For the most anticipated segment of my Allegris round the world journey, I flew Lufthansa’s Airbus A350-900 Allegris business class on the 9hr20min flight from Vancouver (YVR) to Munich (MUC).
Continue reading: Review: Lufthansa Allegris Business Class Airbus A350 (YVR-MUC)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Don't even need to read this to know Ben should have flown D1. This is barely "premium." D1 is the industry's most Premium product. I bet Lufthansa lost $10,000,000 operating this single flight because they can't compete with Delta's industry-leading economics.
Two things stand out - the unwillingness and inability of senior management to engage with customers on board and at the ground. A prepared speech at the gate is just so typical german to do something :eyeroll: . And the the over-engineered and horribly repeatedly marketed disparity in seat design. Just bad and leading to massive frustration. Compare to BA suites introduction 5! years ago - consistent and solid hard product, versus paying same high price and getting Skoda:Audi:Porsche based on your FF status and ability to snag seats.
Ben, is it fair to say that (as a whole) you would rate the Air France's new Opera business class suite above Lufthansa's Allegris business class suite? Thanks for the review.
the ceo occupied row one the suites. you don't have to say more. not costumer focused. just for his own benefit instead of show this top seat of the product to other passagers.. shame on this management
It all sounds nice enough to me, until I see that LH is effectively "charging" for seat selection in their new business class? So, the critical detail is: How much? That's a heckuva lot more important to me (and I'd guess, anyone reading this) than the quality of the packages icecream they served. Want to sit near a window? You'll pay extra for that. How much extra?
And....you can't get any of the better seats if you're on an award ticket!
You said this flight cost you "90,000 Air Canada Aeroplan points plus $88.24 in taxes and fees." But you managed to avoid paying the fee for your seat - don't you think it's worth mentioning that?
It was funny the first or second time, now it's just boring and stupid. Enough.
I do not understand all the fuzz with Allegris. It is like celebrating the remote village finally being electrified, while all the country around has already had electricity for years.
I am really glad that Lufthansa-dorf finally got modernized, but for now it`s just few planes, so not much to be excited about yet.
"Last but not least are the window privacy seats, which are the window seats closer to the aisle. This is the seat I ended up in". Not sure this is what you meant.
The most telling part of the review is that the service was average despite the CEO being onboard and that the LH boss avoided any interaction with the customers who he's supposed to be introducing this cabin for! Says it all!
Basically a botched launch of a complex product which will require careful messaging.
That company employees hogged the best seats, and weren't greeting each fare individually and soliciting their feedback during the flight, is beyond belief. Seems like they've lost touch with their customer base. Or perhaps they're trying to avoid a lot of difficult questions about waiting 7 years for a rather odd C product, and probably another 2 years for the F.
Presumably they got first dibs on the best meal options as well.
Although the article was somewhat interesting, the focus on luxuries is getting trite. I think that all these “avgeek” people want is to have their asses kissed and be treated like royalty. So much for flying. Might as well write a restaurant or hotel review.
@ Lee -- Yes, I'd say so. That's a great product, and it's consistent across seats (except the bulkheads, which are even better). I like some Allegris seats more than some Air France seats, but I think there's value in knowing the experience you're going to get, regardless of where you sit.
@ Cr- -- Huh? I'm not sure what you're trying to say, exactly, let alone how you deduced that based on this review?
@ Oran -- That's a toughie. In terms of hard product, British Airways Club Suites has the benefit of being consistent between seats, while Lufthansa Allegris lacks. I'd say the better Allegris seats are better than Club Suites, while the worse Allegris seats are worse than Club Suites.
Nowadays I'd say British Airways has the edge when it comes to bedding and catering, which is a sad reflection of how little Lufthansa has done to innovate with soft product.
@ Bobo Bolinski -- Lufthansa isn't yet charging for seat assignments in business class, but will soon. So for the time being, passengers can select some of the premium seats in advance at no cost. I wrote about what we can generally expect with Lufthansa charging for seats here (though there still aren't any exact numbers):
https://onemileatatime.com/news/lufthansa-allegris-business-class-seat-fee/
Can't wait to try it myself. But from the looks so far, I'd go with Apex seats over this.
The vodka and tequila are decent, but the bourbon and Scotch are bottom shelf and lower mid shelf respectively.
