Last October I wrote about Lufthansa adding a new flight between Frankfurt and San Jose, which was scheduled to launch on April 29, 2016. Long term the flight is to be operated by a Lufthansa Cityline A340-300, which is the same plane that Lufthansa flies to leisure destinations, like Tampa. That plane features 18 business…
Continue reading: Why Is Lufthansa’s New Flight To San Jose Delayed?
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The largest no of visitors to San Jose are from Korea,Britain,Germany,China and Japan. With ANA,Hainan,BA,Lufthansa now all flying out of San Jose can a Korean airline be far behind. I did not count Mexico as that is more of a leisure destination and there are already flights to Mexico out of San Jose
I feel they should be offering rebooked guests comp'd ground transportation for their screwup/reschedule.
I also think the market in SJ/Silicon Valley is showing early signs of softening and the market for FRA-SJC may not be there.
It sounds like opportunism combines badly with fleet limitations. Opportunism in that they wanted to "beat" BA. Fleet limitations in that BA can start a route with a 787 (look at Austin) and substitute a larger plane when necessary. LH cannot do that.
It may be related to the dramas at Eurowings long haul. By all accounts, reliability of their own aircraft has been so piss poor us that LH has been lending aircraft for Eurowings operation in Cologne- and even then they have been wet leasing aircraft to cover the operation.. This has got major traction in the German papers that it wouldn't shock me if lufty is keeping an extra 340 spare to cover the Eurowings dramas over the next few months
I'm surprised airlines haven't been trying to sell their terribly inefficient A340s to replace them with A350s or other, more efficient planes. Especially with low load factors that make an A340 very costly.
Lufthansa just started up a new route to Nairobi. At the last minute they changed to a much smaller and older plane. They said it would only be temporary until April when they plan to start using the newer, bigger plane again. Pretty lame. I'm flying with them next week and look forward to reviewing the private, refitted 737 business jet they are using for that route.
The super worse start of Eurowings longhaul flights with the fantastic delays like the Varadeo flight could be a reason. The launch of Eurowings new destinations Vegas and Miami are delayed as well. Maybe Lufthansa wanna use the A340 (the old A340 of Cityline are part of the Lufthansa budget-leisure-concept "Jump" ex Frankfurt) to help Eurowings out instead of leasing Arke-/TUIfly as happened at the Eurowings start.
Anyhow I don´t get the point for Lufthansa to fly to San Jose with Jump because it´s not a super popular destination for Germans to spend holidays.
Between this and the Panama City flight, you have to wonder if anyone at the airline is doing a thorough analysis of these routes!
Took LH489 from SJC to FRA two weeks ago and the flight was pretty empty especially the bottom half of the economy class. People were lying down on those seats in the middle. Glad I didn't book the award ticket in C as I got pretty big space in Y already.
I just found out that LH seams to start this route next year, due to I see awards to SJO in the end of mars