epicurus

DL and AA aren't substantially better in a consistent way. Asian airlines are usually the best, such as SG, CX. Some European ones quite good too, such as LX and VS.

Last week I flew ZRH-EWR in C and my supposely flat bed is broken. Foot rest always fall down and cannot support the weight my leg. Emailed customer relation to complain and got a $350 e-certificate.

If you are paying for C and don't care about mileage program then you should try Icelandair or Air Berlin, both usually have very competitive rate between US and Germany.

HumbleBee

Iceland Air J doesnt go flat, its more like premium economy than int'l J

weero

I am somewhat shocked that a gourmet knows this ....

Other than a few F op-ups, I have never encountered an edible airlines breakfast. It seems to be a true catering problem. Why however any bag of gummibears or crunchy chips beats a premium breakfast is still a bit hard to understand.

Seats and food are also bad on Lufthansa. And you will land in the same terrible FRA as with UA. With TK and LX you occasionally can get lucky, even seat wise.

JaysonW

Is the Lufthansa a380 Business class crummy, too? Just trying to compare it with the 777-200 BF on United which we flew from IAH to LHR last fall.

WineCountryUA

If the EXTRASEAT process is used should be no problem, but purchasing a simple 3th seat which will be declared a no show at the gate -- then you will have a problem.

malgudi

I would add this to "lessons learned the hard way" file and book a ticket on LH the next time.

valor155

Agreed. I flew to Rome from PHL on an A330 in Envoy. Very comfortable seating. Food was pretty good and so was the booze.

The crew on the way out was awful. Domineering lead FA was a real pain, and affected the whole FA crew. The ride back was much better in terms of service.

TWA Fan 1

Oh, so it was pretty much similar to the hit-or-miss experiences one can have with UA crews in J?

harryhood

LH A380s don't have the lie flat seats, they have the angled seats. Food quality is decent, service is ruthlessly German (in both the good and bad senses of the word).

The UA BF flatbed seat is better.

GordonGordon

Go for Turkish Airlines for comfort and service, Austrian Airlines for food or LH for mileage. Never pay real money to USA Airlines for transatlantic/pacific C class.

TWA Fan 1

Just a slight clarification: The LH380 has lie-flats in F, but not in J.

I know that's what you meant.

Agreed about the Teutonic service...personally not my favorite.

PaulInTheSky

To OP,

It depends on whether you think status is an important factor. If you are paying right out of your pocket for the business class flights, try to go for the foreign airlines: (US-Europe) -> LX, NZ, BA, AF, TK, LH. (US-Asia) -> KE, CX, SQ, NH, JL; (US-MidEast) EK, EY...

This is really one of the worst flights that you had tried, and I am sorry for you. When I had the paid J TATL, I did my best to grab all the LH, BA, and AA flights. In general, they have better J performance than UA, simply because you don't know whether flying to the UA hub would give you a grumpy old configuration 777. If you are flying PMCO Hubs, then all the 777s come with flatbed seats BF from 777 or 752. Like others said, 744 routes would give you a peace of mind because it's normally difficult to swap the equipment entirely to old-config 777s.

I am not sure what crusine is your most favorite, but if you are expecting to purchase the J seat for steak from the Morton's, it really is not going to happen. However, I find the crusine pretty nice in BA J, AA J/F, and LH J.

For those who said food in flight is simply not good at all, I would disagree since the Japanese special meal in NH/JL premium cabin is simply amazing.

zkzkz

The 380 was ordered long ago, before planning new seats. They have the same seats as other LH planes.

They *are* now buying new lie-flat seats and the first couple(?) planes are flying already, I believe FRA-IAD. But they're not going in the 380 first. I think the plane they went in first was a 340 or 330. I don't know how sure you can be to get the right plane either. I suspect they don't swap planes around as much as UA does but even so I'm sure there's no guarantee.

gailwynand

Agreed, I had the Japanese premium meal on NH recently. I never thought I would have anything like that on an airplane, ever.

While on the subject of NH.. even their Y food is better than UA's C food.

KurtVH

[QUOTE=profhoff;19388653]... but when the inedible breakfast came (the sausage looked like a turd, seriously, and tasted worse...)

Seriously, I'm very confident, despite not being within a thousand miles of your flight while you were being served breakfast, that the sausage did not taste worse than a turd. That kind of hyperbole, besides being crass, makes your posts difficult to take "seriously".