TRAVELSIG

Very well said.

This recent article from Reuters in Berlin tends to agree with you by the way:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0HN0DS20140928

Low-cost? Low chance for Air France and Lufthansa


Lufthansa gets around half of its revenues from higher priced premium tickets, but Chief Executive Carsten Spohr, who took over in May, says Lufthansa needs to do more to capture the price-sensitive leisure market, which accounts for around 80 percent of short-haul European flights.

Since its existing domestic budget carrier Germanwings has turned out too costly to compete, he is aiming to use Eurowings for a new run at low-cost expansion in Europe, as its costs are 20 percent lower. The company placed an order for 10 jets for Eurowings last week.

kEiThZ

Eurolegacies haven't yet caught on to the fact that travelers are a spectrum. Today's Y passenger is tomorrow's J pax, when he gets promoted at work. And today's J pax, is tomorrow's Y pax when he's traveling with his family on vacation.

This is why EK, EY and QR are having solid success at retaining customers. They treat Y pax decently. LH wants to stuff them off in a low cost long haul carrier. Good luck with that. I foresee even more defections to the ME3.

kEiThZ

They keep thinking it's all about price. EK has enough of a reputation that most of its customers would pay a little more to fly EK. That'll be a tough fight for LH.

YuropFlyer

Yes, it's kind of funny, 10 years ago EK had to build up it's numbers with low fares - now, they can charge more than the competition (still having lower fixed costs) and enjoy the profits. Some people in DXB did something right. And someone was perfectly correct to jump ship and not take the OS job..

Rambuster

I just came back from a KLM longhaul return ticket in C on their 747 service.
To be honest I was really impressed by the hardware and service.
The seat in C is fully flat and quite a bit wider than LH/LX/OS.
Service and F&B were excellent both out- and inbound.
I slept until 20 mins before landing this morning in AMS and could still get a cup of coffee and a quick breakfast tray. This is something you are lucky to get in LH F (as HON) let alone LH C this close to arrival.
LH's 5* pledge? More like a 3* pledge in reality - at least in C.

If I were a betting man, I'd say Lufthansa will not be around anymore in 10 years time as a longhaul carrier.

seat 1a

Interesting , have not been on KLM for decades.They have an F cabin as well?
Normally get my coffee

I would not take you up on your bet.
With getting Spohr many within LH rank and file were very happy , they knew they got someone with in depth understanding of the company and the industry.
It is of course a monstrous task to guide and set the long term strategy for LH or any European carrier , but very few companies have blossomed with contraction of its main business in combo with going down the value chain.

Be strong , don't let the consultants dictate.

weero

I read this a lot and many might indeed perceive them as decent airline. But from my own perspective this could not be further from the truth. Barbaric food options, one column of seats more than real airlines, a hub in limbo, including free time travel to the Dark Ages, no alliance network whatsoever, and a plethora of substandard Biz seats.

At the current price levels, I would never fly EK. When they beat MS in pricing, then maybe yes.

YuropFlyer

A typical weero (no pun intended)

A few things to mention:

-The "plethora" of substandard Biz seats, well, actually yes, there are some seats which are more like Y+, rather than proper C, so it's indeed a bit of a gamble. Still better than with LH, where you get a guaranteed NEK seat on flights up to 5-6 hours (DXB is still their shortest flight with "real" C seats, is it?) and their standard seat (Rutsche) isn't much above EK's worst offering.

-Dark Ages? Seriously, don't to comparisons when you don't know what you're talking about.. the UAE for sure aren't the pinacle of democracy or "freedom", but they're not about "Dark Ages" either.. go rant against SV if you feel like talking about Dark Ages..

-Hub in Limbo? You could say this about pretty much every airport.. in fact, DXB is still expanding, and DWC eventually will be ready when DXB indeed is "full". Not worse than any other big hub to transit from my personal experience, actually liked it much over many others.

-One seat more wide, I guess you mean like in the 777 in Y? I've experienced it, it's not so bad for an average person actually, and on the other hand you get more legroom than on LH, so if you're tall and slim, you want to prefer EK. Plus, the "1 more" is by now industry standard. Go ask LX about their 777 order..

