weero

Then LH is near an order of magnitude worse.

I fly and flew a lot more on UA than on LH.

HKG1111

The latest stories from the ground of an airline which want to get 5star.
I had three short haul flights on LH this week in Eco in summary:
first leg
- aircraft change - booked emergency exit gone without notice, seat next to me occupied despite not fully booked (seat blocking may be new only for Y/B tickets) - only after complain the crew acted and reseated me
second leg
flight canceled and combined with next flight 2 hours later, no recognition at all in eco, the crew did not care at all, no friendly faces - service just standard ( I wonder if they have instruction to not care about status pax anymore)
third leg
flight delayed - answer from LH there are no seats on an Lx flight which would get me also to my destination - my call to LX says "of course they had seats" , flight crew did not go the extra mile at all, no personal touch towards their passengers

common for ALL three flights - the crew had 15 min before landing time to cheatchat with each other behind the curtain - typical LH

finally the fourth leg on LX - it was like day and night: personal greeting and recognition, bottle of water in Eco, friendly crew and very good service to all paxs. The pilot welcomed all passengers outside the cockpit (when have you seen an Lh leaves his cockpit to face passengers..). A flight you want to take

I wonder who should apply for 5 star - I vote for LX , LH has in my view difficulties to keep 4 stars. If LH passenger airline head says the next 12-18 months are critical for LH he is fully right, if they dont understand to come back to recognize loyalty and listen to customers we can close this forum in 24 months (or merge with another forum).

YuropFlyer

LX with their new max-seats should be 5*?

For me, both airlines are solid 3*. I still book LH group when they're (significantly) cheaper or clearly the best option, but otherwise they've lost my loyalty completely. Because they showed none themselves.

It's sad for the very good people that work at LH group, but the "bad apples" have grown to such an amount that it's no fun anymore. And with bad apples I don't just mean people, but the whole process.

Save pennies, lose pounds. Other European airlines somehow got the point, and are now posting good profits, despite the oh-so-evil arabian and low cost competition. LX/LH's answer to it: squeeze in more seats, reduce service, reduce drinks offer, reduce lounge offers, increase prices, increase full surcharge on awards. Not the right way to go, not at all, in my eyes.

weero

All 5 star airlines shaft and squeeze coach passengers.

The flock of backpackers attracted to high density pegs chez MH, CX, EK, QR like the feeling of being forcefully rubbed together because while it feels like sex it isn't molestation if both of neither party agreed to it.

SQ is a strange exception here as their coach product is excellent. I think they score the 5th star by deriding coach pax - making them wait upon deplaning, offering a ludicrous mockup lounges, and dispersing extremely obnoxious kids all across the cabin.

In coach "5 stars" should be a trigger warning for your built in "hide and run" instincts.

Kat007

But LH will be putting it`s Economy passengers into bicycle seats very soon.

http://www.businessinsider.com/airbu...-patent-2014-7

PetzLUX

I had a few flights in SQ C in the last months.
If SQ is 5* then LX deserves inflight 5* too.
Although I had the very best beef filet I ever got on a plane on SQ, their service level was not worse and not better than LX.
I can't understand the hype on SQ.
I will try SQ Suites in a few weeks - maybe I will get a small idea of the SQ-hype then.

YuropFlyer

5* is all cabins and ground experience together. Not just C, F, or the FCT

LX does have (longhaul) a good - for some very good - C product, and while views can differ, their F product is also seen as generally very good.

However, their Y product is really nothing to talk home about. Rather tight seats, no power or USB in their A340 fleet, very few toilets in ALL cabin classes leading to queues etc. - the good food that LX does usually even have in Y isn't helping that much here.. also, the IFE isn't really top notch, just average at best.

Ground service in ZRH is ok, but the lounges for example fail quite a bit. C and SEN are way substandard, and F is just "ok".. especially the LX Business Class lounge would be 1* if SQ's Silverkris is 5*..

And then we have short haul - wide bodies at SQ, narrow super-tight bodies with LX's version of NEK vs. real C seats (even if old plusch one's) at SQ.. you can't just put that in the same category, can you?

So, while in a few aspects, LX indeed is as good as SQ, overall they aren't. (Plus, no one is taking the "official" rating from Skytrax serious, it's more random than some hotel stars after all, and can easily be "bought" by airlines or they punish airlines who don't want to pay etc.)

PetzLUX

I don't care about any statistics, rankings etc. anyway. Don't trust those things if you did not tune them by yourself.
I don't care about Y/Y+ as I do not sit behind the "poorness border" called cabin class devider.
I like LX F lounge quite a lot. Excellent service, nice food, shower, rest cabin if I want to take a sleep. LH FCT or FCL are not that much superior IMO. And LX HON Circle service is top.
You can't compare shorthaul in Europe with "shorthaul" on SQ at all. No matter if LX or any other airline here.

weero

Bah! It clearly says 'business' in the URL which is colloquial for cheaply spun apocryphal fiction.

weero

Then why are you lamenting about it ?

