When it comes to transatlantic expansion from network carriers I generally find that British Airways is the most creative in the destinations they add. Lufthansa has been trying some routes, though hasn’t been nearly as adventurous. Furthermore, many of their new routes are operated by Eurowings, their low cost carrier.
Well, Lufthansa has just announced their next North American destination that they’ll operate with a mainline plane, and it’s not necessarily what you might expect.
Lufthansa Launching Frankfurt To Ottawa Flights
Lufthansa will be launching nonstop flights between Frankfurt and Ottawa as of May 16, 2020. The route will operate 5x weekly with the following schedule on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays:
LH472 Frankfurt to Ottawa departing 1:45PM arriving 4:05PM
LH473 Ottawa to Frankfurt departing 5:50PM arriving 7:15AM (+1 day)
The flight will be operated by an Airbus A340-300 featuring a total of 279 seats, spread across business class, premium economy, and economy. The flight will cover a distance of just ~3,730 miles, and is blocked at 8hr20min westbound and 7hr25min eastbound.
This represents the first time that Lufthansa is flying to Ottawa, and it’s also Lufthansa’s fourth destination in Canada, after Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
The new flight will become bookable as of tomorrow, Wednesday, September 11, 2019.
What About Air Canada’s Ottawa To Frankfurt Flight?
When it comes to transatlantic flights out of Ottawa, the only other flights are year-round service on Air Canada to London Heathrow, as well as seasonal service on Air Canada to Frankfurt.
Given that Air Canada and Lufthansa have a transatlantic joint venture, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Air Canada drop their Ottawa to Frankfurt seasonal flight, and hand it over to Lufthansa.
This is pretty common in joint ventures, where we see airlines switch the “metal” they use for a particular flight:
- Air Canada currently uses a 767-300 for the route featuring 211 seats, so on a per flight basis the swap to Lufthansa represents a ~32% capacity increase
- At the same time, Air Canada operates the flight daily while Lufthansa will only operate it 5x weekly
So either they’re roughly doubling capacity on the route for the joint venture, or it’s remaining roughly steady if they’re simply handing the route over from Air Canada to Lufthansa.
What do you make of Lufthansa’s new route from Frankfurt to Ottawa?
@ Rich
@ August
Have to agree. As content has largely lost its relevance for me with all the CC pimping and journalistic 'news' items I find myself going here less and less. I used to check it 1 or 2 times a day, right now it is probably about once or twice a week.
My home airport! Too cool.
@Rich
@August
Having less relevant content is better than a blog going few days with no new content. You are still here often right? Would you visit if you know nothing new is here?
Remember blogs get $$$$$ from clicks and views, not (directly) the quality.
Darn it, was hoping LH coming to MSP. We only have Condor for nonstop to Germany and that's like 4x per week and seasonal for about 4 months a year.
@ Rich- I was just thinking the same thing. This blog and others getting really stale, I only come here for occasional reviews and to find good deals but very few deals these days and pretty much all CC pimping which is just about played out.
Never mind that most of the eyes have moved to YT and vlogs but even that is kinda done to death. Wish Lucky success but i think its time to move on.
OMG. When I saw the headline I actually thought "too bad, there's no way it'll ever be Ottawa", so it was a bit of a shock, but makes sense in the context of AC retiring its 763s. I don't think a non-North American airline has ever flown to YOW that I can remember.
It won't change anything for me in the short term, but I'm not the typical YOW flyer -- I'm a UA...
OMG. When I saw the headline I actually thought "too bad, there's no way it'll ever be Ottawa", so it was a bit of a shock, but makes sense in the context of AC retiring its 763s. I don't think a non-North American airline has ever flown to YOW that I can remember.
It won't change anything for me in the short term, but I'm not the typical YOW flyer -- I'm a UA 1K 0.9MM, so will stay with UA for now, at least until I hit a million miles. And I actually prefer to route my transatlantic redeye flights through ORD to gain an extra hour of sleep (not to mention the extra PQM). But I guess one difference is that theoretically I can use my UA GPUs on LH while I can't on AC.
