HombreDeLasNubes

Last week I was at the FCT again, after a long time avoiding it. I couldn't find a place to sit and eat. The "PA" told me: "Certainly you can find your way down to the cars on your own..." And then I had to wait in line with 16 other people going to the same plane. So they sent 4 busses with 4 people each. I asked the PA scheduling the busses how they could sell this as "personal service" but she just dismissed it. So I looked up the website and surprise! Looks like LH is continuously improving HON Circle Services:

As you leave the First Class Terminal an experienced chauffeur is already waiting to drive you personally to your aircraft in a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, a Porsche Cayenne or a Mercedes Viano MPV.

Not a word about being able to choose how you want to drive as it did before.

But hey, why do I complain anyway? I am HON, they address my by name on the plane!

Rambuster

Yawn.
This is actually quite old news we discussed some time ago.

GK1998

this is very old news and no there is no guarantee that you will get your own S-Class Mercedes.

May I suggest www.netjets.com as a better alternative ? I use them several times per year and you are guaranteed to get at least two croissants on board.

seat 1a

Ohh my dear , you had to walk down the stairs alone , stand in line and share a ride . That would destroy my day.

SMK77

I think the OP has a point - why flying with LH and giving them good money if they do not appreciate your business. You can certainly do without the perks but the FCT was designed to pamper customers and I think it is a nice gesture having a PA caring for your needs and wishes...

Uli

in the press release about the new lounge in terminal 1 / B, LH mentions "limousine or minivan" service, so they did not learn from that. writing that from a minivan on my way to the plane, and i hate it ....

econprof

Can I share an observation here?

As a lowly SEN, I can certainly appreciate that it's a bit ridiculous to be complaining about not getting a personal ride on a Porsche Cayenne to the plane.

On the other hand, it seems to me that certain similarly ridiculous complaints (the kind of champagne served in first class, for example) get discussed ad infinitum.

In both cases, it's a matter of feeling like you're not getting value for the money that you've paid. In the former case, it's a longer-term investment (in getting to HON) and in the latter case it's a shorter-term investment (in an expensive first-class ticket).

I don't really see the difference, except that the OP was different.

Sometimes, it seems to me, FT can be a bit cliqueish.

NA-Flyer

As the number of HONs is on the rise and during morning rush hours you will find a lot of HONs in the FCT who are not traveling in First Class on long hual trips, just going into european flights and casuing a lot crowded area and inconvenience for First Class passengers who are paying top money for LH, I believe that LH should find a soloution to this problem.

I recommend that they should distinguish between F/CL and HON products by separating both products and make a special lounges for HON traveling on european flights and provide them with all the benefits out of these lounges and keep FCT for only HON traveling long haul or genuine first class passengers.

andre1970

Well, IMHO you will be enormously disappointed if you subscribe to a logic of "investment" when it comes to elite status in FFPs. The only case you will not be let down is when you get status as a result of your necessary (business, vacation, etc.) flight activity. That is, when you have invested zip (as in zero) in terms of money, time, etc. in attaining your status.

Of course, the above "definition" risks to fall victim of itself, since it hinges to a "proper" definition of "necessary": addicted FTers will always convince themselves that a ...RTW routing on a FRA-MUC trip, those countless hours in the lounges munching chips, cheese substitutes and plastic yogurts were absolutely necessary to feed their addiction (no pun intended). And the worse: they will be right!

But let's restrict our talk to "hard" stuff. If you start mileage runs (or you go out of your way to fly JFK-EZE as JFK-FRA-EZE 'cause you get HON miles ) because you are, e.g., 100K short of HON then you will never get your value back in terms of "hard" goods or services. Even in the case where you manage to get those 100K HON miles for as cheap as 5K EUR (and I'm totally letting aside the inconvenience that cheap flying entails).

Note, that I don't blame anyone for doing this, so don't get me wrong. I'm not the one who's gonna dictate to someone how they should lead their lives, let alone how they should price their ego . Myself, I do waste my money in a wide array of useless things.

