BIZ class ticket on 1 class aircraft?
 

Flew to Copenhagen yesterday with a LH BIZ
class ticket. The flight was operated by Cimbar and service was fine. What confused me was why LH even offers a BIZ class ticket when clearly the airplane had *no* BIZ class.

So M&M members can get 2x miles? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

guess, they can bribe you with miles.

for me that's not enough of a good reason.
it seems like they are selling it as something which it isn't. their was no
business class on this airplane!

EndlosLuft,

if you are looking for a real business class experience (although not that real for LH flights within Europe anyway), you should avoid Canadair Jets and Avro Jets as well. All of them come with only one class of service.
BTW: That service is normally more like intra-European business class than economy class).

What I know from earlier discussions here and from a couple of personal experience, some flights to and inside Scandinavia has no business class service or sometimes no seat numbers for the flight (first come first choose!?!) but have BIZ Class Tickets. I may be wrong but I believe it is about flexibility of the ticketing rules like "changable", "endorsable", "reroutable" & "full refund is possible". This may be the case with your BIZ Ticket.

Calflyer :
You have been right until a few months ago.
Canadair, Avroliner and so on are operated by LH CityLine. They offered CityClass which had an upgraded service. Now they changed to the standard ECO and BIZ divided by a curtain.

LH has several flights operated by small one-class aircrafts but sells b/c tickets for these flights. As said before, these biz tix are usually unrestricted and allowing same day return. Otherwise you only get more and better food/drinks, newspapers and of course more miles. The seats are same in B and Y!

this is the (business-class-ticket-) policy of most European carriers, not only LH.

And yes, all the above arguments are correct (includes the 250%, minimum 2'500 STATUS-miles credit for business-class-tickets, into the miles&more-account of a LH-FrequentFlier or Senator).

[QUOTE]Originally posted by TMTRD:
[B]Calflyer :
You have been right until a few months ago.
Canadair, Avroliner and so on are operated by LH CityLine. They offered CityClass which had an upgraded service. Now they changed to the standard ECO and BIZ divided by a curtain.

I flew HAM-HEL on LH Canadair in November and there were no curtain separating classes. Service was the same regardless of your ticket price, but much more like biz class. Quite nice with heavily discounted ticket...

My 2 Cents

I just got home from a MUC-FMO flight on a CRJ (pretty cramped, but I had no choice). Comfort-wise, the margin between biz and eco is very slim (just the snack, which can come in handy, depending on your situation). But I booked C, because I was flying on short notice and InfoFlyway priced the eco ticket at the same price as the biz ticket.

However - and this may be everyday life for the heavy business travellers on this board - I came to enjoy the flexibility of a C class ticket (almost) at max.

I had a business meeting in MUC and was booked on a 6:40PM departure for FRA and the on to FMO (hoping for double miles all the way). Turns out the meeting is extended, I call the Senator desk and in 2 minutes I am rebooked on the 8:20PM direct flight. MUC airport is quite a ways from the city and it turns out that my local train gets in after the check-in deadline for my 8:20PM flight. I call the Senator line, but there are no later flights available, so I decide to re-route to DUS and rent a car from there - the LH agent even puts me through to Sixt, so it is all settled and done in 5 minutes.

Arriving 20 minutes before departure I try my luck and smile at the check-in agent "I'm sorry, I missed my check-in cut-off time and I've already been re-booked, but is there any chance I might make it on the flight to FMO after all?" She smiles, punches the keys, hands me my boarding pass and tells me to run to gate A31, she will call the gate agent to tell her I'm coming. (Did I mention I bribed her with a chocolate Santa Claus for this nice treatment?).

So here I am in FMO, nobody gave me hard time, asked for change fees or restrictions. And the C class ticket was not that expensive after all...

EndlosLuft: Have a look at you Lufthansa ticket and look what the Fare Basis is (not the cabin class, but the fare basis).

For many routes within Europe Lufthansa (in common with all other airlines) will issue a Y Fare Basis for a C Cabin, in other words you are paying for a fully-flexible Economy ticket and this gives you Business Cabin access WHERE AVAILABLE, but you are not - and often are not able too - actually purchase a C Fare Basis ticket.

This is why on most routes a fully-flex Economy ticket (Y Class) costs exactly the same as a Business Class (C Class) ticket, because they are exactly the same. Within Europe there are no real Business Class fares, just fully-flex Economy. This is the same reason as why on some restricted tickets they are 'Changable Only by Upgrade', in other words to get the flexibility you must buy a full-fare ticket - Y Fare Basis, upgrade to C Cabin Class.

Nick

first of all thank you for your posts i'm learning.

nick, checked my ticket and its definitely a "C" fare.

So the ticket says "C" Fare Basis and "C" Class?

In which case, look on one of the booking agents (I prefer www.itn.net) and compare the price of a Business Class ticket, with the highest price Economy Fare for the same journey, just in say 3 months time. They should be the same.

Nick