chris63

Yes, as planned & disgraceful on a route like this

SFO777

Perhaps it's not as important a route as you think.

RTW1

And why would you whish the old F on someone else on another route :-). As long as they are flying someone will be sitting there....

sp4294

^ Makes you wonder though...they really should do better for such a large city.

sp4294

You can never be sure until LH 492 has left that day and YVR does get a higher percentage of old F than most. You're odds aren't too bad lately though (1/10 in last ten days):
http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh492/

flylocal

FRA-LAX (both flights) and FRA-SFO ist newest F in A380 and B748 airplane. Only MUC-SFO is with oldest product. That makes no sense to me...

lowside67

Sure it does... FRA is an important business hub and primary connection point to the rest of Europe for staralliance. MUC tends to be a destination rather than a connector and more for leisure travel. Makes sense that the leisure route is going to get less flights and older product.

Mark

flylocal

hmmmm.... if you put it like this...

SFOTurtle

This doesn't answer why LH is choosing to put the older F product on its A346s that are based in MUC on the SFO route to the exclusion of other routes. FRA being a more important business hub has no bearing on that. By your analysis, LH would not have retrofitted any of its A346s and just kept those on MUC routes. Fact is most of the A346s based in MUC have been upgraded with new F, and for reasons only LH management knows the upgraded planes are rarely being assigned to the SFO route in the past month (the opposite was apparently true just a couple months ago).

I was on LH 458/MUC-SFO yesterday in F. I didn't catch the tail number but it was old F. The purser on the flight (all of the flight attendants and LH's ground staff at both CDG and MUC were outstanding) apologized for the old F, and said that it made no sense why the old F was consistently planned for the SFO-MUC route given the load factors (I was on an award but the award seats did not show up until T-1). The purser made a point to note that other MUC long haul routes (e.g. ICN) were consistently empty in F even when those routes seemed to get priority with new F, and this was a mystery.

Anyway, for F awards, I knew I was likely to get old F on the A346 but chose this routing for a daytime flight with LH's superior F service including Cayenne transfer from the remote gate to the MUC FCT as well as excellent on board service. For a daytime flight, we would still choose LH old F over UA's better hard product on the 744 out of FRA any day of the week. There was one F seat open in row 2, and the f/a were nice enough to make that up specifically for Mrs. SFOTurtle and I to use as our bed during the flight whenever we chose to sleep.

SeisSpeed

I flew the New F YVR -- MUC on the A333, then back, FRA -- YVR on the 747-4.

The tool was accurate, for me, I did use the flight details page as well, but that is only accurate up to 5 days out, but it was accurate. YVR has been getting consistent New F as of late.

SeisSpeed

Seems to me that MUC has more flights throughout Europe than before. Most of the flights I look at in Europe will route through either MUC or FRA. Anyone else notice this change?

sp4294

I have to disagree with that. MUC is becoming more important as a connecting hub and people are realizing that it is a better airport period. It is not just a leisure destination and has good connections to the rest of Europe. Now if you are in the financial business, then you would want FRA of course.

SFOTurtle

But just for the sake of argument, let's assume that MUC was not nearly significant as FRA. Ok, stipulated, but it still doesn't answer the question of why the A346's with old F are assigned to the SFO route while other routes with A346's consistently have new F.

lowside67

If we stipulate that SFO-MUC is deemed to be less valuable to Lufthansa, to me it seems logical that that they would intentionally put one of their lesser products on the route?

In my eyes, I would think the choice of an A346 (new or old F) would conceivably be based on expected passenger volume while the choice of new or old F would be based on the perceived value of the passengers that fly it.

As another example, FRA-YVR currently gets a 747-400 with first class, and it's now being slated to be replaced with a 2 class 747-400. This means the choice of the plane is based on expected volume (ie they can fill a 747-400) and the choice of configuration inside is based on not having enough pax paying for F to justify the product.

Mark

SFO777

Again... Why do you assume that SFO is important enough that it should get new F? When we lived in SFO, 458/459 were our "go to" flights. They were the easiest award flights and the F cabin rarely close to full.