The introduction of Lufthansa’s new Allegris cabin concept hasn’t been without drama, to put it mildly. Lufthansa has a bunch of Boeing 787 Dreamliners that are ready to fly, with one small problem — the airline is struggling to actually get the seats certified.
Several weeks ago, Lufthansa’s management provided an update on this situation. We now have some more details about the bizarre way in which the first of these planes will seemingly enter service.
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Lufthansa’s 787 business class certification issues
In 2024, 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. Fortunately that has since been resolved, and the new first class has been in service for some time.
However, for several months, Lufthansa has been facing a much bigger issue with its Boeing 787s, which are also supposed to feature the new Allegris cabins (though without first class). Lufthansa currently has 15 Dreamliners that are in storage in the United States, and many of them already have the full cabins installed.
What’s the issue? The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hasn’t certified these new seats. 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 (yeah… don’t ask). On top of that, individual certification is required for seats on every aircraft type.
To give a sense of just how bad things became, at an event in December 2024, a Lufthansa executive acknowledged that a “scenario in which the seats are not approved at all is not out of the question.” Yowzers. Fortunately Lufthansa management has a more positive outlook now, but the situation still isn’t great.
Lufthansa’s plan to fly 787s with Allegris cabins
Lufthansa has been 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 (but it seems like certification process is finally being made). 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.
What’s the latest on these 787 deliveries? The current plan is that the first of these new Dreamliners will be delivered to the airline in the coming weeks. Specifically, the plane with the registration code D-ABPF is expected to be delivered in late August 2025. While we’ll see how this plays out, the expectation is that Lufthansa will get 10 of these planes before the end of 2025.
While the first Dreamliner will initially operate some intra-Europe flights, the expectation is that the plane will start flying between Frankfurt (FRA) and Montreal (YUL) as of October 2025. Here’s the kicker, though — for now, most of the business class seats will need to be blocked.
Specifically, it appears that this route will be operated by one of the new 787s between October 9 and October 25, 2025 (the end of the IATA summer season). While the seat map hasn’t been updated, how do we know this? Well, you’ll find that on those dates, Lufthansa is selling at most four business class seats on any Montreal flight.
Since Lufthansa has so many different seating types in Allegris, my guess is that only some of those seating types are facing certification issues. This is purely speculation on my part, but I’m guessing that maybe the front row business class suites are fine when it comes to certification, while it’s likely most (or all) of the other seats are the problem.
Man, it would be pretty surreal to be one of just several passengers in an otherwise empty cabin. Let me emphasize that this plan is subject to change, since the aircraft type hasn’t officially been updated. However, the number of business class seats being sold makes the plan pretty clear.
At this point, the goal is for the business class seats to be certified by the end of 2025. Now, whether that actually happens remains to be seen. Obviously storing brand new planes for months on end is less than ideal. Then again, flying planes with nearly the entire business class cabin blocked isn’t a great option either.
Another interesting detail here is that if the new Dreamliner interiors are actually certified by the end of the year, as planned, then Lufthansa is likely to just retire its last remaining Airbus A340-600s. That’s logical enough, though not ideal in terms of first class capacity, since those planes do have first class.
Bottom line
Lufthansa’s new Boeing 787s are delayed. Roughly 15 of these jets have been ready to go for quite some time, but the issue is that Lufthansa can’t get the new Dreamliner business class seats certified. That’s because the seats are from a different manufacturer than on the Airbus A350.
Currently, Lufthansa management expects the seats will be certified by the end of 2025. Whether or not that actually happens remains to be seen.
In the meantime, Lufthansa is reportedly preparing to start putting these planes into service, without being able to use most business class seats. For most of October, Lufthansa seems to be tentatively planning to fly these new planes to Montreal, as all flights have no more than four business class seats for sale. Obviously that’s less than ideal — then again, both options (grounding or flying the planes) kind of suck.
This Allegris rollout really hasn’t been very smooth, to put it mildly. First the airline had to fly A350s with the space of the first class cabin empty. Now Lufthansa has parked brand new 787s for many months due to not getting the seats certified. 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.
What do you make of Lufthansa’s Dreamliner drama?
I find it strange how suddenly those 787s are meant to replace the A340-600s. I thought the purpose of these 787s is to displace their 5 existing 787s to Austrian, displace their A330s to Discover and Brussels, and replace the smaller A340-300s.
I spend my time watching Rory Sutherland video clips. I hope one of you gets the reference. Anyway did LH give the challenge to the wrong department? "We need to update our premium cabin experience". Would you give that problem to LH Management or to Disney? Why not just copy cabins from JL/NH and spend a little money on gaining an edge in soft product? EK manages to stay in the headlines all the time,...
