The introduction of Lufthansa’s new Allegris cabin concept hasn’t been without drama, to put it mildly. However, the messiness of this situation has just reached a new level, as reported by Spiegel Business (thanks to @MeenzMev for flagging this).
In this post:
Lufthansa can’t get 787 business class seats certified
Earlier this year, we saw Lufthansa introduce its new Allegris concept, with the most exciting development being the introduction of the new Allegris business class, finally offering direct aisle access from all seats.
This product debuted on the Airbus A350-900, but that wasn’t without its challenges. First there were supply chain issues with getting the new seats. But even when the new business class, premium economy, and economy, were ready to go, the new first class wasn’t. So Lufthansa started flying these planes with the space of the first class cabin empty.
Lufthansa is now facing a much bigger issue with its Boeing 787s, which are also supposed to feature the new Allegris cabins (though no first class). According to comments at an event on Wednesday by Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa has a staggering 13 Dreamliners ready to be delivered, and that number will reach 15 in the near future. Six of those jets already fully have the new cabins installed.
The issue? The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is reportedly refusing to certify these new seats. The seats need to undergo a crash test, but the seats haven’t yet passed that test. It’s not clear whether the seats failed the test, or if the test just hasn’t happened, for whatever reason. These tests are of course important to keep passengers safe in the event of an emergency.
You might be thinking “wait, aren’t these the same seats as on the A350?” Sort of. The A350 seats are produced by Thompson Aero, while the 787 seats are produced by Collins Aerospace. On top of that, individual certification is required for seats on every aircraft type.
Most recently, Lufthansa was expecting that it would get these new seats certified in the near future, with plans for the planes to enter service in early 2025. Now Lufthansa doesn’t expect approval before the summer of 2025 at the earliest, and even envisions a “scenario in which the seats are not approved at all is not out of the question.” (!!!!!!) Yowzers. That suggests to me that the issue isn’t that the seats haven’t been tested, but rather that they may not be passing the test, for whatever reason.
Lufthansa considers flying 787s without business class
Lufthansa is already dealing with a major aircraft shortage. The airline was relying on the Boeing 777X for its fleet renewal, but that plane has been delayed by at least six years. Then Lufthansa had delays with its new Airbus A350s due to the Allegris cabins. Now Lufthansa is dealing with issues on the new Boeing 787s — the general Boeing delivery delays aren’t even an issue, but just the seat certification.
With no end in sight to issues with Lufthansa’s 787 Allegris business class seat certification, the airline is now reportedly weighing its options. One of the possibilities could include the airline putting these 787s into service, but not seating anyone in business class, so instead just using them for economy and premium economy.
Gosh, the economics of that can’t be good at all. Then again, parking over a dozen 787s in summer while there’s a lot of demand isn’t great either. Spohr reportedly claimed that Lufthansa doesn’t make a majority of its profits in business class anyway, suggesting that this could happen.
Bottom line
Lufthansa’s new 787s are delayed. While over a dozen of these jets are ready to be delivered, Lufthansa can’t get the new Dreamliner business class seats certified. Until recently, the belief was that this would happen in early 2025, but now Lufthansa doesn’t expect to fly the planes before summer, and leaves open the possibility of the seats not being certified at all.
I… I… I… I’m speechless as to what a mess Lufthansa’s Allegris situation is. First the airline had to fly A350s with the space of the first class cabin empty. Now Lufthansa may have to fly 787s with the space of the business class cabin empty. Never mind that SWISS is introducing the same product, and will have to install a 1.5 ton weight in the back of A330s, because first class is too heavy.
If Spohr were a little bit less smug, I’d almost feel bad for Lufthansa Group here. Lufthansa deserves to win an award for its Allegris rollout… but it’s not a Skytrax 5-star award I’m thinking of.
What do you make of Lufthansa’s Dreamliner drama?
LH have a history of funny decisions on fleet and hard product. Over decades, they have preferred to go their own way, working with their own groups of engineers and focus groups of customers, often resulting in overengineered and overly complex outcomes. I have never understood why they wouldn`t just go out and look what others have, and copy that. The strength of that group has always been on professionalism, safety, network, reliability, and not on hard product.
I think the fault partly lies with FAA whose crash test protocols are a bit too strict. I just gave them feedback & hope they'll listen to me by not being this strict on LH 787 Allegris business class seats
If I were the CEO I wouldn't bother waiting for certification. I'd jus place the fleet into revenue service
Isn’t LH part of the Star Alliance? Isn’t UA flying 787’s with same config?
