For the first time in well over a decade, a Lufthansa plane took off with a competitive business class product!
Continue reading: Lufthansa Debuts “New” A350 Business Class
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Carsten Spohr turned LH into an LLC with premium fares. They can’t even cater Y passengers on intra-European anymore because LSG / GateGourmet faces labor shortage. 5-star airline. It will take years to upgrade C and F with new seats once the 787 and future 350 have joined the fleet.
Will be on one of these in june out of montreal. Looking forward to it! Makes sense now why the seat map was funky.
The business class which got LH their 5 star rating is the gift that keeps on giving for OMAAT.
It's a joke that Skytrax awarded LH 5 stars years ago based on the product that won't debut for another 3 years...
So they're putting their best J configuration on two of their shortest "long haul" flights. Sigh. I thought, perhaps, they'd use these birds for LAX, SFO, and ORD (this last one is not much longer than YYZ, but with UA there, I suspect slightly more premium connectivity than with AC at YYZ). Then again, 30 J seats isn't a huge cabin nowadays.
You lot do realize Skytrax is a business and businesses function to make money. Every list and ranking you see online is ultimately paid advertising, dont get all upset when you see someone win an "award".
Being Quebec City/Montreal based, am LOVING this news. Lufthansa just came back onto my radar, now if they could just bring back the First Class service...
Is it just me or does Canada often get the new, small roll out, premium cabins. Or at least this and Club Suite.
Good move. AC is garbage all around, but had a better J seat.
Now AC is just garbage.
The most frustrating part of this is, how much Lufthansa hypes this on their social media. They are pretending as if this was this great upgrade for everyone... whereas this impacts only the smallest percentage of flyers.
lol...I mean AC still has better signature lounge for business passengers.... also the lamb, steak and bbq dishes are better than what Lufthansa and United offer... obviously Eva's dumplings and buns and Turkish /ANA catering are better for star alliance
Good news, I was avoiding LH like the plague. Great that they are flying this out of YUL.
For years you´ve been going on about LH´s business class and I am still at a loss for words how you cannot appreciate that there are a lot of people travelling together with others and actually enjoy this layout. If you travel with the wife and kids in business class this is an awful lot better than any of the reverse herringbone, staggered and suite layouts. There´s a market for this. Just not for travel bloggers.
> If you travel with the wife and kids in business class
So... 1% of J travelers, maybe? There's a reason it's called business class and not family class. Business travelers (and yes, travel bloggers too!) want privacy and a comfortable bed, neither of which is offered by LH's current J configuration.
I feel like in this day and age, the market for non direct aisle access business class seats would be more for places like Hawaii, Fiji, or Tahiti where a lot of couples go on vacation together, hence why Hawaiian and Fiji Airways continue to maintain a 2-2-2 layout on their A330s, and why Air Tahiti Nui opted for a 2-2-2 business class on their brand new 787s (which were delivered only a couple years ago). Maybe I don’t know better about this, but it seems like Germany (where LH calls home) is no more of a market for non direct aisle “couples” seats as the UK, France, or the Netherlands are. Frankfurt and Munich are significantly larger markets for business travelers than leisure. Yet why have BA, AF, and KL all been moving quickly to put direct aisle business class on long haul aircraft (at least those that aren’t on the way out) unlike LH?
How often do the Skytrax rankings get revised? Does LH keep its 5* for eternity?
The mistake we all make with Lufthansa's 5 star status is that we all assume it is 5 out of 5 stars. Lufthansa is clearly a 5 star airline - 5 out of 100.
Not all people in business class are sad lonely salesmen flying to do the bidding of their corporate overlord.
Some of us enjoy flying with our spouses and taking vacations.
A 1-2-1 config is a perfect compromise.
And a deflating seat that nothing has been done about in years.
And 50% on time performance with no customer service when you inevitably miss your flight.
I avoid LH like a plague. No way I am paying to choose my business class seat.
My only relation with LH is to avail of their First Class lounge at FRA while flying Swiss F.
Highly doubt that market is 1%. There are plenty of people with money who can afford to travel in J with their families. I'd be curious what the actual market breakdown is.
The decision to only fly the ex-PAL 1-2-1 business class to these three cities in Canada is puzzling. YYZ and YUL are short transatlantic hops where people might not care as much about direct aisle access. YVR is kind of long, I guess, but Lufthansa has plenty of significantly longer routes, such as MUC-LAX, MUC-SIN, MUC-BKK, and MUC-MEX (assuming they no longer plan to base A350s out of FRA). I would think they would try to put this “new” business class on those routes, where having a competitive product likely matters more.
That 2-2-2 high density cabin configuration is premium economy in my books. How can an airline get away calling that business class? And who in the world with any standards would ever pays J fares for that?
@Bob: Of course there are leisure travelers in J, but as you say, if you're flying with your spouse you can take the middle 2.
If someone's kids aren't old enough that they'd be worried about not having them in their line of sight at all times on a plane, the rest of us would kindly request that they relocate to P.E.
I think it might be precisely because there are so few J seats. In premium heavy markets like LAX/SFO/ORD, I bet they sell most of the 40+ J seats in their current configuration. Downgrading to 30 seats would be a big revenue hit.
Even if long-haul business class is 60% business travelers / 40% leisure (which is likely generous for leisure), that would still tilt the scales towards a general preference for all-aisle access vs. 2-2-2 among the airline's demand.
Let's just not pretend "the market" is what's driving Lufthansa to fly their horribly outdated business product and acknowledge it's a cost decision. I fly to Europe frequently (I'm Global Services on UA) and on my flights (at admittedly ideal business times) I would estimate 65-85% of the cabin are solo business travelers.
Besides, among 2-2-2 configurations LH still has one of the worst products on the market. I'd rather fly LOT's seat (or Turkish's old seat), or even United's old 2-2-2 product on their 787 than fly the LH seat. No privacy, not comfortable, and likely in an overheated cabin to add insult to injury.
LH has a decent soft product - I just wish they'd massively accelerate their hard product updates.
Ugh. On my last flight my 7 year old was one of three kids under ten in J, a reverse herringbone cabin (Air Canada), and I’d have much preferred two actually adjacent seats. All the children were better behaved than any adult, despite none of them being seated “next to” their parents, so it’s quite ignorant and offensive to come online telling other people where they should sit. If I’m travelling solo then I much prefer reverse herringbone. I’d love if airlines made better options for families travelling, as LH seem to be exploring with some of the new seat options across all classes. The TAP/ Aer Lingus product isn’t one I’m a fan of travelling solo but is another great cabin option for travelling with kids.
In my post pandemic experience it’s significantly higher than before, with families making up 25-40% of J passengers, and this is not including elderly people travelling with a companion who may need assistance, or people travelling together for any other reason, but without children. This is probably due to the huge increase in remote meetings changing work patterns, and remote working allowing people to travel more and bring companions.