I'm often amazed about the low-end spirts offered in J by premium airlines. Does anyone have an explanation for this other than airlines saving money?
I'm using "premium" here in a generic sense, not as a reference to a particular Atlanta-based airline.
Wonderful reviews, thanks!
Really hate this. Business class is all about simplicity: no extra fees: no extra fees for bags, no extra fees for lounge, no extra fee for food, no extra fees for fast track, etc. This utterly complicates things and is repelling. And for the traveler on a business expense report, the basic seats (those with no extra fees, and the majority of seats) are just meh/uncompetitive, so really Lufthansa still doesn't offer a competitive product. The fact that the CEO did not engaged with passengers explains much.
This inconsistency in seating is just not good. There will be couples on the flights traveling in C, and for them it will be a mostly frustrating experience.
It is one of the few things I enjoy about united j, decent bourbon and scotch international at lease.
I am assuming that they can just buy the minibottles in bulk, sell in economy and give away in business. So it is cheaper than buying bottles of scotch and bourbon for airplanes.
Lufthansa does a good job highlighting how great OneWorld elite recognition is across member airlines compared to Star. Lufthansa will only look after their own when it comes to elites benefiting from seat selection, but not wider alliance elites!
Lufthansa really needs an interior designer to put some flare into the cabin. It’s just such a boring cabin!!
Lieber Ben,
you missed something major there. I flew the same plane to Toronto 2 days later and next to the snacks there's a 'bar' with soft drinks and wine. It is blueish. I flew the Business Suite so a slightly different experience.
Also as reported by Traveldealz.de LH is currently offering a status match for SAS Eurobonus for up to LH Senator status. Your readers may have missed that.
Where is the upvote/downvote glyphs (ok just the downvote) when you need them:-)
Also:
"The airline used to offer nuts at this point, but now serves nuts after takeoff"
You mean before takeoff.
"There were two choices of starters"
Don't you mean three?
"I think both Air France and British Airways beat Lufthansa catering by a long shot."
Arguably, so do Austrian, SAS, ITA, and even Iberia.
It's far from a consistent policy across oneworld - e.g. MH charge OWS elites for seat selection whereas BA don't.
After so many years, Lufthansa's Allegris finally debuts and is a failure. There's too much variation in seats. Put in reverse herringbone seats and call it Allegris 2.0.
The inconsistency in seating along with the fact that they‘ll charge extra for the nicer seats is a huge drawback and feels like being nickel and dimed after already spending a lot of money. Not good. For business travelers, companies won‘t allow expensing seat selection fees so you‘re stuck with the basic seats and have to stress out until checkin to see whether you‘ll get a better seat. Also not good. And while we don‘t know how much they‘ll charge, if we go by what Swiss charges, it‘s likely going to be at least $200+ extra for a better seat (and even more for the much better ones). I agree with the commenter who said business class is all about simplicity and not being nickel and dimed, so this just doesn‘t feel good overall. But hey, better than what they have today I suppose (same goes for you Swiss and Austrian - time to get new seats).
Is there a ranking of business class products purely in terms of bed amenities (duvet, mattress, privacy, etc) coming?
Not true re MH, I flew on them a few weeks ago, One World Emerald. We didn’t pay for seat selection, in fact status recognition was flawless throughout the trip.
If there's such variety of seat options in a midsize business class, I am wondering how badly would LH screw handling seat assignments, which is a given. Are extra charges going to be dynamic? How about operational upgrades? I imagine a situation where a more expensive seat is unoccupied, but there is a passenger with an upgrade. Would it trigger a cascading upgrade? Would they move the "cheap" business seat passenger to a better one?
So many questions, and no answers
While I'm glad LH is finally upping their J hard product. The colors/materials chosen for this allegris seat looks awfully cheap and drab.
The AKG NC60 is my favorite noise cancelling headset. Been using it for many years now. It´s just so much more comfortable to wear than any other headset.
Why would a paying flyer in business need a PhD in seatguru pr aerolopa to figure out where to seat. Theres nothing personalized in this mess of an offer.
