I’ve uploaded some pictures of my journey from Boston to Bangalore to my photo gallery. As I pointed out, Lufthansa feels like an early 1990s airline. They tend to focus on the First and Business class customers, with features like in-flight Internet access. I’d have loved to try this, but there’s no way I can get out my laptop and use it in a full cabin of 32-inch pitch coach seating. Lufthansa doesn’t seem to be interested in competing for the economy passenger. For example, they are way behind the competition – BA, Virgin, Jet Airways – in in-flight entertainment (IFE) for economy passengers. LH, BA and VA all bought 744s at the same time, but BA and VA have aggressively updated their economy seating to incorporate the latest technology (video on demand, games, etc.). Moreover it’s not just a question of the age of the fleet: LH’s newest A330-300 and A340-600 aircraft also lack individual IFE in economy.
Is there any point in competing for coach? Clearly LH doesn’t have the kind of cost structure to complete with newcomers like Jet. On the other hand, both BA and Virgin have recognized that there’s a market for a Premium Economy product positioned between business class and economy. Many companies (including Sun) will only pay for economy, and I can’t afford to pay for an upgrade to business class with all the trimmings. However I’m happy to pay a few bucks to get a slightly bigger seat with a few inches of extra legroom, and I’ve done so on several occasions.
The bottom line is that LH feels very much like an old-style quasi-monopolistic flag carrier. For economy traffic between European cities and long-haul destinations, and between North America and South Asia, they have a fabulous hub in Frankfurt (see my itinerary) and a tolerable price point. They don’t think they need to do anything else to compete, so they concentrate on the premium traffic where they are competing against service-centric carriers like Singapore and Thai. (No US carriers offer any real competition any more.)
So why do I fly them? Convenience, and Star Alliance. (Most of my LH flights were purchased as UA codeshares.) But I still hope that some enterprising carrier will put A340-500s or (eventually) B777-200LRs on non-stops from the north-eastern US to India. (BOS to BLR is 8,139 nm; the A345 can do over 9,000.) I’d switch in a heartbeat.