Originally Posted by
ijgordon
From a financial perspective, First Class rarely makes sense. Profit per square foot, given the space requirement, is a fraction of business class (which is actually itself smaller than [true] premium economy). The demand just isn't there, except maybe on a handful of routes, which is why you're seeing more and more carriers (even premium overseas ones -- LH, AF, CX, QR) reduce where they offer FC.
To expand on this, CX removed F from their Oceania routes. They don't send it to the Gulf and their Japan routes have also lost much of it—I think there's one HND frequency that still has F, but it may have been discontinued recently. Their A359 is two-cabin so that's another batch of routes that don't have F.
QR only has it on a tiny handful of EU routes.
LH has been slowly dropping F for years, especially ex-MUC but some FRA routes have lost it as well. DEN was already mentioned. All MUC-based A333s lost F and none of their A350s have been delivered with F. IIRC their upcoming 777x orders won't feature F either.