mamb0

Met one of the guys from Lauffer who are operating the HON PA service. Either he switched jobs or Lauffer is also handling "Royal Service" (ridiculous name) He told me HON PA in TLV is practically dead now, no Hons coming in for departure or arrival service.

LXA350

It's reallly a great shame; LH had such a great name in Israel which really was a very challenging task to achieve if you look at the history. There would have been many reasons not to use a german carrier. However through a lot of dedication and hard work from both the german and the Israeli side LH became one of the most popular foreign carriers especially amongst premium clients. With one stupid decision by LH management the many years of hard work got destroyed. They can only fix it by deciding rather sooner than later to reintroduce long haul service at least on all FRA fights. SCORE can not work if you loose your most loyal customers and instead of downgrading the flights of one of the most dense premium traffic route in the LH network other ways had to be found how costs can be saved. As I mentioned, LH needs to rethink their entire model of long haul operations, one to two crew mebers should be removed from each long haul aircraft and only one Purser should be on the flight on all planes except for A380 to start with.

Rambuster

Basically I agree with your arguments, however we don't have the financial data to back it up. LH has this data and I'm pretty sure they did the math.
Interestingly enough, other airlines seem to be following LH's move to operate narrow bodies on this route.

BA seem to have the smartest concept, by reconfiguring a couple of narrow bodies with Club World type seats. Therefore they can offer a limited number of premium seats which they can presumably sell at close to full fare!

I am surprised LH did not go this direction? Surely they could equip some A321s with longhaul C seats to serve TLV, CAI, BEY ?

...if you listen closely, you can still hear the BA laughter at their Waterside HQ....

oliver2002

Well, AFAIK the refit of the former bmi A321 with the LX seat was a project from the years LH was in control at BD. BA just inherited them and is putting them to good use.

hugolover

True, but it was a bmi lead project. And let's not forget, bmi would have had a better cabin on the KONT routes (except TLV which they dropped) than LH anyway.

oliver2002

The project to refit the A32S fleet with (former LH) NKS in brown cow and put in a LX/OS/SN style C was most certainly signed off by the head of LH Passage as it was a major investment at a time when bmi was bleeding cash by the truckload.

hugolover

Yeah sure signed off. But DH were behind it.

LXA350

That really was a smart idea, but now it's BA offering it's passengers 3 daily flights with a good product although single isle and LH offers NEK. I really think LH has enough routes where A32S are used for longer flights that a sub fleet at least based in FRA would make sense and this would also solve their problem if they are not cabale to operate the long haul jets economically to TLV.

sunseeker

at least we now have an indication how El AL feels about it:
they can't stop laughing !!!


Mehr Israel-Flüge ab Deutschland.
Im Sommerflugplan 2013 hat Israels nationale Flugline EL AL ihren Flugplan um einen Nonstop-Flug ab Berlin erweitert und bietet Geschäftsreisenden und Touristen dann insgesamt 29 Verbindungen pro Woche von Deutschland nach Israel.
Von Frankfurt/Main geht es elfmal pro Woche, ab Berlin-Schönefeld zehnmal sowie von München achtmal nach Tel Aviv, Israels angesagte Mittelmeermetropole. An Tagen mit zwei Abflügen besteht die Wahl zwischen einem Vormittag- und einem Abendabflug. Hievon profitieren vor allem Business-Reisende mit nur einem Tag Aufenthalt in Israel. Die Rückflüge erfolgen jeweils morgens oder nachmittags. Wie die Fluggesellschaft mitteilte, können auch in diesem Sommer „Rail & Fly“-Bahnfahrkarten gebucht werden. Neben den Verbindungen ab Deutschland besteht im Sommer auch wieder eine Verbindung zwischen Wien und Tel Aviv. Der Sommer-Flugplan ist vom 31. März bis 26. Oktober 2013 gültig.

mamb0

BA, too. At least that's what the purser on my recent tlv-lhr trip told me. If that darn flight would end up at T5, I would not fly anything else. But connecting to a TATL with that stinks a bit.

Rambuster

The 20 mins bus rides at LHR surely doesn't stink as much as 4 hours NEK ?

rorschi

Unbelievable and shocking !!!

TLV is (was) the biggest "hotspot" with HONs outside Germany. As the people there are usually willing to pay C and F, it was a little bit more difficult to get rid of the HONs, as the method by banning Economy Class from earning HON-miles did not work there. By replacing the comfortable classes with NEK-seats they seem to achieve their goal.

IMHO, either the HON-programme will end in a few years, or LH will relaunch it with a campaign "we got it", as the German Railways relaunched the BahnCard after they kicked Franz out. But LH will have a pretty hard work to get their customers back... (we will see how long it will take till TLV will be served by a single A319 ex-Germany per day...).

mamb0

Oh absolutely. It's just less comfortable than it could be. I am a travel diva... And also there is still LX...

Rambuster

Just a quick note to travellers on NEK services to CAI and TLV:
Make sure not to check any bags. The A321s need to be fuelled to the max to make the journey. With a full load of pax, there is often not enough free cargo weight available to load your bags ! Therefore they are quite often left behind.
The problem of course being that the next available flight is just as full....your bags mighty be stuck for days at your origin.

Perhaps this is the reason LH launched the additional cargo flights from FRA to TLV? .... Just to transport left behind bags...

hugolover

How come those flights are full? Are there many FTL hipsters going down there these days?