by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 24, 2017 | AnyWay, Austrian, Featured, Lufthansa, Swiss |
LH group announced a new way of booking trips to a limited group of destinations that help reduce your costs and add a bit of mystery to your trip.
The way it works is that you first tell LH the dates you want to depart and return on and then book your trip as usual. Two days before your departure, you’ll get an email from LH letting you know what flights you’ll be taking. Don’t fret, you’ll depart and return on the days you booked, but you might get some creative routing for the trip. Your flights will be operated by a combination of Lufthansa, SWISS, or Austrian aircraft.
This new program is dubbed ‘AnyWay’ and it covers travel from most of Lufthansa’s German gateways including Stuttgart, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Berlin, Dusseldorf, and Leipzig. However, the ‘AnyWay’ concept only covers 10 destinations thus far: Miami, Bangkok, Mumbai, Dubai, Boston, Delhi, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Peking, Shanghai, and Tel Aviv.
Keep in mind that this is only available to Economy Class bookings made for travel on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
For your willingness to be this flexible, the fares will be a bit cheaper than the lowest prices usually offered on a given route. In most cases, I observed fares being €50 to €100 less.
Sounds like fun if you’re into saving a small bit of money, but there can be some consequences to being frugal…..
The biggest issue that I see and would have with this program is that you’ll be steered to aircraft that will already be near capacity and the airlines are trying to squeeze every last ‘sardine’ into the tin. What this might mean for you is that you may be stuck in a middle seat on a very overcrowded A340 aircraft as you jet off to Asia. Since you’ll be among the last passengers to be put on a flight, your odds of getting a good seat diminish dramatically. If you book for you and your family, your odds of sitting together all but vanish if the plane is full.
However, if you’re into sitting at the back of an A340 in the seat next to the stairs going down to lavatories, you’ll have virtually everyone sitting in coach walking past you at least twice during the flight so you might be able to make a few friends as a result! 😉
‘AnyWay’ is set to launch on October 23 and will be available for travel from Mid-December to Mid-March in most cases.
To learn more about the program and to book travel under ‘AnyWay’, please visit the AnyWay webpage. However as of this writing, it appears that the webpage is not yet functioning even though the launch was set for October 23.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 21, 2017 | Air Berlin, Austrian, Featured, Lufthansa, Swiss |
Due to the demise of Air Berlin, and the fact that many Air Berlin loyalists are ‘stranded’ without their favorite carrier, LH Group has announced that it will continue to send widebody aircraft to Berlin in order to accommodate travelers wishing to travel to and from Berlin. This announcement follows on the heels of Lufthansa’s use of the 744 during certain flights between Frankfurt and Berlin during September.
Lufthansa in their press release feigned surprise at the fact that they’re seeing increased demand from Berlin, but with AB’s shutdown looming what was to be expected? With LH being able to buy a significant chunk of AB’s operations, aircraft, and staff this obviously did not really come as a surprise to anyone.
So with that in mind, here are the changes that are coming for the next few weeks:
From October 23 to October 25 SWISS, Austrian, and Lufthansa will schedule most, if not all flights to be operated by A321 aircraft in order to increase capacity from Berlin to Frankfurt, Munich, Zurich, and Vienna.
During this 2 day period, Lufthansa flights not being operated by the A321 will see the A346 operate the flight between October 23 and 25. For it’s part, SWISS will send their A333s to fly between Zurich and Berlin on October 24 and 25. Austrian will run their 767s between Vienna and Berlin on October 24.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 6, 2017 | 767, 777, Amenity Kit, Austrian, Featured, Premium Economy |
Austrian has announced that their first 767 slated for the upgrade to a Premium Economy cabin is now in the shop and the update has begun. At the same time, Austrian has now opened Premium Economy booking for all of their long haul flights scheduled for March 6, 2018 and onward.
The seat is identical to the one found aboard Lufthansa long haul birds except that the seat colors match the Austrian cabin decor.
As with the current product found aboard LH, the Austrian Premium Economy experience will be nearly identical as far as seat pitch, baggage allowance, and dining is concerned:
- Increased seat ‘pitch’ as compare to Economy
- Foot rests
- Amenity Kit
- Fold old tables with dedicated arm-rests
- 12 inch IFE screen
- One standard and one USB power port
- Checked baggage allowance of 2 pieces at 23kg (50 lbs) each
- Enhanced dining options
- Welcome aboard drink
In all, 12 aircraft will be retrofitted between now and March 2018. Once the €15 million retrofit is complete, Austrian will offer a total of 252 Premium Economy seats on their long haul 767 and 777 aircraft.
I suspect during the next few months (until March 2018) while the upgrades are taking place, Economy Class passengers will be offered low-cost or free upgrades to Premium Economy seats. Miles & More Senators & HON Circle members may receive complimentary upgrades as well. This will be take place on a flight by flight basis while the fleet is being upgraded. At least this is what happened while LH was going through the process of upgrading their fleet.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Sep 4, 2017 | Austrian, Brussels, Fare Sale, Featured, Lufthansa, Star Alliance, Swiss, United |
If you haven’t acted yet, you have 2 days left to take advantage of Lufthansa’s fare deals for travel to the USA. The fares cover travel on Lufthansa Group airlines as well as Air Canada and United.
The sale covers Business Class with fares starting as low as €1500 from most Lufthansa / SWISS / Austrian origination cities in Europe. Most of the USA’s east coast can be reached for only €1500-€1600, while the midwest and west coast can be booked for only €1800-€2000.
Canadian destinations have even better pricing with fares to Montreal or Toronto coming in at only €1300.
This fare sale is set to expire on September 6 so there is are 48 hours to take advantage.
The rules and fine print of the deal:
Minimum stay of 7 days is required
Tickets must be booked 60 days prior to departure
Travel must be complete by October 12, 2018
by Lufthansa Flyer | Jul 6, 2017 | 777, Austrian, Featured, Route Announcements, Vienna |
Austrian Airlines announced that it is set to return to two destinations next year.
Beginning with the Summer 2018 schedule, passengers will once again be able to fly Austrian from Vienna to Tokyo, Japan (Narita) and to Cape Town, South Africa. In their comments, Austrian suggests that market dynamics have once again made it lucrative to serve these long haul destinations. It also doesn’t hurt that they’ll be adding another Boeing 777 aircraft to the fleet next spring. At that point they’ll have 6 777 aircraft that can be deployed on their long haul routes.
Flights to Tokyo will begin first with 5 flights per week starting on May 15, 2018. Cape Town will be launched later in the year with 2 flights per week beginning on October 27, 2018.