After all, this board blatantly manifests that there are people out there who do care about being addressed by name on a plane (as a necessary trailer to the primordial dilemma "chicken or pasta?") while they wouldn't care about it while sitting in a Michelin "trois étoiles" restaurant.

The same people who will raise a stink about not sitting alone during a 2 min ride on the way to a 20 square meter tube they'll eagerly share with 15 strangers for the next 14 hours!

sentom

i couldnt have said it better! the complaints about this are getting utterly ridiculous. to get annoyed by the fact that you have to share the ride to the plane with 3 or 4 others is just beyond believe. having to walk downstairs without a PA (babysitter?!) is obviously not possible for people flying a lot or F flyers. i wonder how these people manage to survive without LHs help in their daily lives. besides that, i was ALWAYS asked if i'm ok to walk down alone, or if i would prefer them to take me down, i dont think that i'm the only one they ask.
if the service LH provides is not exclusive enough for you then there is one simple solution, STOP FLYING THEM! i think some of them out there need to get down from their high horse, realize for a moment how much worse it could be, and start enjoying life. if they keep getting upset about stuff like that, life might not be much longer...

sentom, aka hontom

Fendant

Next year they will supply HON bikes ex FCT and FCL for those who like completely individual rides

I think too that the OP's complaint is outright ridiculous, suggest he switches to Shitteam or Once and never World. BTW for his Asian trips Aeroflot and other Russian airlines are also offering VIP rides to and from airplanes in Moscow, they will at a later stage upgrade to sort of Russian Mercedes but have not found suitable vehicles so far.

Last Sunday we were 4 in a van ex FCT ( including a celeb and a high ranking diplomat ) to the PEK plane and had a hilarious conversation, about a guy who found an excuse why he had to delay his departure in order to get ferried by a S class. Maybe he was the OP.

yapak2

i bow my humble head in respect for your message in general and your language skills in particular. made me laugh. too true.

muc_flyer

Of course, different things seems to be most important for top tier customers like HONs are. Nearly every top tier customer is different.
While I could not care less if I will be taken by van for 2-3 minutes to the plane or by S-Class Mercedes, I hate to experience FRAs service to queue afterwards together with the driver in the finger for 5-15 mins before being "handed over" to the cabin crew.
What I am missing as well is, if you travel coach on short trips, LX does welcome you, asks you for newspaper and hands out water to you. It is likely that you will be offered to change seats as well. LH has never approached me in coach so far, no special service at all - something which could be enhanced IMHO.
But again, my personal view - and only what would make my travel more enjoyable.

econprof

Well, some people (maybe everybody here, at some point) have chosen LH/*A over some competitor because of the perks that come with status and loyalty. I don't really think it's odd to think of that as an investment. Whether the return to that investment (however small) is worth it is in the eye of the receiver.

I happen to fly a very competitive route (NYC-FRA) in which LH is usually the lowest or low cost alternative. The perks I get for being a SEN are definitely worth it to me.

But it's also not surprising that when the return is devalued (e.g. having to ride on a shuttle bus to the plane) that some folks will be annoyed, even if most of us think it's stupid.

Just curious, andre1970... you didn't happen not to finish a Ph.D. program in economics, did you??? Your responses to my posts often remind me of the kind of frustrated annoyance evinced by a lot of ABDs I know.

Right... so my question is why aren't other folks similarly skewered when raising equally ridiculous issues, like which champagne they get in F or in the FCL????

flysurfer

I'm happy to report that I walked down the stairs(!) on my very own the last time I used to FCT for a FRA-MUC connection. My PA had to take care of more important/problematic pax, which I'm perfectly fine with because I'm neither important nur problematic.

I'm even more happy to report that I had my personal Cayenne to the a/c, since I was the only pax using the FCT for this flight.

I apologize for not realizing how important it is to report such details here on FT.

Anyway, my flight to LAX departs in three hours, so I better hit the shower, pack my bag and drive the 120 km to the airport. In my very own Touareg (Cayenne light) from Sixt.