@ George -- Nope, it's a different seat on United.
Well, he did say that they may not be able to afford "free coffee", so perhaps they could save money that way?
I can't wait for them to ruin ITA, before I even get a chance to fly them.
I only fly LH because they fly to my home town in Poland, there is really no other reason for me to fly them anymore. And I used to be Senator (is that still a thing?)
I think they can fly business class in this case but with the door locked which can't be deployed. A seat can't be installed on the aircraft if it is not crash certified. Hence I think the issue might be crash test of the door which is not required to be crash tested and hence the delay. In which case they can not use the door and just use the seats without doors being able...
I think they can fly business class in this case but with the door locked which can't be deployed. A seat can't be installed on the aircraft if it is not crash certified. Hence I think the issue might be crash test of the door which is not required to be crash tested and hence the delay. In which case they can not use the door and just use the seats without doors being able to be deployed like many airlines. Earlier FAA had no such requirement to test cash test a door. Now there is a FAA memo which says it might be required on some doors at their discretion. Hence the Pickle for Lufthansa. Now the seats are required to be crash tested according to regulation while the doors and such stuff are not required to be crash tested. So now if FAA is requiring to crash test the door it won't pass as it is not designed to pass under a crash scenario. Now that you are telling that it would be done next summer hence my conclusion is DLH is going to work with EASA and get them certified which does not have a requirement for doors to be crash tested.
They didn't pass the Allegris test, but I know they won't fail the El-cheapo route .
KLM is getting rid of 100s of seat sets that are 2-2-2, surely LH could buy them cheap, slap LH fabric on them, and get them in the air on the undelivered 787s till they sort out this absolute cluster**. People would be unhappy with 2-2-2 but it's their standard offering now, so why not?
Not mentioned in Ben's post, but if you read the original Spiegel article there's a whole section on how Lufthansa is trialing restoring free coffee and how Spohr is noncommittal on whether they'll bring this back permanently. That they're focused on this is so telling about the state LH is in.
It's karma...they paid off skytrax for 5 star when they didn't deserve it and now they are paying the real price of cheating....
On top that heavily increased greenish airport and fuel taxes which I consider an assault, and this paired with airports falling apart. We shall not forget that one of the biggest shareholder is the government together with different municipalities. No surprise it is falling a part. Oddly same is happening with trains. I'm surprised about my self but Italian trains and airports and airlines are as "good" as the German one, if not better.
...On top that heavily increased greenish airport and fuel taxes which I consider an assault, and this paired with airports falling apart. We shall not forget that one of the biggest shareholder is the government together with different municipalities. No surprise it is falling a part. Oddly same is happening with trains. I'm surprised about my self but Italian trains and airports and airlines are as "good" as the German one, if not better.
Remarkable is how we perceive Countries and infrastructure. Our brain goes on telling us it was top notch 20 years ago, so they must be perfect today as well. If all the YouTubers and blogs would realize this, they would be more critical with LH and perhaps less critical with others.
Do you want to a livable planet? Because if you want a livable planet, you're gonna have to pay those "greenish" taxes. It's not a perfect system, but we gotta do something.
Today comes the news, that Lufthansa has ordered 5 more A350-1000. Good move.
That seems right on course for Lufthansa. They are THE WORST AIRLINE for customer service (have held us hostage to buy a last-minute, full-fare ticket at the gate because of THEIR COMPUTER GLITCH that apparently cancelled 1 of our 2 tickets, even though it still showed valid in our app and instructed us to check in for our flight). They are HORRIBLE to interact with and are completely WITHOUT INTEGRITY.
I'd NEVER fly them again!
I agree with you about their attitude m Germans are never wrong...
No first class seats...
Then no business class seats...
Why not dispense with economy seats as well? It's so much easier to be a cargo airline.
When does Spohr step down? Does Lufthansa need to go down the drain first?
The A350 is also currently struggling with a high number of defects, with 15-18 not working seats per aircraft this week, unfortunately there are neither spare parts nor personnel to repair them.
From the bottom to the top this is German mentality and thinking . Dominance ( not any more but they think ) is in their DNA ...
Hope this brings Lufthansa Swiss and Austrian just desserts and bankrupts them. Maybe also shuts down all of their customer service centers in Asia. Got to love Karma at work!
