan them at all and had to request manual entry. The latest update may have fixed this bug—please share if you’re still experiencing issues.
Distinguishing LH 319 vs. LH City 319
On the card itself, the “City” label is so small it’s barely noticeable, making it look like a duplicate. A clearer visual distinction would help.
Unused NFT Potential
Uptrip originally launched with the promise of using blockchain to enable NFT cards and related features. Today, the NFT tab at the bottom of the app feels like a forgotten relic. These ideas haven’t been meaningfully developed since launch. We’ll take a closer look at the Uptrip NFTs in this article.
Inconsistent “Make Change Fly” Rewards
Rewards for the now-ended “Make Change Fly” campaign vary. One well-known account received 40 points, while I was offered a Compensaid voucher. A glitch – or deliberate A/B testing by Miles & More?
Conclusion on the Uptrip App
The Uptrip app has enormous potential for frequent flyers and card collectors alike, but it’s still hampered by numerous bugs, missing features, and sometimes unclear structures.
Many of these issues are technically solvable and would significantly improve the user experience. Users and the community would greatly benefit from quicker updates and clearer systems. At the same time, Miles & More could profit financially by finally addressing these problems.
