Flight Radar 24 indicates D-ABYA has returned from Xiamen and has returned to commercial service. Has anyone had a chance to fly her as yet to confirm Alegris seats on the lower deck?

It appears that D-ABYC is the 2nd craft that is currently in China - hopefully undergoing the Alegris retrofit!

D-ABYA has been in continuous service since 10th January

D-ABYA returned from Xiamen without Allegris. The same will probably be true for D-ABYC. Although it had been announced otherwise, the retrofit of the 747-8 appears to be delayed once again. This was also indirectly acknowledged in the announcement regarding the A380:

‘Among other things, the Boeing 747-8 and Airbus A350-900 will receive new seats in all classes. To kick off this conversion programme, also known as a “retrofit” in aviation, the popular Airbus A380-800 will receive new business class seats at Elbe Flugzeugwerke in Dresden starting in February.’

Either there are problems with the 747-8 retrofit or the announcement was deliberately false.

Interesting. Could we see non-Allegris 748 now? With First done at the same time as business. And a harmonised product upstairs and downstairs? We can but hope!

That would be the sensible way forward, but what concerns me is that the promise of �new seats in all classes� could technically be fulfilled by refurbishing only the lower deck�

The entire idea of taking care of these retrofits in two stages was laughable in the first place. No matter how much the moderator of this forum may claim differently, the Allegris product was announced more than 8 years ago. At that time, the 747-8 fleet was between 2 and 5 years old, and so it should have been abundantly clear that this fleet (back then 19 units strong) would need a retrofit at some point. Yet we are led to believe that LH only realized this a year ago? And then they came up with the moronic idea of taking care of just part of the business class first, effectively turning the configuration into a rogue miscreant with a 5-class layout for what should be one of the flagships of the fleet. Not to mention that the entire fleet would have to be taken out of service again for part two of the retrofit.

Maybe they have now realized the error of their ways and a new plan is forthcoming. If they had any common sense left, they'd go for something off the shelf in lieu of the overengineered disaster called Allegris. But I am afraid they have long since stumbled into the sunk cost fallacy.

In our Dreams, not going to happen, they would lose too much face

Allegris is a masterclass in how not to refurbish an airline fleet 🤭