Food looks abysmal, btw. The name allegris seems just a mispell of some popular Latin word, formulated in some focus group for its resonant similarity to some ill understood popular Italian phonemes, like for the Kia Amanti or hyundai sonata, and other tragic names of mid-range vehicles. Get a consistent business class product without footsie with the neighbors and without coffin cubby hole, call it business class and price it uniformly
Why are all the dates showing Jun 23. I definitely recall you posting this before and there were comments when it was previously posted. I had bookmarked this thread earlier as I had put a comment of you walking down the air bridge as seen in another vloggers post which I see you removed my comment. Won't post it here again as you clearly did not wish that YouTube vloggers link to the video be posted here. Fair enough!
LH’s CEO plus colleague hiding in their suites for their flight should be the real headline here.
Just compare this to NZ’s CEO serving drinks in Economy recently.
They should at least have left the suites for revenue passengers…
With that much adjustment to the seat available, it would be good if it produced a code once you'd got it just so that you could just plug in on the next flight so that seat would adopt your preferences, like memory seats in a car. Maybe there's too much variability in the seats for that to be ideal though.
Note to all airlines - please don’t offer ice cream, in any class of service, unless you figure out a way for it not to be rock hard. Please don’t offer a cheese plate unless you figure out a way to serve it at a reasonable temperature.
Can’t be too hard, and if it is- find other options.
A ticket where you pay thousands of dollars for "business class" and then get nickel-and-dimed a few hundred more to avoid sh!tty seats is a hard pass from me.
Lufthansa continues being mediocre; Ben continues being effusive in his praise of them.
Exactly this. I literally said, "Meh...hard pass" as I was reading this quasi-circle-jerk of a review. Basically it boils down to "If you're willing to pay for one of the few slightly more decent seats, this is pretty on par with what's been out there for years." Yeah, no. Lots of other/better ways to get across the Atlantic for me.
Plus, I hate when bloggers gush over a product that's only "(r)evolutionary" for that particular airline but is just barely keeping up with industry standard. I get being happy that LH is doing SOMETHING to improve, but this is so lacklustre given how long we waited, all the fanfare, the Skytrax nonsense, etc.
Personally, I don't mind ice cream being rock hard, as it's usually perfectly fine to eat after 10 minutes or so. It's when they serve it already melted that is particularly disappointing.
When you have wine at 10 euros in business class and 25 euros in first class with Lufthansa group, did not expect better for spirit.
While AF-KL’s new reverse herringbone seats may not be the *most* innovative, at least it’s mostly and somewhat consistent through most of the fleet and/ or it’s not a guessing game for the average traveler which seat to pick and pay up.
The variation between seats, to include surcharges for the better seats, after the long wait, is unacceptable IMO. The rollout continues to be a huge disappointment. Also agree the CEO not interacting at all is a bad look.
Thanks for review which as always is detailed, careful and spot on. I took the middle E seat MUC-CPT (9E) last night. First of all I can confirm this is an extraordinary seat with more room and storage than even the best F class products. There is virtually an open wardrobe on the right! Footwell space is great and there seems to be a new mattress which is at least an inch thick and works really nicely. After collapsing the armrest I did not find width an issue although this is not in the league of the remarkable 11D,F and 19D,F seats on SQ which are nearly as wide as they are long!
Service was great and charming. My one objection is conceptual rather than practical. This is two or even three classes in one. 2A,D,F,K and 8A,D,F,K are F class standard with a giant wall around them and, as stated, doors. There was no way to purchase or nab these seats at booking or check in and assume they go to highest ranked LH Miles and More (I am only UA 1K). 9E, 11E and the close to window seats are definitely the best otherwise as the paired aisle seats are nothing special, not very private and the 2.2 m extra long seat is just a gimmick. Who is 2.2m long? Or do you crawl into the box head first for an extra quiet experience
All seats however a big improvement over 2-2-2 otherwise available on LH. And service really is very pleasant. Experienced staff who balance friendliness with professionalism very well
Lucky, we know how you love individual air nozzles. I just flew this product for the first time and discovered that there is an individual air nozzle at every seat! It's just below the reading light and you can see it in the photo you took of the tablet control. The air nozzle is controlled by the +/- buttons just below, and it is surprisingly powerful.
I'm grateful for this review because I have a trip to Berlin to plan and will avoid booking Allegris as your review seems as fractured as the product. It is really too bad about the average service because Lufthansa FAs used to be spectacular. I find it tough to swallow that the average service was because the staff was new to this product. I'm sure they were trained incessantly on it.
Oh well. Thanks for the head's up. Even if means making a connection, AF business class here I come.