Originally Posted by
Land-of-Miles
I completely disagree here. LH business seating seems very similar to BA (especially the new BA space saver seats) with the added advantage of the fold down table.
The LH J soft product in shorthaul (and I haven't done longhaul with LH for a while but this was also true of LH when I flew them more regularly) is far better. The meals are good and tasty, the crews tend to be more proactive (unless you get a really rare great BA crew), the wines are better. All in LH offers a superior product in the air.
BA only seeks to compete on price not upon service quality. BA will stick with the current J seat as it gives high density and higher returns. Sadly I think this strategy will pay off handsomely.
The current LH shorthaul product does NOT have tables blocking the middle seat. Those seats with the tables were given to bmi. The ex-bmi product is the old Lufthansa seats not the current ones.
On some aircraft the first few rows have had a table screwed in to block the middle seats as the aircraft is over capacity for the crew numbers (same reason why BA's 737's have a few rows where the B seat is blocked in a domestic config). If you go a few rows back on LH business or on an aircraft where they don't need to physically block the seat then there's no more table.
I've never had problems with any of the BA crew in CE, but my experience with LH is serve business, then do economy and if there's time then go back to business. I prefer the BA approach of having a member of crew dedicated to the cabin.
Edited to add: how can you say BA's current seat is high density? The current one offers 33" pitch, Lufthansa 30", bmi 31". Unfortunately you're wrong about BA keeping the current seats. The plan is very similar to Lufthansa.