Originally Posted by
JimInOhio
You mean one of those *A carriers in Europe who don't even offer F or even J except for widebody aircraft? The bigger shock is for the guy who flies J ORD - FRA on either UA or LH and then gets connected to an A320 with only Y (with terrible seat pitch, I might add) and a blocked middle seat they pawn off as J for another three hour flight.
True, but the lounge experience is better (well, less crowded) than this side of the Atlantic. In the end, there was some kind of balance, LH J: less-crowded lounge and access to every *A lounge intra-EU, worse seat, priority boarding, mediocre food. UA F better seat (except UAX), overcrowded club on I>D and no club at all on D>D, mediocre food,
priority boarding.
With intra-EU flight times on average shorter than intra-US, this different approach with LH focusing more on the ground experience and UA focusing more on the flight experience was more or less justified, and both carriers met in the transition between those experiences by reciprocally offering priority boarding to the premium pax of each other. No longer.