DELee

Given the role that Lufthansa plays within the Star Alliance, the code share flights with United as well as the opportunities folks have been using to earn PQPs and use upgrades, here's a link to Lufthansa's permanent grounding of 6 A380s, 7 A340-500s and 5 747-400s:

Lufthansa Group decides on first restructuring package

Additionally, a number of A320s and A340s from Lufthansa, Lufthansa Cityline and Eurowings are being either withdrawn from service and/or phased out.

Wondering how this will impact the UA flyers - especially folks in this forum.

David

aacharya

None of us will miss the 744 in Y.

st530

How many A380s does that leave in the fleet? I liked having the A380 on IAH-FRA because it was pretty easy for Y-J upgrades using PPs (not so easy from J-F but still some success). Of course, who knows when LH will return to IAH and with which aircraft (I would hope at least eventually 747-8).

HNLbasedFlyer

I think the impact is LH and all airlines will likely be different for at least a couple of years or more.....

Bear96

I am going to miss LH Cityline's A340 TPA-FRA service - best way by far to get from TPA to / from Europe. I was booked on it for a trip this coming June/July. Since it sounds like Cityline won't ever be flying any more of those I am sure my flights won't be happening but they are still showing for sale on both the LH and UA websites.

garykung

I would say very minimal.

Since the PQD was introduced, it kind of forced all UA flyers to fly exclusively on UA as much as possible. PQP may make things better. But the whole thing has been interrupted by COVID-19. So no one knows how good or bad PQP actually is.

UA_Flyer

There will be impact to me but no significant.

I like to use plus points (GPUs) to upgrade to F when fly Lufthansa between Asia and EU, but If I cannot, my fall back is to fly SQ to maintain PPS or fly OS for its outstanding in-flight catering.

EU-Asia accounts for 1/4 of my annual travels (roughly 80K BIS) prior to Covid-19, but I anticipate my overall travel will reduce to less than 1/2 in 2021 especially my own organization and other organizations have been innovative and flexible in the past 2 months to go to virtual meetings and begin to see the benefits outweigh the cost of travel to accomplish the same goals. More important I see businesses are finding ways to cut costs in 2021 before operation ( and revenue) is back to pre Covis-19.

I guess the types of aircrafts shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

mduell

Given the TATL JV, plating LH flights on 016 stock was pretty easy.

SunLover

Decreased First Class cabin award redemptions opportunities.

SL

LondonElite

Upthread should read A340-600 rather than -500. A great shame across the board.

lhrsfo

The reality is minimal impact as it won't make any difference to the order or speed at which LH planes take to the air. As things slowly recover, they'll be adding more flights and more planes, starting with the more efficient ones. The birds that they are retiring now are largely the ones they would have retired anyway by the time that they would be needed. They'll be getting new planes from Airbus to fill out the fleet.

cfischer

huge impact for C --> F upgrades with the 346 retirements

st3

I was looking at flights in September for a trip the GF and I have been planning and it wasn't showing up as an option.

CALMSP

I wonder what the likes of IAD/EWR/ORD/DEN/IAH/SFO will look like for flights to FRA/MUC. With the JV in place, I think we'll see either one or the other fly for the remainder of this year going into summer 2021.

noah

LH grounding some aircraft is merely a small fraction of what will impact all of us. I'm not sure when/if we'll ever see 2 LH hubs (FRA/MUC) -- but this is just the beginning. Every airline will ground planes and reduce service. As things return they'll try and forecast when and where travel will return and sometimes they'll get it right and sometimes they won't -- but it will almost certainly not be as easy as it was before to connect many of the spots on earth as conveniently or comfortably as we've become accustomed. It took a long time for the full impact of 9-11 to really be felt on the "new" aviation normal that emerged, and that is a relatively small impact compared to what this pandemic continues to do to the industry. I'm sad to see the A380 go, but I'll just be happy if most of the *A airlines emerge from this in some capacity.