kai.lileboo

I noticed that LX is operating many EU routes on Air Baltic or Helvetic.
What kind of aircrafts, cabin and service is to be expected? Is the crew Swiss or what? What kind of quality would that be? Why Air Baltic?
Is business class and meals LX standard?

​​​​​​Thanks

olm022

I recently took several LX flights that were operated by Helvetic, Air Baltic and Edelweiss. In summary:
Air Baltic
Crew is from Air Baltic. On several flights they were rather unfriendly and do not seem to understand pax status structure within LH Group. Service is done "by the book" without understanding the concept of Swiss hospitality. Emailed to HON service about the shortcomings only to be told that crew is in training.
Helvetic and Edelweiss
Crew was very similar to what one can expect on a SWISS operated flight. Some were great, some were... just there and delivered the service.
Overall, Air Baltic decision seems to have filled the gap of LX insufficient aircraft count, but it hurts on the service level.

chris63

Helvetic, overall rather poor, service is generally much slower & less responsive in J intra EU

HKG1111

My experience is rather the opposite. I have no issue with Helvetic in J at all. The Eco service on the other hand is rather ..

Concerto

I'm glad I am not the only one who feels this way about airBaltic. I think it was just awful, in fact, but often SWISS is plain awful. Or sometimes SWISS is ok to jolly good. You never know, it's the lottery of inconsistency, the hallmark of LH Group. And I particularly dislike inconsistency. So I have taken my business elsewhere, mostly.

Helvetic has been pretty drab, too, on flights this year. The only one that is sort of ok is Edelweiss.

cfischer

I found Helvetic and Edelweiss on par with LX short-haul in J. Same product and service level IME.

davidj1

Sharing similar sentiments for Airbaltic, crew is a bit more rough. But I've only taken short 1 or 2 hour hops with them so can't complain too much - they are efficient.

Upside is the aircraft are new and fresh. I believe they run A220s.

Kacee

We just did five intra-Europe legs on a combination of Helvetic and Air Baltic. One in J, four in Y. I would agree the Helvetic crews were more polished (basically same as LX) and the Air Baltic crews were not at same level.

A couple additional thoughts.

1. The sale of lite fares has created an awful situation with economy pax carrying on the kitchen sink to avoid checked bag fees. It's made worse by the lack of pre-assigned seating, so you get families/groups scattered all over the cabin. Boarding is very very slow and chaotic and the overall experience is on par with flying a LCC in the US (i.e., extremely unpleasant). For the first time in many years, I see some value in paying for J intra-Europe.

2. The seats on the 220 are terribly uncomfortable. A shame because it is otherwise such a nice aircraft.

fereke

While I agree ​​​​on seeing value in paying for J, it is a pity this value was not created by improving J but by deteriorating Y to even lower levels...
Me buying J does not help with the general mess and delays it generates, though.

airoli

To the best of my knowledge, on LX all passengers have a seat assignment prior to boarding. And people travelling on the same PNR are assigned seats close to each other. It's not like FR or WN.

Kacee

Yes of course they have assigned seats by the time they board, but I think you know very well there is no advance seat selection on lite fares.
That is purely aspirational. We saw many groups/families split up.

Fabo.sk

I have done one flight on BT wetlease for LX and a couple for SK. In general I did not have any issue with BT crew on these flights, yes, they are a bit less polished than LX crew, but within the range - while on average LX is better, I've also had LX mainline crew which was worse.
One good think about BT wetlease is A220s which I find very good and comfortable aircraft. LXs are nicer visually IMO (color combination) but the same hardware.

LX does no longer allow for free seat selection for Light fares, even on check-in time. As far as I know, the auto-seating will try to seat single PNR together, but if there is no contiguous block of seating available by the time the group checks in, it will not reseat anyone to put them together, nor will it autoassign seats in advance.

shipsmail

Had several flights on BT, as most of the flights DUS-ZRH are operated now by them. The service is in general ok, the plane quite new. Crew does not speak German, no Swissness of course at all and no recognition of status.

kai.lileboo

KACEE: 2. The seats on the 220 are terribly uncomfortable. A shame because it is otherwise such a nice aircraft.[/QUOTE]

The A220 is one of my favourite aircrafts. Large windows, large pitch (first 6 rows) and every time I flew it, I chose 3 seat side, and the middle was empty. But this was on LX, I don't know the difference between airlines. On the other hand I find a LX A320-neo to be very uncomfortable, very tight seats, too upward and too close, with almost no pitch and the windows are too low, thus to be able to look through you must bend! I avoid flying it!

vivere

I flew with Swiss this past weekend and can agree to most peoples experience with airBaltic, they are NOT good. Swiss should seriously consider to dump them, crew is an absolute mess. Slow service, very bad english (even the pilots speak bad english).

I asked the crew for a bottle of Cava, directly she started to look around in the storage box for booze. How can you as an FA not know what Cava is, it’s not that hard to learn the menu if you are not a retard? It is the same in whole of Europe. They didn’t collect trash either for landing, but I guess thats why our flight was so late from the beginning out of Zurich (cleaning). I had the feeling that the young ladies on my airBaltic flight is not something you trust if it ever happens a real emergency onboard. Helvetic was pretty good though.