florens

Politicians and government should not be surprised. Nor should the general public („they got money and now there are reduncancies anyway“).

The govt/politicians clearly showed for 14 months now they don‘t want people to travel (think quarantine list), so this was fully expected sadly.

LX and other airlines have no other choice than to downsize, sadly.

Shame on govt/politicians who don’t care about a whole industry.

LXA350

I didn't do the math, but if things will not be even further reduced to what was announced, the fleet reduction for LX seems to be the lowest ratio wise within the LH group.

Hopefully LX will not sae further on it's products and end up like LH which sorry to say barely deserves 4 stars, at least they have no funding left for the time being to buy themselves the title of a 5 star airline which they surely have not been over the past years. The closest in the group to match such title would be LX but the more LH will be deciding on how the airline is run LX might also loose it's boutique quality offering. Since COVID I started flying the gulf cariers and when it comes to cabin cleaness and operational efficiencies during these times they are far superior to LH group.

HKG1111

I fully support your 4 and 5 star assessment. On the cleanliness, I wonder why we see this difference. Often all airlines actually use the same (outsourced) cleaning companies. For me it is just sloppiness on LH group side to supervise the work.

moreaki

I'm cautious to search for the sole culprit in politics alone. LX leadership has been largely absent both with innovative ("fly to nowhere", for example) or strategic ideas (digitization anyone?, thanks Amadeus for finally introducing ADOK) early on and with appropriate communication (the news agencies reporting on travel restrictions have been largely deceptive, so why is there no active push from LX marketing department to counter these random crap travel limitation stories in 20min or Blick or whatever people read these days?). Why is there no pressure on IATA still dictating the fare rules (min stay, for example)? Since August 2020, I've been avidly supporting LX by buying as many flights as possible, even outside work/family business. I often wish I wasn't the only HON to do so. Some of my Swiss friends complain, yet 30% of their goods are on one of the cargo planes I sometimes happen to be on. The upside is, that I finally got to see how beautiful Switzerland is, and I definitely fell in love with "Graubünden".

Downsizing: temporarily for two years maybe. I'm certain that if you maintain and even increase quality of service, demand will raise sharply again. I certainly don't want to be scared again by looking at an almost exclusive TAP and TK leg offering all over Europe on any given day on Google flights. The pricing dynamics has to be improved, especially for short-term traveling. AI in fare pricing has clearly shown to still be in its infancy, so let's improve incentives by short-term event appropriate pricing through veterans of the industry. Actively challenge IATA ruling on fare conditions (I'd happily buy the NCE-ZRH-BKK in A/F once a month to support LX if there was no minimal 2 day stay requirement), so routes can be offered to more people willing to fly, independent of irrational, non-conclusive, and largely independent decisions taken by individual governments.

I reckon dreaming is allowed still .

Nick Art

Indeed. Pricing policies could really be improved vastly... I mean just look at the fantasy high prices you sometimes get when checking flights shortly before departure...
Soley because of overly complicated fare combination rules and not because anybody would ever buy them. (I'm talking the 2000 CHF intra European J tickets for example).
It's ridiculous!

airoli

Some interesting items from the SonntagsZeitung interview with the LX CEO:

• Masks expected to remain mandatory on board for the next few years
• Printed inflight magazine will not return
• "Wir prüfen aber auch gerade, ob es auf allen Strecken und Flugzeugen acht Sitze in der First Class braucht und ob die aktuelle Grösse der Business Class auf allen Strecken sinnvoll ist." - We are analyzing if we need 8 F seats on all routes and if the C cabin is the right size on all routes

moreaki

For years you could read in the LH Group financial report that Eco+ pays for up to 60% of C cabin's real estate capacity. Instead of refitting planes to reduced F and C in favor of Y+, how about restructuring the general service offering and pricing? Pre-Covid, LX F was easily on 80% capacity. At least on the flights I regularly took to SFO, SIN, MIA, JNB, LAX, HKG, with the exception of the already slashed NBO, where I pretty much always was the sole F passenger. Over the past years, I cannot remember load capacity ever being below 50%. Clearly, very often you don't have full F paid fares in cabin (this can be solved by improved pricing). But I'd be surprised if they sliced LX F down to 4. Affluent people are naturally price sensitive and this has been largely ignored by LX. The UHNWI do not bother with flying F anyway. It's the best time for LX to have some balls and invest! And maybe start listening to those of us who actually fly almost daily on their network.

moreaki

It's become beyond ridiculous. Given the weather situation in CH, I've looked at some quick turnaround flights for tomorrow in any C fare. Nothing below 12 cpm, and it should be in the 4 to 5 cpm bracket for the first 30 - 50% load capacity. If I didn't know any better, pricing strategy seems to loosely follow the BAG country list it seems.