Before noon, Friday Dec 20, manufacturers of existing approved 787 biz seats should be emailing carefully priced offers to Mr Spohr.
Did you listen, Lufthansa, when reverse herringbone seats on Air Canada are generally loved?
The Allegris seats are a stooopid reality-evading goat rodeo. Maybe event a Stupid Humans on Committees trick.
As a study in organizational behaviour, this is going to be rather fascinating. Possibly authority to make decisions is too...
Before noon, Friday Dec 20, manufacturers of existing approved 787 biz seats should be emailing carefully priced offers to Mr Spohr.
Did you listen, Lufthansa, when reverse herringbone seats on Air Canada are generally loved?
The Allegris seats are a stooopid reality-evading goat rodeo. Maybe event a Stupid Humans on Committees trick.
As a study in organizational behaviour, this is going to be rather fascinating. Possibly authority to make decisions is too far from the level of folks responsible for operating and implementing? Or are scintillating personalities pushing poor decisions through?
The funny thing is that some of Lufthansa's 787s are already in service with Collins Super Diamond reverse herringbone seats. Sounds like they should have just ordered those for all of their 787s... I guess it wasn't dense enough for their liking, though.
Stupid question: if this is just FAA that is not certifying them, then what stops LH from flying "non-certified J" planes to other markets? Global insurance liability?
Of course if EASA approved the seats, LH could use them. But EASA won't approve them without the same tests either. The way it normally works is that for US produced tech, EASA trusts FAA certification, so there's no need for full certification process in Europe. You can skip FAA and go straight to EASA but if the seats can't pass the test, you didn't solve anything.
very informative, @Samo, thank you!
German efficiency.. oh wait, was that a concept from the 20th century?
Between the VW debacle, BER airport debacle, LH Allegris debacle, and Deutsche Bahn debacle ... yeah I'd say German efficiency is a quaint relic.
Somehow this is a new low for Lufthansa… speechless
Irony is that their neighbor Condor has already fully modernized their fleet for nearly a year and are rapidly expanding.
Condor hard product is basically the same as half of these Allegris seats and has the same Prime seats up front as well.
Or for another comparison point: UA announced Polaris a year before LH announced Allegris, and they finished the retrofit last year before LH had a single Allegris seat in service.
Another: For a while LH's best J seats were those on planes it bought, USED, from Philippine Airlines.
Yesterday we had Laurel & Hardy.
Today we have Lufty & Spohr.
Sounds like a collosal failure of plannning. These rules arent new, this seat has been in the works for seven years and somehow somebody at Lufthansa group didnt think to schedule the testing until the 11th hour.
“ …and even envisions a ‘scenario in which the seats are not approved at all is not out of the question.’”
That statement right there should lead to Spohr being sacked.
In the normal world of aviation, you'd be right. But in Lufty World, Spohr will get a pay rise and massive bonus. To say nothing of a 6th or possibly 7th star from SkyTrax...just because! This airline is the most batshit crazy airline in the western world.
What a win for the environment, flying planes around 1/2 empty.
Don't worry, they just need to shame customers into buying their Green fares a bit more and we'll be saved.
Standardization. Harmonization. Interoperability.
In this case, its more
Standardization. Harmonization. Inoperability. LOL:-)
Introducing Allegris LH obviously was too busy developing a concept of creating three or four different business class configurations to be able to charge extra and milk the customer. Too bad that in their greed the forgot the basics like getting the new seats certified.
Why would Lufthansa not use the same seats that are on the Austrian Airlines 787? They are -- essentially -- the same company. Use the same seats.
Austrian's first 2 787s were former Bamboo Airways and their next 5 787s are former Lufthansa aka former Hainan.
They should have just stuck with the Super Diamond seats that they already have on their 787s that are already in service. I guess those weren't quite dense enough for Lufthansa's liking, though. They didn't want to completely tarnish their reputation of having among the most dense business class seats of any major carrier in the trans-Atlantic market, I guess.
Austrian, along with Brussels, is kind of the goat (do people even use that word in that context anymore?) of the Lufthansa Group family. They wanted to have a shiny new product on their main airline and relegate the older, less sexy (in their eyes) seat to their stepchild. That's not to say what you're suggesting doesn't make perfect sense, but LH's hubris probably didn't want that to happen.