This will replace the Air Canada route. Air Canada doesn't have the right aircraft for this route any longer (if it was going to continue it might with a 7M8 if those were flying). The mainline 767-300ERs are going to be retired just as soon as the MAX debacle is solved.
I’m surprised they didn’t revive the FRA-PHX route. Apparently the Condor PHX flight has been doing gangbusters.
There's a Federal election in October. This route is the best from the Canadian capitol to Europe. Is there a geopolitical angle? Does it depend on the election result? My guess is that AC will not drop it. The LH service will add.
The LH 343 is likely to be operated by Cityline thus giving LH the option to save on crew costs. I think AC will redeploy their 763s on domestic / NA routes to compensate for the 737Max grounding. LH Cityline 343 already operate seasonally to YUL if I remember correctly so it may make sense for LH to fly to YOW as well.
The flight times are good for connecting passengers both ways -...
The LH 343 is likely to be operated by Cityline thus giving LH the option to save on crew costs. I think AC will redeploy their 763s on domestic / NA routes to compensate for the 737Max grounding. LH Cityline 343 already operate seasonally to YUL if I remember correctly so it may make sense for LH to fly to YOW as well.
The flight times are good for connecting passengers both ways - either for intraeuropean or ex-Frankfurt traffic and possibly from YOW onwards to the rest of Canada / US.
What is surprising to me is that LH will use an A343 for this new daily service. They must feel that they can fill this flight on a consistent basis because that's a fairly expensive piece of equipment to operate for such a route.
This actually will benefit me as I'm relocating to Ottawa soon. I'm expecting to either connect all the time or drive two hours to Montreal airport for nonstop flights.
All these "points blogs" are getting pretty useless. I'm not sure if the CCs/banks mandate it or not but the bloggers seem to have to push out 6-8 blogs a day, most of the stuff is pretty useless. You're lucky if you see one useful point blog a week.
And due to all of the extra posts per day (35-55 a week) trip reports make up a rather small number of the posts as well.
...All these "points blogs" are getting pretty useless. I'm not sure if the CCs/banks mandate it or not but the bloggers seem to have to push out 6-8 blogs a day, most of the stuff is pretty useless. You're lucky if you see one useful point blog a week.
And due to all of the extra posts per day (35-55 a week) trip reports make up a rather small number of the posts as well.
Instead recycled CC posts are being pushed out, often pumping cards that really aren't worth getting, pump airlines credits which are tough for many people to use, etc.
While I like Ben, even his blog is getting to the point of "So what". If they know of any "tricks" to use points they can't say much due to the wide audience that would make the "trick" disappear almost instantly.
Gary's blog is almost entirely worthless. His typos are probably the most entertaining portion of his blog. Does anyone care he is flying Spirit?
At least Ben throws in an occasional interesting trip report such as the one with his dad but he can't do that for the dozens of posts he apparently needs to make weekly. And most of his new hires seem to disappear almost as quickly as they appear.
AC also needs to retire their 763s, which are at the end of their useful lives.
While their 788 might fit the bill, they don't have very many of them. I also think YOW can fill more than 20 business class seats a day most of the year, so this aircraft might be the best fit for them on the route.
Bobby, that flight connects two of the most boring cities on the planet. Me neither.
YOW-za. I surely didn't expect that ... nor will I fly that.
There must be a lot of O&D traffic coming from Ottawa needing to get to Europe be it diplomats or leisure traffic.
It seems like AC might be trying to shift certain *A traffic to its partners in certain markets. Are YYZ and YUL slot-restricted or operating at full capacity? Maybe AC is trying to limit connecting passengers?
Yawn is what I make of it. Lufthansa normally makes steady, boring, profitable moves. This falls squarely in that camp