It looks like Lufthansa’s first Airbus 380 will be going into service this summer, and surprisingly enough it won’t be to JFK. Instead the first regular route for the Airbus 380 will be Frankfurt to Tokyo Narita starting June 11, with service every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. It looks like the next city will be Beijing, starting August 25, and after that is Johannesburg, starting October 25.
I’m both thrilled and sad to see Lufthansa flying this plane. Lufthansa’s configuration of the Airbus 380 has only eight first class seats, as opposed to their current 747s, which have 16 first class seats. As expected, they have zeroed out all their first class award availability, and with only eight seats, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Fortunately Lufthansa is still great at releasing plenty of award seats on their other flights. The good news is that there does appear to be some business class award space, which isn’t all that shocking given that they have nearly 100 business class seats on the A380.
So this is a great chance to try the Airbus 380 in a premium cabin with miles, but not in first class. Though if you were one of the lucky ones to already have an award booked on the Frankfurt to Tokyo route in first class on one of the dates mentioned above, you might be in for a nice surprise.
Or maybe this would be a nice time to make a speculative booking on a different route — like New York to Frankfurt — for sometime next year, in the hopes that they have enough A380s to cover the JFK route by then too.
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