LX A with new minimum stay conditions
 

I used to book frequently LX to North America in First in booking class A when staying in NY for 3 days without problems. Trying to book this for October again, it did not work out and only F booking class available, while A was available according to Expert Flyer. Calling the Swiss core customer service, I was told after some checking that the new minimum stay is now 6 days for booking class A. Core customer service wasn‘t aware of this and surprised.
Probably the solution is to book two tickets, one originating in Europe and one originating in US (for two stays).

Beware of higher fares in one direction though. Typically USA-Europe is more than Europe-USA.

It has been like that for quite a while, no A on LHG on less than a week :td:

Similar to P fares. Was looking for a P fare to use my eVouchers for a short business trip to New York later this year and no “cheap” P fare on less than 6 nights. :td:

I was just checking the fare rules. The cheapest A fare ZRH-NYC for mid Octover is ANCB0 at 7295++ CHF.
The rules for Minimum Stay say: " TRAVEL FROM TURNAROUND MUST COMMENCE NO EARLIER THAN
12 HOURS AFTER ARRIVAL AT THE TURNAROUND."

How do they implement the minimum stay?

That is the minimum stay, there's nothing else to implement. Looks like that fare can be booked if you return from NYC the next day; doing an immediate turn drives the fare up to CHF12k+
FWIW on NYC-ZRH there is a cheaper A fare that does have a Sat night stay requirement, for ~$6.7k (and 50-day advance purchase), otherwise it's $11k+. Currently nothing I see on this route that requires a full 7 days.

Usually way more, and prices from NY to Europe have been crazy for a while.

LH-Group (not LX specific) introduced these crazy 8-10 day minimum stays for A class about 6 months ago.

What happened is they dropped the OR Saturday night requirement, which probably screws most of us.

It’s absurd really as it’s inconsistent with most of their competitors, and just pushes most of us to other airlines. In case no one else has noticed, their F cabins suddenly aren’t looking as smugly full as they were last summer 🤷🏻‍♂️

Yes, let’s hope this starts to hurt their revenue & they drop these absurd enhancements

these ‚cheap‘ fares are not valid ex Germany.
so you have to start your trip in CH/IT/etc.

Generally, the last several months, A class availability becomes less and less even for 10, 11 or 12-mth out, even you see F8, A is 0.

Also annoying is, they can‘t tell you for sure if any upgrade availability whether LH or LX, but they can tell with certainty on award booking, this is another very strange thing to me. It makes it almost impossible for me to use evoucher in any of meaningful long-haul routes.

So much intransparency.

Yes, that is my experience also.

Impossible for me to use my evouchers since i refuse to end up in their sub par J on longhaul flights, been giving them away to Family on Y to I & even that has not been working out as they prioritise upgrade bids :mad:

Same experience here. I always book business and then try to upgrade by calling Swiss. If it is no going through immediately, I ask them to cancel the business ticket, which is free of charge on the same day. In that call they can also rebook you on another flight to try, if there is upgrade availability. A very annoying complicated process, as they have to send the upgrade request to revenue management with mostly an (negative) reply within minutes.

yes, ex US fares are about 50% higher than ex Europe. But when you combine both it is still cheaper than booking F booking class.
BTW AF rules have not changed (3 days minimum), therefore their unchanged fares are on the same level from Europe as it is on LHG from US.

Pre Pandemic it was not like this, they used to be super helpful…….