sunseeker

sorry, german only:

http://dmm.travel/news/artikel/lesen...s-class-59028/

it is funny (or not ?) how they fabricate all sorts of reasons for this instead of acknowledging the facts:
pax are running away in bulk from their overpriced, sh*tty product !

oliver2002

Very vague article... LH always reduced their C according to demand and used to be proud of the fact they could swap a few rows of C for Y in a matter of hours, the new C is no different. I recall that post lehmann all A330/343s flew around with 36 instead of the regular 48 seats in C and the 744s all had C only till door 2.

oliver2002

The original Spiegel article that went to print this week: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/vorab/...-a-964995.html

20 instead of 36 is a clear reduction. Lets see what comes in the end.

FD1971

Pretty normal development in markets that are in process of becoming more and more deregulated, i.e. India.

In the end, no airline on this planet has managed to keep the prices high enough to justify more premium seats, once the market become more and more open for everyone.

LH is the highly admired industry leader, when it comes to matching supply and demand to charge the right fares, so this move will be no exception and is in line with other companies re-arranging their set ups on certain routes. Industry leaders like Cathay, ANA or Delta come to mind quickly.

As pointed out before, the complexity of such a massive long-haul operation is increasing.

A significantly lower overhead and streamlined ops due to Score will allow LH to re-enter markets that were not sustainable in recent years.

Unfortunately, this will also put more pressure on the organisation and will ultimately increase the cost of running a (sub)fleet.

The strategic option of getting back into the Leisure market is still worthwhile considering. The guys in Kelsterbach on the other side of the A3 are doing a good job as well. ^

gum

Thank you for the link, sunseeker!

Interestingly enough there are two sides of the medal. The reduction of number of seats in Business Class seems not to be a specific LH problem.

Within the article you linked there is a great sentence which should be rush-translated for the English speaking FTer community:

"Während in Deutschland die überregionalen Medien einschließlich der TV-Sender brav nachplappern, was ihnen Berlin vorgibt, nämlich dass es einen tollen Aufschwung gibt, können dies viele Firmeninhaber so nicht bestätigen. "

Whilst in Germany the supra-regional media including the TV stations are well behaved parroting what Berlin [amendment during translation: e.g. the government] purports that there is a great increase in prosperity many company owner can't confirm this.

This sheds clear light on the real state of the national economy and not the Lufthansa product itself.

Therefore the stated article is a bit ambiguous.

gum

Congrats to that profound and great analyzis. ^

Would only add three words between no... airline. IMHO the sentence would read: "In the end no not government-subsidized airline on this planet..."

That said you can see a shrinking of the percentage of offered premium classes seats in nearly all markets, i. e. everywhere where no Cinderella accounting is used.

Forrest Bump

Now let's see if the subsequent move is to rise the J pricing. Something really difficult to justify by their 'excuses and justifications' department. Or not?

f4freeJunior

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9900; de) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.1033 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I tend not to fly LH C, but on my last LH C flight last week to BOG, C class was only 50% full. Colleague who was on fra-gig on the same day reported a 2/3 load factor in C.

TRAVELSIG

Is this the much vaunted "after the success in antagonizing our customers enough they went somewhere else, and raising prices above what the market will bear, while continuing to offer a product that is different than advertised on the majority of flights, we will now cut supply to match the remaining demand?" strategy. If so, compliments.

LufthansaFlyer

Ouch...

jlemon

I only have one question....

Does anyone think LH will consider removing business class seats from the A380 (and thus possibly add coach seats in the back section of the upper deck)?

LufthansaFlyer

It might be interesting to speculate where Y+ seats might be added if the product really takes off. I could see Y+ added at the expense of some biz seats upstairs.

more4less

Brilliant!

Skipcool3

I stopped flying Lufthansa in J when they changed the short-haul J connecting product.

We now have German wings flying in to Heathrow.

There is still a strong market for good premium products... Shame that LH are just responding by reducing seats instead of renewing, improving and refreshing the service.

gojko88

It would make all the sense in the world (I doubt they can really fill the whole C cabin on an A380 all the time), plus it would add a further touch of exclusivity to the Y+ experience.