urcertel- did they set the minimum upgrade at $750 and you chose to bid $850? Or did you have bid multiple times? Flying SFO to FRA in 2 weeks. I have premium but will also try the auction. Thanks

This is my quick review of the two recent flights on Condor, in paid Business and Prime Business class.

August 29

Phoenix-Frankfurt

Condor DE2027

Airbus A330 Neo

Scheduled: 7:35 PM

Seat 2K ( Prime Business )



I checked in on line, which was not easy because, for some reason, the site was in German. Did passport check at the counter at the airport. There was no line at the airport security, but the line to get to the Escape lounge, which Condor uses in Phoenix, was about 30-people long. The attendant said that there will be 30-40 minutes wait to get into the lounge. I finally got in after about half an hour of waiting outside. The lounge was just OK, but it sure was better than waiting at the gate.

The boarding area was a zoo, with wall-to-wall people. Parked at the gate next to ours, was a BA flight, a full B-787, scheduled to depart for LHR at the same time as our flight. Plus, there was a domestic flight boarding near us. BA flight departed on time, but we had an hour or so delay due to a single cleaning crew servicing (3) planes at once. I kind of expected a delayed departure from Phoenix because the flight was consistently running late the whole summer, according to FlightAware.

Once on the plane, the service was excellent. I upgraded my regular business seat to Prime Business seat for $240, (6) days prior to my flight. With (4) Prime seats being available for upgrade for months prior to departure date, the price fluctuated from $360 three months ago, to $300, and down to $240 six days prior to the flight. All Prime seats were occupied on my flight, so I am not sure if Condor auctioned them at the gate for less than I paid.

On a night flight, I would strongly recommend upgrading to Prime. The seat is big, the service is more attentive, the TV is bigger, pajamas and snack basket are offered. As a side note, the remote controller for my TV did not work properly. I could use the touch screen but the TV was too far away from the seat to use this option. The crew tried to reset the system a few times but nothing helped. I did not care much about it because I was planning to sleep anyway. Imagine my surprise when the purser came over and offered me to choose any item from the On-Board Duty Free catalog, up to 100 Euros, to make up for the malfunctioning controller. I thought it was a good, proactive service recovery by Condor.

Other than that, the flight was smooth, comfortable and uneventful. I can't remember what we were served for dinner, but I remember that the quality, the presentation and the service were quite good.



September 14

Frankfurt-Phoenix

Airbus A330 Neo

Scheduled 2:55 PM

Seat 3H ( regular Business )



Check-in in Frankfurt had only 2 people in the Priority lane. I did not do the on-line check-in. Security was easy. The LH Business lounge near B44 had everything I needed : a shower, lots of space, decent drink selection, and good food.

The flight was completely full. It was the last FRA-PHX flight for this summer season.

All Prime seats were sold long before my flight. It did not bother me much, especially on a day flight. The regular business seat was comfortable and was plenty big for me. The crew was not as friendly as on the outbound flight, but they still were very attentive, hard working and efficient. The only strange thing I remember about this flight is a strict bathroom enforcement for the right and left side of the plane. I was sitting on the right, in 3H, and the crew did not allow me to use the single front bathroom, which was on the left side, by the cockpit. I was also discouraged, almost prohibited, to use the left bathroom at the back of the business class. The rule, though very strange, was strictly enforced by the crew. I don't know if this was just a single occurrence or the policy with Condor. But in any case, my suggestion for you would be to choose a seat on the left side of the plane, because then you would have an access to two bathrooms, one in front and one in the back. The right side only has one, in the back, for the same number of passengers.



To conclude, Condor did a fine job getting me to and from the Continent. Phoenix does not have many other options to get not-stop to Europe ( seasonal Air France and BA/AA ). I would probably use Condor again in the future, as long as I don't have to connect.

I hope this report will be helpful to those who plan to fly Condor in the near future.

minimum bid was set at 749 CAD. There were 4 people bidding and it got really heated during the last 2 minutes.I ended up winning it at my final bid of 850 CAD.

exactly a week later (Sept 18th) my friend flew the same route (YVR-FRA) and he won an upgrade at 750 CAD because he was the only one bidding for an upgrade on the seatboost app, so no competition.

