Originally Posted by
Nick Art
That clarification is just more confusing than clarifying because at first I thought It'd tell me that it's a lie flat seat because the flight was operated by an A330 and not that it's a lie flat seat only when the flight is operated by an A330 (which isn't true either, as we still have the A340s and B77W with lie flat seats that operate the flights sometimes). So imo it is not clarifying at all and rather misleading.
I'm still waiting for the day when some carrier in Europe decides to introduce an actual Business Class into their short haul planes (looks at Qatar), maybe we will see an introduction of that with the A321NeoLRs swiss is thinking about to order that will maybe jump over to the other short haul planes or maybe since new planes will have the range to be used for short haul and medium - long haul we'll see more Business seats intra Europe (thinking of MoM planes)? Yeah wishful thinking I know. Maybe one of us should dedicate his life for the sake of the others and become Manager of the LH Group and introduce that...
The BA A321 Business seats are actually the same as Swiss has on their A330s.
Agreed! Actually El Al for all their bad points do have an actual business class on their short haul aircraft, well more like US style with a 2-2 configuration with recliner seats.
I understand the point the airlines make about fleet consistency but when you have (in this case for example) run 2x daily flights to TLV for 15 years and they are stable and important feeders for your long-haul and European routes, surely it makes sense to configure a sub-fleet with real business class (also for LH) and win the entire business market, which would happen in a matter of weeks. TK in TLV had 8x flights a day (mostly with long-haul product) and Aeroflot has 5x a day with A330 and B777, a huge part of their success is the product in J. If LX or LH had a strong and consistent J product to TLV I am certain they could operate another 2 or 3 daily flights to feed their long-haul.
In the case of LX for example, a flight departing TLV around 8:30 which arrived to ZRH at 12:00 would be a perfect feed for the West Coast and Asian flights departing ZRH at 13:00-13:30. Now pax wanting those routings must take the 5am departure and wait 4-5 hours in ZRH.
A lot of airlines slightly seem to overlook TLV, and those who don't such as TK and lately in the low-cost area, Wizz and Ryanair, show just how much demand exists, and just keep adding more and more.