Sunk cost fallacy on full display (fully recognizing there are very real costs they would lose by backing out). But c'mon. Any reasonable lead would have canned this years ago and gone with an OTS option that will still be far more premium than this. Embarrassing for Lufthansa, but something tells me they don't care about PR - they will sell enough seats to people who travel 1-2x per year.
This. They should have gone with an OTS seat from the beginning - it would have been far faster with far fewer problems with manufacturing and certification. For that matter, back in 2012 when they introduced the old business class, they should have used a seat with 100% direct aisle access, as other carriers were already doing.
The German version states that not all Business seats are produced by Collins so only ‚some‘ seats will be flown empty and not the whole Business. That’s a major difference compared to what you are saying in your article and is bad journalism.
It's a BLOG, not the WSJ! Get your head together.
You really think the FAA would allow passengers in some seats and not all? I’m sure it’s all business class or nothing. I’m shocked they would even allow a plane to fly with only some seats certified
Why not? It's quite normal to have INOP seat(s) on a plane, this would be no different. Also, FAA doesn't have jurisdiction here - the reason why they're certifying the seats is that they're manufactured in the US. But they can't stop LH from operating a plane with seats they don't unlike, unless it's on a US flight. That's within EASA jurisdiction.
So are we saying they have different manufacturers for the different seats of the same cabin of the same airplane ? Way to go to compound supply chain risk and maximize risks of delay !
Guys, you really can't fault Lufthansa here. They blew their development budget paying SKYTRAX to give them a 5 Star rating on a seat that was 7 years away from introduction and simply forgot to save some money for certification testing.
LOL. And they lost the 5-star rating (which Allegris was used to justify) long even before they had a single Allegris seat in service. I guess they either ran out of money or it got too embarrassing even for Skytrax to call LH a 5-star carrier.
At what point does Spohr get canned over this debacle?
This is the "Red Tape" that bogs down the private sector.
No sir, this is the red tape that contributes to passenger and crew safety.
Red tape for sure, but crew doesn't sit in F. Pax safety is more at risk from power-hungry FAs than the seats in the event of a crash...
So likely they'll be flying a lot more Ys with bratty FAs and nobody's "safety" will be in question.
as a passenger I'm thankful for 'red tape' that ensures safety
You would think that heads would roll...
Lets see how long LX takes to retrofit the 330s...
I had an involuntary change to an LX itinerary that was ticketed by LH. I called in to cancel and get a refund. They only refunded taxes. When I called back to clear it up they told me it was a voluntary cancellation and refused to refund me. I hate LH. They do not care at all about customers or staff.
If your itinerary had a U.S. origin, destination, or stopover you are covered by DOT consumer protection rules regarding involuntary flight changes.
Whoever Ok'd this needs to get sacked. The design is straight up stupid and an inability to get it certified till perhaps end of year? That will be costly.
Welp, at least Lufthansa isn’t in SkyTeam
ORD ass comment
Nope, wasn't me.
We still have to see Swiss retrofitting a A330.
The fuselage is even narrower than the 787. I'm curious how they will do it and if they get certified to do it....
I think they over-germaned on this Allegris. They over engineered the hell out of a product they can't produce, nor get certified. Seat manufacturers are probably deprioritzing them over customers of their regular line ups that can probably be produced faster.
...We still have to see Swiss retrofitting a A330.
The fuselage is even narrower than the 787. I'm curious how they will do it and if they get certified to do it....
I think they over-germaned on this Allegris. They over engineered the hell out of a product they can't produce, nor get certified. Seat manufacturers are probably deprioritzing them over customers of their regular line ups that can probably be produced faster.
I don't see them coming out of this hell hole without pulling a Qatar Airways (who still flys about 75% non-qsuite aircraft) and buy into all the different business products they can so they can do what they are supposed to do : fly people for money.
Has anyone been fired over the Allegris debacle?
This has been a case study in how not to do things. They should have just gone with an off the shelf seat with a 1-2-1 config. For a bulk product like business class, it seems they thought they were smarter than everyone else and could come up with something game changing. They are not, and it is not.
It already behind the latest J...
Has anyone been fired over the Allegris debacle?
This has been a case study in how not to do things. They should have just gone with an off the shelf seat with a 1-2-1 config. For a bulk product like business class, it seems they thought they were smarter than everyone else and could come up with something game changing. They are not, and it is not.
It already behind the latest J seats at BA and AF, its main competitors. Should have called it Icarus rather than Allegris
No, people have been promoted for the project.