Condor flight review for my roundtrip LAX to BAS September 2024. Flight from LAX was delayed by 18 hours due to medical emergency on the incoming flight. Condor put us up in a hotel and we left Sunday 9/15. The ticket agents at LAX were amazing lines, separated lines for economy, PE and Business. The Condor flight to Frankfurt as nice, the crew amazing on the flight, professional and pleasant. My spouse was upgraded to the Prime seat on the outgoing flight, I was in regular business (I did snag the pajama's though). Landed in Frankfurt and from here is went downhill. The amount of stairs all while carrying carry-ons and long transferring to get to a bus to get to a holding pen, to get to a bus to get to Lufthansa CRJ to climb more stairs to the plane was very hard on my knee. Frankfurt is a difficult airport to manage if you are older or have mobility issues.
Vacation over, so back to the airport leaving on Lufthansa from Amsterdam to Frankfurt, uneventful but searched due to the dreaded SSSS on my ticket. I had another long walk to reach my gate for the to Frankfurt. Lost out on the lounge due to reading here on how long it takes to get through Frankfurt.
This is were Condor really blew it for customer service. I already knew I had that dreaded SSSS on my ticket and this is where a giant Condor cluster5uck happened. Long walk to get to a basement Condor gate, no priority lines or any line separation; just a mob of people trying to get to the ticket agent. My ticket was scanned then passed into a "holding pen" seating area. Within minutes everyone had to get out of the "holding pen" for a ticket and passport validation, why wasn't this done the first time through the line? This is where the SSSS came in pulled aside, 5 of us taken to a secondary search area, typical and sent back to the mass of people. I rejoined my husband and was turned away after they scanned my ticket as I hadn't had my passport scanned. WHAT? They checked my passport x 2 once when we were in the Condor line before the "holding pen" and then in secondary. I had to get back into the mob despite going through this line 2 x before. The failure of Condor to get their .... together in Frankfurt is an insult to the flight staff and pilots that actually fly the planes. Got through that line, ticket and passport passed inspection but the GA said this is all due to your Countries rules What?. The cluster5uck lines were not due to my Countries rules. Then we got to board a standing room only bus to be taken to a gate with a jetway. I was the last to board and made it to my seat. I will never fly through Frankfurt if I can avoid it. Condor needs to get their act together with boarding lines and better customer relations at Frankfurt. LAX can do it, why not Frankfurt?

Can anyone share experiences and prices bidding for an upgrade from economy to premium economy?

I've booked a condor flight from YVR - FRA and there are no changes that I can make until check-in (e.g. seat selection, upgrades, or add baggage).

"Quick" review of our recent flights with Condor in Premium Economy

FRA-MIA on 5th of September

Check in at FRA was quick, even though we lined up for Premium Economy and once we got to the counter they told us we had to do a document check before which was never mentioned anywhere, nor were we approached before getting in line. They were kind enough to check us in and let us do the doc check afterwards.
Fast track security was a nice add-on, even though the regular line wasn't really long either.
Boarding was a mess, had a remote gate (almost at the other end of the apron). No priority boarding or organization whatsoever.
The seat of my significant other was missing the advertised footrest, which seemed to be the case on several other seats too.
Food was ok for Economy, didn't really notice a premium touch except for metal cutlery and lots of premium economy branding. Individual water bottle at the seat was a nice touch.
Crew did a decent job, even though not overly friendly and almost completely invisible for hours during cruise.

MIA-FRA on 26th September:

Check in only opened 2 1/2 hours before departure so we had to wait a few minutes until checking in. Otherwise quick and easy.
No fast track security but not needed either since the line was almost nonexistent.
Boarding pretty well organized by groups (enforced). .
This time both our seats had the advertised footrest.
Food was subpar, especially the breakfast with a cold and hard croissant with a big chunk of cheese in it was disappointing.
Crew did a decent job again. I only noticed two walk throughs with water and I didn't sleep more than a half hour. That's something to improve, especially because there was no individual water bottle at the seat.

For both flights:
We both found the seats to be super uncomfortable. I sit in an office chair a good portion of almost every day and despite that, my butt started hurting after only two hours. Really didn't like the almost non-existent padding of the seats as well as the overall ergonomics. Reclining didn't help either for any of us.
The legroom is quite good on those premium economy seats, even though the seat itself is just a regular economy seat.
Didn't like the concept of welcome drinks in the air, which basically meant the first round of drinks was narrowed down to orange juice and sparkling wine. Do it on the ground or just get rid of it...
Getting priority baggage is helpful and both times our baggage arrived at the belt pretty quickly.
The toilet situation isn't really great either. There are only three toilets in the forward part of economy of which two are super tight and one is huge, probably for accessibility reasons. Seemed like the crew did almost no cleaning during the flight since the toilets were already pretty nasty after a few hours.