As much as I hate the ground stuff of SQ and the arrogant trolley trannies that populate the SQ cabins ... they are the only 5 STAR airline that somewhat deserves to be called a 5* airline. The flying coach nightmares of MH and QR should disqualify those airlines from such a title to begin with.

Except for the abominable *Gold lounges in Changi and the neolithic 772 Biz product, SQ really has excellent hardware and food and drink in all classes everywhere. Which is even a greater an achievement if you think what mindset and bureaucratic nightmares they had to slay to build such an airline from Singapore.
Which is perfectly fine ... but as coach is the vote majority for such an assessment I wonder if you could even think that LX would ever rank high in such a benchmark.
Of course no one complaints about the LX C product or LX' F food.
Why not? What is stopping you? A SIN-TPE makes a good rival for a ZRH-LED, I'd say.

Kat007

There are other sources for such info; this one was the first on the searching list. Google yourself to verify.

stargold

None of the articles mention any Lufthansa involvement whatsoever.

weero

Business ...


No seriously ... who else thinks that this is just an ulcer of the Boeing propaganda machine as passengers are painfully aware of the fact that Airbus stems against the super-cheapo economy LCC seating so popular with formerly great Boeing products.

Boeing sorely missed the opportunity to maintain minimal standards for their -admittedly great - hardware. The Dreamliner will consistently be remembered as NightmareLiner by passengers in coach ... and grace to UA also in Biz. No one remembers the clean are and the smooth engines when they cannot breath said air and all they feel is the pulse of the seat neighbours.
And now the 777 has become the new symbol for garden chairs too.

I have colleagues who know next to nothing about flying but being smart young ladies they come to me with an itinerary as ask "that one operates a 340 - that's an airbus without the new seats, right? No 777 like on my last trip..".

Quite an achievement to arm the best twin engine ever with such a reputation!

stargold

I have not had the "pleasure" of experiencing a 3-3-3 on 787 or 3-4-3 on 777 yet, and I do not plan to start anytime soon.

But I suspect that airlines find it overall profitable to offer those "snug" Y seats, because I think enough (but admittedly not all) of the Y passengers fit into the following scenario:

1. Not a lot of prior experience in air travel, and definitely no sophisticated knowledge of each airline's configurations and seats.
2. Goes to a website like Kayak, plugs in dates, sees a long list of airlines and prices.
3. Sees airline X as the cheapest, and instantly becomes interested.
4. The booking engine does not show any decent comparison of each airline's seat size/configuration, so the buyer has no idea what it will be like.
5. Goes onboard to find a tiny Y seat with no space.
6. Thinks "It's probably like this on all the other airlines"
7. By the time it's time to book the next flight, has forgotten about the small seat experience, or remembers the experience but is willing to put up with it in exchange for lower price.

And without the smaller seats, the airline's ability to lower fares will be diminished, which is fatal in the age of price comparison sites. Perhaps in the age of the travel agents, the consultants could have acted as an advisor regarding the config and comfort, but there is no real equivalent when people go online to book tickets instead.

Tim Clark, when discussing the 11-abreast A380, said "The solution is to offer distractions like big meals, frequent snacks and lots of electronic entertainment. With food and TV, people are mesmerized."

The fact that EK still continues to enjoy a relatively good reputation for Y travel seems to agree with Mr Clark's assessment.

For those people who know better, such as your colleague, of course they will be willing to pay a small premium for a better Y experience. But the airline's decisions seem to suggest there are more of the former type than the latter.

weero

I do of course agree with your reasoning. So just a few more tricky points.
Well the key is that she doesn't know better. And she definitely doesn't mind flying the cheapest LCC there is, if she needs to go.

But pretty much everyone is an OPM now and then and there is lots and lots of frequent flyers out there who are agnostic about pretty much anything flying except for bad experiences.

So with my colleagues it is that if they fly on their own dime, they go for the cheapest there is. And if they fly for work they check only two things

1. fare must earn 100%
2. plane must not be a Boeing

This gives airlines that operate 3-4-3 a lot of backpackers and very quickly 0% of the better paying customers. Unfortunately, it also affects some of the "honest Boeing" operators such as NH, JL, or BA.
Well IFE is worth gold IMHO. I go for AVOD over legroom these days on most routes I fly. But drinks and meals aren't free either.
They do on certain fora. In real life, I have yet to meet a coach flyer (obviously not the Biz crowd) who voluntarily flew EK more than once.

My pals here were always dismayed - they read all these great anecdotes and then hated the experience. Oddly enough my PA flew EK's 380 and also hated it whereas when I sent her to ZRH on LX, she thought it was a very decent experience ...