Originally Posted by
oliver2002
LH makes 70% of their longhaul revenue by selling C seats. F is supposed to be an experience, and they don't intend to sell every seat in F, its always been like that. The peanuts they get out of the *A pot for giving a partner FFP a F award seat probably doesn't cover the cost of catering and the kit.
If that's true, then if anything, LH should be blocking longhaul
C from *A award redemption, not just longhaul F. I find it hard to believe that the catering expenses from F are more than a modest upcharge from C (€50 bottles of champagne and farmed caviar notwithstanding) and there's lots of reports of people finding 4 C on LH flight awards well in advance of flight- the revenue lost from 4 C seats could easily beat the revenue lost from 1 F seat (especially if it's much more likely you'd sell C than F- even one of those C seats being sold, three empty should pay off better than giving 4 away).
I also tend to think it's not true that it's peanuts for a *A partner to pay someone else for F seats, because multiple reports indicate that US has
de facto instituted *net blocking on LH F, even at T-14 and dramatically increased mileage prices (something like 50% over the past year).