Would we book again?
Yes, at the price point we got our flights, we would probably book it again. When it's at the same price with an airline with a real premium economy, we would book that over Condor anytime, even if it's a route with a stop, as long as the connecting flights aren't too long.

Upgrades to Business?
Were offered on both routes, they asked 799€ for the FRA-MIA leg with 7 open seats. As far as I know it got down to 599€ at the gate and the C cabin ended up full.
On the MIA-FRA leg they asked 899€ with 2 open seats.
Needless to say we didn't jump on any of those since the price of the upgrade combined with the fare we already paid was above the C-fares we could've booked right away.

BAS? Condor flies to the Solomon Islands? Normally SSSS are taken aside before the immigration checkpoint when you go from A to B. The DHS/TSA requires FRA to do the SSSS either there or at the gate. Doc checks are also done for the destination countries requirements. ;)

A friend of mine missed a Condor flight LAX-FRA (DE2087 Oct 4) because of showing up late to the gate due to a scheduled delay (it was at 7:49pm local time when he called me that he missed it, looks like the flight pushed out at 8:13pm, 1h13min late, not sure about his exact gate arrival time, but either way it was too late). Flight was in paid business class booked via Amex Travel (with some points applied), and was the return leg of a round trip ticket. I contacted Amex Travel who called Condor and Condor supposedly said that since it is a no-show the ticket has no value anymore and cannot be changed. Is there any point in following up with Condor and trying to get any remaining value as travel credit / taxes refunded etc. or do we just accept the loss? My friend already got out on a different flight booked separately with a different airline. I understand that Condor is not at fault here, just trying to figure out if it is worth trying to get something out of them or if that would just be a waste of time.

You can get airport taxes maybe. IMHO not worth the effort.

Last month, I tried out Condor business class from Frankfurt to Miami; the review can be found on my eponymous website.

In short, my two biggest gripes were about the IFE (rubbish choices), and the horrible state of Miami International Airport (although that's not a Condor issue). Otherwise, good crew, good overall food, good seat. BTW, All seats had aisle access on that Airbus A339.

In my experience from Frankfurt was anything close to what you experienced. The flights were great, granted the IFE could use some updating for Americans. We didn't have the nice check-in window that you showed with different classes. We were in some kind of basement area with no defined class designation. The check-in staff had no procedures for scanning passports. The mob of 300 people being sorted out no less than 3 times was chaos. Then a crowded bus trip to a regular jetway. What a mess. We didn't despite being at the airport early have time to use or even check out the lounge. I am glad we decided to check-in before trying to use the lounge, we would have never made it. The flights were great, Frankfurt would not be my first choice in airports to travel to or through.

Did you guys figure this out? Any success? Even if AS can't do it, Condor should be able to add a lap infant.

No, unfortunately. I spoke with reps from both Alaska and Condor over the phone. Alaska definitely couldn't do anything about it and Condor reps told me it's not possible to buy a standalone lap infant ticket and refused to escalate both times I called.

In the end I gave up, canceled that flight, and booked a trip to Asia instead because I got lucky with the Starlux drop.

Yeah, I guess Alaska explicitly says they don't do lap infant tickets.

How do lap infant tickets work on Starlux? You booked an award through Alaska, I imagine?

Flew FRA-SFO 3 days ago. Like everyone else's experience here, FRA ground services were a mess. Condor check in seems to be banished to the farthest outreaches of Terminal 1 - took forever to walk there. Priority on the boarding pass meant nothing as there was no priority boarding, and it was just a mob of people rushing the bus to get to the remote gate. I chose to upgrade to prime seat at check in since I was on an AS J award and only paid for taxes anyway, plus it was my first time flying Condor. At check in, 3 of the 4 prime seats were available so I paid for seat 2K. I had been monitoring the pricing for weeks and it was consistently $600, but a week before departure it dropped to $300 and stayed that way. Luckily there was an error on the US site during check out, and when I tried it on the German website (translated with Google Chrome), the pricing was different at 249 Euro. I backed out to check the US website again and it was still $300, so I went back to the German website and paid the 249 Euro instead. On board, I found that other people had also bought up to the 2 remaining prime seats. The experience was actually pretty great. Got all the amenities (PJ, full flight Wifi, snack basket, upgraded amenity kit), the flight attendants were very friendly, and they made sure the prime seat passengers got their meals first (along with first choice entree). IFE was a bit lacking with a lot of older movies, but I'd give the edge on the food to Condor over Lufthansa business (and definitely over United).