In general, and especially when I am underway professionally, I am in complete agreement with you, and in fact I challenged Mr. Spohr during the "Dialogue" that if LH can offer products that 'simplify' my life, I would certainly spend more money with LH.

What I don't need is more complex pricing and service-offering schemes that require ever-more analysis and decision-making when buying air tickets. I need a simple, consistent product that gets me from place to place with as little hassle as possible. If I can stop and take a deep breath and relax and drink a cup of coffee and eat a couple of forks-full of potato salad (or cured ham ) in the process, that is a bonus.

As I rarely need to transfer on LH, in my personal case the handling during connections is normally not an issue, but given the horror stories I read here with short transfer times and cumbersome transfer processes (e.g., in FRA), I can see why people who frequently transfer with LH appreciate the extra hand-holding an HON gets when it is necessary.

I don't understand how re-booking is more expeditious for an HON, except maybe that the assistants in the F lounges are more available to serve as needed. I find lately that as long as I am willing to pay the new extortion fees, there is always someone at LH who is willing to rebook me very quickly and efficiently when it is required, either in person or on the telephone.

As SEN, I find that my curb-to-gate time in, let's say, FRA, can ONLY be bettered by traveling via the FCT, and then (typically) only by about 10 mins (mostly the mean waiting time for security at FRA (I have personally encountered long waits at FRA security and passport control only very rarely, at least at the times when I am traveling), which is pretty much in the noise floor compared to allowances for variances in ground transport. On arrival at FRA or ZRH, I do find that F/HON luggage does get priority and arrives quickly, but that saves me perhaps only 5 mins compared to SEN/*G "priority" luggage handling. At outstations, I observe that the F/HON tags are still taken seriously, while sometimes *G priority tags are largely decorative (i.e., useless), so perhaps F/HON also saves a bit more times sometimes on the outbound segments.

When one travels weekly or even more frequently, these segments of 10-15 minutes can add up, but I think compared to other constraints, they are quite minor. The argument about spending more time with family for me only holds water with respect to those who, due to HON priority handling, are able to make connections that would otherwise be missed. Missing a connection is a big deal, and it can cost a traveler anywhere from a couple of hours to a whole day (sometimes more), which is huge.* However, since I usually fly nonstop on LH metal (one of the realities of being FRA/ZRH based is that if you want to fly nonstop, you often have to fly either on LH/LX unless you are flying to the hub of a competitor), missing connections is typically a very minor point for me.

*Which is also why I often often to fly to HKG and get a driver for a handful of Yuan (or the train when I am not in a hurry) to CAN instead of trying to screw around with a connection somewhere in Asia, and why I complain incessantly about LH abandoning the CAN route.

The PA service (where it exists) seems to me (remembering that I typically only fly 5-10 F segments in a year) more cosmetic than useful, though I do appreciate occasionally being conducted quickly through arrival formalities.

I think anyone who intentionally tries to spend hours at the FCT, or worries about what kind of vehicle delivers him/her to the plane has other, deeper problems, and if their world is really so small that a maximizer experience at the FCT is a big deal (and especially when they feel the need to record it all on video), then I feel more pity than anything else for them.

Maximizing the experience is however different from actually taking a bit of time to enjoy the facilities offered, and for which one pays when one is a F/HON passenger. The F/HON facilities are actually quite nice, and I see no problem, especially when I am on my own time, to slow down just a bit and enjoy the space and amenities LH provides.

In principle, I agree here as well. In fact, if you take this argument to its logical extreme, perhaps the FCT should look like the waiting room in a general aviation terminal. You arrive by private car, security is very quick and discrete, someone is waiting to take you to the plane, and if by some chance you are delayed (maybe because the only fueling truck is still busy with another customer), there is an old broken-down sofa and a some stale coffee that was made hours earlier and has been sitting open and oxidizing (maybe even boiled down a little to enhance the bitterness). The place is not much to look at, but it is damn efficient at getting me from my ground transport to my seat on the plane...

Maybe LH is overdoing it a bit with the Porsche transfers, cigar bars, whiskey assortments, and expensive cured hams, but in the scheme of things, these touches are probably peanuts compared to the costs of, say, operating a dedicated premium call center (although I am not so sure how much more expensive it would be to have a couple of specially-trained HON operators to take HON calls and make sure they get good treatment). I would argue that a top-quality call center is more valuable, but I don't have the data to say if the increased customer satisfaction overcomes the cost (though my comment about having a few specially-trained operators for HON certainly seems doable--even DL manages to do that for their "preferred customers" out of their Chisholm call center).

For me those fancy lounges and car transfers ring quite hollow when the basics have not been well executed, but they are still nice features, when one has the physical and/or mental time to enjoy them. The luxury amenities are still nice, and I see no problem with actually enjoying them when time allows.

We can debate endlessly the value of HON membership in terms of time saved, convenience, etc, but when I look at the raw data, as a FRA-based SEN, I simply don't see a huge step up in terms of time/hassle savings that would justify the cost of moving 30% or so of my air travel from other carriers to LH that I would need to move in order to make the step up to HON. I would love to entertain a convincing argument, but so far I have not heard one, at least not in this forum. I have also not yet heard a convincing argument that there is a difference between traveling as a F passenger (regardless of status), and traveling as an HON.

I DO see a big step up from SEN to F/HON in terms of the spacious, quiet, facilities, polite helpful staff members, and a more relaxed atmosphere that I encounter traveling as a SEN. The restaurant in the F lounges is also quite nice. and as someone here noted, saves having to eat extra on-board meals.

Given the number of times I am underway in a year, and given the number of private trips I make in a year ex-LH hubs, I could potentially persuaded to "strive" for HON on (mostly) emotional and (partially) practical grounds. However, the argument over how much quiet, spaciousness, better food, personal handling, and rubber duckies are worth is a much more subjective and emotional argument than time (as a practical matter) one saves traveling via the FCT instead of Terminal 1, and how much time F/HON luggage tags save on the arrival end.

My hard data tells me there is not so much of a difference between SEN and HON when it comes from getting from point A to point B nonstop on LH. The soft experience, however makes the difference bigger.