Really amazing and great project. Amazing seat. Rightfully earning a 5 star rating. All so amazing. And so great for the shareholder value too.
LMAO
Who needs QSuites on QR when I could fly NoSuites on Lufthansa!
Just sleep on the floor. Probably more than half the population of the world does. Maybe with a thin mat. Perhaps Lufthansa can debut this as a new ethnic immersion concept.
Geez. they should just kill it, put in a standard reverse herringbone and call it a day. Obviously will still be delayed but a much simpler solution than this insane mess
Exactly. The Cathay A350 business seat that has been around for years would be perfectly fine.
And that’s also not great, at least on the 77W
Time to "visualise yourself flying Allegris First A350 or Allegris Business 787 or Swiss Senses A330 or something of that kind! ;)" on board LH's no first class A350, no business class 787, and Swiss' dilapitated A330.
Why?
Because you didn't fly Copa 737 instead.
We should be grateful that we can at least "visualise" on board those planes.
Thanks name changing intellectual for your wisdom of "visualising".
Spohr should just do what Spohr does best: create a new company called Lufthansa AllegrisWings and somehow things will sort themselves and all will work out fine, as usual.
According to the 787 production spreadsheet it appears there are 19 aircraft Lufthansa have sitting on the flightline in Charleston.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FH3Y2-vRUgojntPkCSJI5Pd-15rsJ1a0SFCRaT-iqgo/edit?gid=19#gid=19
...and according to the same source, American has 7 aircraft waiting on delivery. The earliest was built back in April 2024 - makes me wonder if seats are the problem here as well. I had previously chalked it up to American being cheap and wanting to wait until 2025 to take financial delivery (not spending a penny more than necessary and all that...).
What is the source of this document?
This website: https://nyc787.blogspot.com/
Although the commentary isn't kept up to date, the spreadsheet seems updated often and seems to reflect reality...fwiw
Yes, Adient seats are holding back American. American released an article about the seat days which are forecasting to be at least 1x year.
Yes, Adient seats are holding back American. American released an article about the seat days which are forecasting to be at least 1x year.
The A350s in the article are manufactured by Stelia not Thompson.
The issue is something no one on this blog would even believe.
Seats.
Engine issues elsewhere
That might explain a bunch of brand new Lufthansa 787s I saw sitting around on my recent trip to Charleston, SC.
I believe both Airbus and Boeing have requirements that the airline pay for the delivery if there is customer-managed equipment that does not pass certification tests.
Boeing isn't interested in storing airplanes for customers and wants, no needs, the money from those deliveries - which explains why LH is willing to consider flying the planes with empty business class cabins.
IN the summer, they will have no problem filling the rest of the plane at decent fares.
@Tim. Fully agreed.
Except... what about the weight imbalance? Would they fill the J space with more Y seats? The cost of that reconfiguration, and eventual double reconfiguration back to J, alone would be exorbitant.
It's a huge mess any way you look at it. There will be lawsuits galore...
The normal solution to that problem is to install ballast.
Since this is a BFE item (buyer furnished equipment) LH still likely has to make the periodic payments leading up to delivery. Typically these prepayments are 30% of the base price with the remaining 70% due at delivery. There is also a price escalation for inflation. If this was a Boeing issue, the price escalation would be likely be paused with other penalties. With this being a LH supplied issue, the price inflation is likely...
Since this is a BFE item (buyer furnished equipment) LH still likely has to make the periodic payments leading up to delivery. Typically these prepayments are 30% of the base price with the remaining 70% due at delivery. There is also a price escalation for inflation. If this was a Boeing issue, the price escalation would be likely be paused with other penalties. With this being a LH supplied issue, the price inflation is likely still accruing and there are likely additional fees being added due to storage and upkeep.
There are widespread seat certification issues around the world. if the problem is the FAA, then it would seem that one or more seat manufacturers would call them out. If it is just that seat manufacturers and airlines pushed seats into production and installation before they were certified in ways that are different than what was the norm before, then you have to blame the airlines.
Given that not all airlines are having the same...
There are widespread seat certification issues around the world. if the problem is the FAA, then it would seem that one or more seat manufacturers would call them out. If it is just that seat manufacturers and airlines pushed seats into production and installation before they were certified in ways that are different than what was the norm before, then you have to blame the airlines.
Given that not all airlines are having the same problems says there is an airline element to all of this.
and he is right. The majority of profits on most global airlines does not come from business class. Not having it on a flight could push it into a loss, though.