Key8

I couldn't belive it - but it is seems to be true:
I suppose they want to keep the seats free for further cancellations and limit sales to the ones who really need and can afford to travel.

Source here in German:
Lufthansa streicht Flüge und Buchungsklassen - TRAVEL INSIDE (abouttravel.ch)

Google translate of the most relevant parts

Specifically, the booking class ban applies to all flights operated by Lufthansa (LH) within Germany and Europe as well as to the USA and Canada (westbound) as well as to all Air Dolomiti flights. According to the notification, only booking classes J and Y or additionally G and F (on USA and Canada flights) are available for these flights until July 31, 2022 (within Germany and Europe) or August 10, 2022 (to the USA and to Canada) available.

The reduced availability applies to all booking channels including lufthansa.com and the Lufthansa Service Center.

This means that only one of the available booking classes (J, Y, G, F) can be booked in each reservation system. In the case of Lufthansa flights, after flight cancellations, it is possible to transfer to the next higher booking class within the same compartment in accordance with the SKCHG/INVOL guidelines. This means: Economy Class passengers in Y class, Business Class passengers in J class

Key8

(deleted)

fassy

....... that is crazy.... Jut looked to book a CPH-FRA-CPH flight end of July.... EUR 1.400 in Y.

Funny enough, they list also via VIA on OS in Booking Class V for EUR 560 r/t. Direct with SK for the same days run at EUR 650.

Madness!

Fabo.sk

Wow. Indeed, prices are quite crazy till end of months.

Whudda thought. Finally COVID restrictions are for all intents and purposes gone... and yet travel is worse as it was a couple months back!

sw1x

Apologising to customers by letter simply isn't good enough. LH saves a ton of expenses by not providing services to the amount they promise (what's with lounges still not being staffed, looking at MUC T2, etc.) - so they should do the proper thing and at least stop charging egregious amounts particularly on their domestic flights. As demonstrated above, the opposite is true.

After all, a rebound in travel should hardly come as a surprise. LH management apparently used tax payers' money during the pandemic to pay severance amounts to staff they let go and now that demand is back they cannot re-hire people.

And what's more try booking flights as the owner of one of the M&M Discount passes: these no longer seem to apply to any flight - but turn out to be limited to certain connections, some of them not even non-stop for domestic legs. This is not what was advertised - and simply scandalous behaviour by LH.

At the same time, all management board members increased their base salaries in 2021 by a combined EUR 0.5mn or EUR 86k/board member except for the CEO who got paid EUR 163k more in base salary. The supervisory board buddies signing this off should be as much ashamed as management.

IAN-UK

Well I guess it means no-free-seat-reservation-for-Sens-on-cheap-tickets gets kicked into the long grass for a few weeks….

Silver linings and all that.

Fabo.sk

Hah!

No such luck.
You can get Light fares all the way up to Y.

chris63

Beyond ridiculous & a disgrace

daumueller

while I generally agree, it makes more sense than selling 1000s of extra tickets that need to be rebooked

Fabo.sk

But then you can limit capacity without removing all but the most expensive classes from sale. Even though I understand why it's advantageous for the airline, I think it's a bit shortsighted.

chris63

Works for the airline but not the pax, it’s just profiteering

MSPeconomist

From this point on, the move makes every LH ticket fully flexible and fully refundable. Passengers can rebook themselves as they please and LH agents don't need to worry about fare class availability and fare rules, just whether there's a seat for sale in the desired cabin. My guess is that this removes married segment logic for inventory availability too as I generally wouldn't expect married segments to apply to full fares.

In some ways, this seems like a move back to the old days before yield management when airlines just sold generic tickets (with some discounts for youth, etc.)

Fabo.sk

How'd you figure that? Light and Classic still exist.

8420PR

This is a win for any customer that has already booked tickets. Any customer that still needs to book a ticket for July is not going to be flying Lufthansa (if they have any sense) - which is LH's intention! If this blanket move applying to all flights (if it stays through to the end of July) is going to cost LH a lot - I can't believe that all flights for July are already totally full.

M&M award flights still seem to have the same availability.

hotturnip

But if you're paying full fare for a ticket, you're going to be even madder when they cancel the flight or lose your bags or misconnect.