My future EU -> PMI flights will currently be with Jump Away PJ: https://www.jumpaway.ch/emptylegs/. I've just called again and the prices for 2 PAX are around the same to what you've just quoted above. Their list is much bigger than what they publish, so give them a ring. Super friendly and very competitive pricing!

airoli

I am not privy to LX's revenue figures and projections for the post-Pandemic world, but I'm pretty close to airline commercials in general. I can very well imagine that there are plenty of routes where a different Y/Y+/C/F seat distribution will lead to a higher overall yield.

8 F seats on all long-haul aircraft is a very rigid layout. Up until the introduction of the A330-300, LX operated a sub-set of A330-200 with no F at all, and those were well suited to lower yield routes like YUL, DEL, BOM. From what I hear, the realized revenue in the F cabin on these routes has never been satisfactory.

I would expect (some) A330-300 to go back to 4 F seats, and more Y+ instead.

oliver2002

POst pandemic travel will be clearly different, I'm sure LX will observe how the bookings develop in their old cash cow. If banking and pharma ex ZRH cut their C/F travel, capacity will follow. Dumping the F cabin in the market to fill it may be a short term solution to fill seats you cannot remove, but if demand is gone for the long run, it makes sense to rearrange the furniture. The A330 will get a new cabin anyway in 2023-25 so it will fall in line with the LH group cabin layout.

florens

2000? bargain! 5000 from Geneva to Tallinn via Zurich. Oh and this is P class.

Nick Art

I still hate the thought of this.

I still think it makes sense to retain the 8F layout on the majority of the fleet, especially with the reduction on LHs side.
However, what I can see happening is that our Lufthansa overlords will push the 4F seats with the A359 to be deployed in MUC, also to be deployed in ZRH eventually, all in the name of group wide cabin layout standardisation. Blergh.


As for the wonderful fantasy prices depicted above: I've had the chance to talk with somebody inside LH/LX whose idea/dream/goal is to tackle this exact issue. But the revenue department is quite firm and old fashioned about changing... Only time will tell if she's going to be successful...

oliver2002

Funny how people imagine a world of IATA pricing... if you look into it a bit deeper it is not what you would like for the consumer...

Nick Art

I'm not sure what you mean by IATA pricing: It could either be the current one based on the letter codes or one that is even more fluctuating and dependant on even more factors and hence worse... I don't like either :P

Her idea would be to have the prices more steady and not as much fluctuation, but have the tickets and pricing be way more modular.

moreaki

Absolutely, and the luxury industry rarely follows demand, it creates it. Given that train of thought, for myopic leadership it makes sense to dump F into the market, decrease its offer and thereby increase demand yielding a vantage point for steep price discrimination. If only pricing dynamics were that simple and static . I believe the airlines taking bold new directions in "real time" tailored strategic pricing and seat arrangements will generate the demand in their respective luxury segment.

Why not introduce a commodity trade style offering or a reverse dutch auction pricing? Or how about the PAX sets the price, and depending on increasing load capacity you raise the floor price per fare class to accept the tender. And for heaven's sake: improve the IT systems. Even banking, insurance and pharma have to a certain degree reached the 21st century in digitization and digitalization. The LH group seems to proudly remain the Gallic fort of " let's make it extra tedious and complicated, nay damn near impossible, to book a seat on their fleet" as an organization. Renegotiate service contracts, as airport companies and other value chain service companies are willing to enter new arrangements.

If I look at the crawling speed of the EU's or IATA's attempt to create a "digital travel passport" or any sort of coherent consensus in leadership, I truly wonder if there is interest at all in finding a viable solution in due time, or if further damaging various depending economies is still wildly acceptable and accepted?