tomashi

That's certainly true! Although as long as most fully flexible domestic and european C class fares are only slightly more expensive than fully flexible Y, I think that many people will still choose C over Y if they have a choice to do so!

But of course the 100-200 € premium may be increasingly difficult to justify when the hard advantages of flying C (versus the "soft" advantages like status miles) become more and more invisible to the customer!

-Tom

flysurfer

M is fully flexible in most cases, too. And many even cheaper fares are also flexible, you simply have to pay a nominal rebooking fee. @:-) Still much cheaper than buying a Y fare in the first place. Plus, you can now combine a flexible with a cheap nonflexible fare on a roundtrip, which is nice if you know that only the outbound or inbound portion needs to be fully flexible. The most restricitive fare rules now only apply for the respective fare component, not for the entire trip. LH changed that earlier this year, it's another "good" enhancement for the Eco flyer.

The other good thing is: no YQ and taxes for the second seat, but you still get award miles for both seats. Since taxes are so high (and keep rising by the minute), LH's base fares need to be kept rather low to end up with the desired fare total. That's very good for those who want to buy a second seat in coach.

Rambuster

I just played around with my flight stats:

2010 I had 27 KONT C segments on LH vs 21 KONT Y segments on LH

I have a feeling I will be trading down in 2011.
TFM's strategy of buying a second Y seat on a flight might actually be a good idea ? Then at least you have guaranteed seatblocking !

weero

WHY?

What deeper insight drives you to the brink of such a conclusion? Trash the wardrobe, squeeze more seats into the cabin, decrease the pitch .. how many insignia you choose to miss in order to at least not dismiss the notion of Ryanairism?

That said, it is hypothetically thinkable that the new seat is less crappy than the old one for the coach flyer but it is certainly not unreasonable nor unfair to suspect LH of penny pinching.
While I am inclined to agree on the quality of the FAs, no other airline left me stranded as often as LH did (even though QF made some effort). So in terms of reliability, reservations, and ground staff, LH is still the same old Gulag to me. Even Xiamen during a snow storm outperformed them.

Add to this the lack of a continental Business seat, an obsolete intl Business seat, a pretty bad lounge situation, and a home airport which surpasses maybe three hubs on Earth (say IAD, DEL, and CDG). And LH could not be bothered less to fix FRA and rather enjoys blaming politicians, FRA management, unions, and the like for the situation.
That would help LH and its propaganda department. Certainly not us.

thomasalexandre

Still don't get it: all those are things you don't get with the "schöner fliegen" cabin neither: same seat as Y, no wardrobe. And the food is the same: I already had a "be invited" euro c meal: was the same just different branding.

NewbieRunner

Official photos of "die Neue Europakabine" (select Actuell > Europakabine)

http://mediabase.lufthansa.com/fra_c...EntryAction.do

and the press release:

http://presse.lufthansa.com/en/news-...icle/1843.html

thomasalexandre

Looking forward already to the comments on here on how evil Lufthansa has once again manipulated the seat pitch shown on the pictures (which to me, looks pretty good!). Malicious LH marketing that choose extra small people or applied their dark Photoshop magic to fool us.

On the pictures posted before, which showed a B737; it looked like the cabin casing was replaced by some darker grey (looked pretty cool to me...); this is apparently not the case: or only in the bobbies?

weero

Congratulations that you are capable of telling seat pitch from scale factor free images. I believe that your displeasure with some of the comments here comes from a too colloquial use of the term "pitch". The complainers here, we do actually refer to the density of the seat lattice. Which inevitably goes up when more rows are crammed into a plane.
Oddly enough .. you provided the proof for manipulated images yourself .

thomasalexandre

The above pictures were taken on an A319: guess LH simply doesn't change the plastic on those.

In the press release: LH writes: an average of 4cm more. But let's compare some of the old marketing pics with the new ones:

Guess it's pretty clear if you compare the old with the new cabin that the seat pitch is without doubt not smaller than before.

weero

So they made the plane longer ?

NewbieRunner

No, they made the windows larger.

oliver2002

Had a great day yesterday in FRA, snow only stole about 1 hour of the time, but we had a sufficient buffer.

Major press of Germany and Europe were present and have already reported, interesting to see what finally made the news.

The pics from the press kit CD are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/airbusdo/20101215# It has a few more than the 'official' website.

rcs85551 and ralf krippner took a ton of photos, including me measuring the old seat in a A321 on our way to FRA and the new seat in the same way.

No time to type right now (work bekons) but surprisingly the seat is indeed better. The missing wardrobe is not an issue for extra luggage storage, but coat storage is definitely gone.

Got some news from recaro on the new new new C, but will share that later.

San Gottardo

Thanks for the update.

I know I keep on repeating the same question, but still I am waiting for a definitive answer: does the new seat have a reclinable seatback? Or no more recline?

Rambuster

The new seat has a reduced recline compared to the current seat. Not sure how much though.
(reported on VFT)

thomasalexandre

Here you have it guys: a full 4cm.

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_i65Z5o5lvt4/TQ...itzabstand.JPG