I spend my time watching Rory Sutherland video clips. I hope one of you gets the reference. Anyway did LH give the challenge to the wrong department? "We need to update our premium cabin experience". Would you give that problem to LH Management or to Disney? Why not just copy cabins from JL/NH and spend a little money on gaining an edge in soft product? EK manages to stay in the headlines all the time, getting endless puff from bloggers and vloggers, even though they charge apocalyptically more points and fees than any other carrier, so their value is rock-bottom. But they stay top-of-mind with "unlimited caviar" and a shower. If LH had delegated their Premium cabin renewal to marketers instead of engineers, would there have been such an obsession with hardware? Engineers don't seem to have the answer. Are these the same guys who rebuilt Berlin's airport?
You write the longest, most off-topic, boring comments.
Not sure why they did not use the previous seats that were approved. Seems some people made a poor decision.
It's called karma. They got 5 star by bribing skytrax with this seat, which is giving them so much headache.
Ben, you're using the word several incorrectly. In several ways, ironically.
When you talk about a decade and then talk about fewer years than a decade, using several makes little sense. When you're talking about being one of a few passengers in an otherwise empty cabin, 'several' is a comically bad choice of word.
It's really, truly poor English. Take this from someone whose *third* language is English. Do better.
I agree with you, as a fellow non-native speaker. For a “blogger,” Ben is remarkably clunky with his mother tongue.
A bunch of routes have the Allegris 787s loaded now, including FRA-YUL and FRA-GIG. All of them are J4
So they have a total of 4 business class seats. LOL.
I just tried a phantom booking on LH’s site for FRA-YUL with random departure and return dates…November 26 and December 12…both flights are LH operated by Air Canada (on Air Canada’s A330-300)…make what you will of that.
Well well well...looks like the Spohr Squad's decision to fragment its business class into multiple seat variants has transformed a straightforward product upgrade into a regulatory nightmare.
When your quest to extract every possible dollar from segmentation leaves you unable to extract any dollars at all, you've rather spectacularly missed the point. Perhaps if they'd decided not to try to over-monetize their new business class and just focused on providing one solid new product, this...
Well well well...looks like the Spohr Squad's decision to fragment its business class into multiple seat variants has transformed a straightforward product upgrade into a regulatory nightmare.
When your quest to extract every possible dollar from segmentation leaves you unable to extract any dollars at all, you've rather spectacularly missed the point. Perhaps if they'd decided not to try to over-monetize their new business class and just focused on providing one solid new product, this could have been avoided.
I'm guessing they saw the construction of Berlin Brandenburg and considered it a fine German operation, worthy of emulation.
4 seats available in the entire cabin?! That sounds even more comfortable than F then.
What happened to the US FAA?
They had no problems certifying Boeing's MCAT system, which killed 346!
Are they growing a spine now??? That's terrible for the airlines!
This entire saga has been a cluster fuck driven by over engineering a problem to drive a small marginal increase in revenue.
Maybe the most German issue one could possibly have. If the seats don't get the approved then what's their recourse? Are the executives going to put their ego to the side and reconfigure the planes with an out of the box solution?
Hope execs can put their bonuses aside too, but one can only dream...
Time to just scrap these seats, put in your typical reverse herringbone seats, and be done with it. What a failure of epic proportions.
Any mention of which seats will be available?
Why do they need FAA approval to have all of the business class seats installed to fly from Frankfurt to Montreal when neither city is in the United States? The FAA isn’t a worldwide government agency.
Because they need EASA and/or CAA approval, which semi-automatically recognizes the FAA approval and therefore bringing new equipment in service globally is a lot simpler.
That's from back in the days when the US could be trusted and therefore had global soft power. Going forward, as the US behaves even more erratically, each country may stop recognizing the FAA and develop their own rules, so every new seat instead of going through a single certification...
Because they need EASA and/or CAA approval, which semi-automatically recognizes the FAA approval and therefore bringing new equipment in service globally is a lot simpler.
That's from back in the days when the US could be trusted and therefore had global soft power. Going forward, as the US behaves even more erratically, each country may stop recognizing the FAA and develop their own rules, so every new seat instead of going through a single certification it may have to go through hundreds, one for each country the airline may want it to fly to.
Because the 787 is built in the US, the FAA has oversight and responsibility for seat certification.
The A350 seats were certified by European regulators because it was built there.
Yeah they warned me I'm gonna get Rick Steve'd, but I had no plans to visit Budapest. Maybe go to Aldi anyway. i love those ladies.
David...I am genuinely curious about what you mean by getting, "Rick Steve'd..."
Please tell me what that means.