Lufthansa to introduce A380 service to New York

Starting February 18, Lufthansa will be introducing A380 service between Frankfurt and New York. Initially, the A380 will operate as LH400/401 on Mondays and Fridays only, though by mid-April the A380 will be serving the route daily. The schedule for LH400/401 is as follows:
LH400 Frankfurt to New York 11:05AM-1:35PM
LH401 New York to Frankfurt 4:10PM-5:50AM (+1 day)

I anticipated Lufthansa bringing the A380 to New York, so tentatively booked a couple of first class awards between the cities using United miles (meaning I can refund them without penalty). Unfortunately, at the time I could only find award availability on the later flight, LH404/405, which I could have sworn would be the A380. The earlier flight is an A330, and the later flight is a B747. I would have never in a million years thought Lufthansa would increase capacity by that much. By March or so, both flights were supposed to be B747s anyway, so it doesn’t make a huge difference there.

Anyway, there are plenty of business class award seats still available, though unfortunately this means the end of first class awards for LH400/401.

Unfortunately the bad Lufthansa news doesn’t stop there. As many of you probably know, Lufthansa is fantastic about releasing first class award space, especially on their B747s, which feature 16 first class seats. Well, they’re reconfiguring nearly half of the B747 fleet to include only eight seats in first class. Looking ahead towards next summer, you’ll notice that the highest number of first class seats that Lufthansa is selling on many flights is eight. I’m sure you can imagine what that means for award space.