-The "barbaric food options" I fail to understand. Care to elaborate? From personal experience, their Y food is better than most competitors, C is "ok" (not great) and F is really good.

EK isn't the land of flowing honey, but in my eyes, if you don't get a direct flight and have to change anyway / similar flight times, they're worth a (small) premium to pay. Especially if it's a A380 route (C/F)

TRAVELSIG

This is interesting coming from a long-term HON circle high mileage flyer such as yourself.

I had a similar experience recently with both DL and KL- both in short and long haul I was really surprised how much the products had changed and how much AMS had improved.

The hard products were very good and soft product was OK. On short haul with KL they even have onboard power which I do not find often on LH short haul aircraft for example. KL also flies to destinations such as Hangzhou which are very convenient for many people while LH continues to focus on large hub destinations and increasing their lift to and from them. The first (thinner destinations and bypassing hubs) is preferable to most customers I know if they are not headed to the hub city.

I don't think LH will go away for long haul- I do think however there will be some significant changes required far beyond simply launching another low cost subsidiary.

Rambuster

No F class. My last flight on KLM was in 2006 when they were still flying TPE-BKK for €300 in C.

Lucky posted a good review of the new KLM business class here:
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...erdam-chicago/

Only drawback with KLM is that Flying Blue seems to be quite bad in terms of mileage redemptions.

gum

Thanks for the link, GBM.flights!

Let's do some tiny slices of mathematics in order to make an educated guess about the product quality.

Your link writes about a seating configuration with 18C/19/261Y seats which just invites us to have a look on the traditional seat map of the A340-300:

http://www.lufthansa.com/mediapool/p...1603320378.pdf

This standard "mainline" LH configuration has 30C/28E/221 Economy.

1.) The long-haul wings has 3 rows of Business Class which is a minus of 2 rows.
2.) The Premium Economy Class will occupy the rest of "Zone A" of the main deck and therefore will before the doors 2L/2R.

3.) The rest of the plane is home for 261 instead of 221 Economy passengers.
So the "minus" of 28 Economy Plus passengers (=4 rows) in the "Zone B" should enable Lufthansa to allocate 40 passengers of Economy Class?
This would be 5 rows.

This is a hint that this is not a new low-cost subsidiary company with a completely new offer. It's just a red herring in order to outsource work to a foreign company.

That said I doubt if Lufthansa will really set up a new subisidray and own brand name. It's just simple cost-cutting of the mainline product.

If Lufthansa really wants to decrease the seat pitch there would have been 277 seats in Y-.

To summarize it: The "new" A340-300 outsource fleet is just a fake product/idea in order to split the employees in more groups and having the mainline LH privileged employees of the Golden Age of air travel and outsourced staff. And the "newly hired" staff of an outsource partner. But I will doubt that PrivatAir with its classy offer of BBJ will be the right partner for that operation.

Not a step forward for a great company and another sign for a bad management decision.

oliver2002

A little confusion reigns supreme at the moment with the gentle people that write press reports.

Currently there are two projects for longhaul:

Project 'Jump': use existing LH branded A343 aircraft (the 13 that will remain after the current retrofit) that are pretty much written off based on the previous 12 year rule. Reduce the size of the current new C cabin a bit, add the planned E-class and enlarge Y. The existing LH FAs will fly these under new conditions and they will fly from LH hubs to classic LH destinations that are under price pressure, example FRA-BKK or FRA-HYD.

Project 'worldwings': buy/lease additional A330s (previously 767), crew will be provided similar to sun express. Operate them from hubs and other locations, where ever it makes sense. Product is clearly different from LH, similar to Sunexpress and Germanwings.

TRAVELSIG

Perhaps not just the gentle press report people are experiencing this confusion?

gum

Thanks for clarification, oliver2002, appreciated.

volta

So, if I understand correctly, project 'Jump' will not look separate from other LH mainline products, just the cabin crew will be more grumpier then usual?