by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 29, 2017 | Featured, Lufthansa, Route Announcements |
Lufthansa has updated their timetable to reflect the addition of 5 new destinations that they’ll begin fly to when the Spring/Summer timetable takes effect in late March.
Here are the details:
Frankfurt – Chisinau:
Will begin 1x/day service on March 28. LH1474 will depart FRA at 9:50a and LH 1475 will depart KIV at 1:20p. Please note that the return flight on Saturdays will depart KIV at 1:25p.
Frankfurt – Glasgow:
Will begin 1x/day service on March 26. LH960 will depart FRA at 2:00p and LH961 will depart GLA at 4:05p.
Frankfurt – Mahon:
Will begin 1x/day service (Saturdays) on April 28. LH1482 will depart FRA at 3:00p and LH1483 will depart MAH at 18:05.
Frankfurt – Thira:
Will begin 1x/day service (Saturdays) on March 31. LH1288 will depart FRA at 1:25p and LH1289 will depart JTR at 6:20p.
Munich – Funchal:
Will begin 1x/day service (Saturdays) on March 31. LH2654 will depart MUC at 8:40a and LH2655 will depart FNC at 12:55.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 28, 2017 | Fare Sale, Featured, Lufthansa |
Thought about heading to Europe during the wonderful Christmas season to experience the Holiday Markets? Counting on traditionally low Business Class fares from anywhere in the USA to most of Europe during November/December? Hoping to spend $2500-$3000?
Not Happening This Year!
For some reason, Lufthansa (at least for now) has not offered their typical attractive fare deals to lure Americans to Europe for the Holidays. For years, I’ve been able to book tickets in Business Class for travel this time of year for as low as $2400 to perhaps as much as $2800. This year, there’s nothing even close to this price point except for a couple of rare combinations. One being Houston – Budapest and the other being NYC to Frankfurt. Otherwise you’re going to be paying $5000-$9000 to fly in Business to Europe to drink your spiced wine.
Hell, for $4100, I flew from Chicago to Johannesburg and back a few weeks ago with SWISS in Business.
In fact, I was looking to book a couple of seats for my wife and I for Thanksgiving Weekend, and the best LH Biz fare I see is $8400 for Chicago – Vienna. LOT Polish only wants $4000. Looks like an easy decision for which carrier to chose. But even the ‘LO’ fare is nuts for this time of year!
On LH, JFK – Munich is $6000 and Washington – Frankfurt is criminal at $9400!!! At this point, they’re charging First Class prices for Business Class seats.
Oh, and there’s this from LH.com when looking at Houston – Budapest. Those of you familiar with LH gateways within the USA will get a kick out of this…..do you see what’s wrong with this picture?
Houston to Budapest from $2500, great fare..Only problem is that Lufthansa doesn’t fly from this Houston airport, but their reservation system thinks they do! 🙂 I suspect that you still need to should up at ‘IAH’ to board your flight.
I suspect that with Air Berlin’s demise, LH feels less pressure to compete on price for travel to Europe even though AB hardly had a US presence. Despite Lufthansa saying that pricing would continue to be competitive even with the lack of competition, it’s obvious that they’re not living up to that commitment and are already passing the impact of AB’s collapse to passengers.
In fact, I’m seeing some Premium Economy fares reaching $2000 from the midwest and east coast which would have been only a few dollars less than Business Fares in previous years.
If any of this changes, I’ll follow up with the info, but with November only days away, we may be out of luck as far as seeing any decent pricing to get from the States to Europe this Holiday Season.
by Lufthansa Flyer | Oct 25, 2017 | Featured, Lufthansa, Terror Alert, TSA |
Beginning tomorrow, October 26, passengers heading to the USA will be subject to a substantial increase in security measures before being allowed to board their flight. In fact, the new requirements include being at the airport AT LEAST 90 minutes ahead of your USA-bound flight’s departure so that you have enough time for the new screening process. This covers all USA and International carriers that fly to the USA.
According to the TSA, this will impact 2,000 daily flights that arrive in the USA and approximately 325,000 passengers.
This is not exactly a new surprise that popped up today. Tomorrow happens to be a deadline that was set 120 days ago when the USA first issued bans on electronics in the cabin, and other restrictions. Most if not all of those restrictions have since been lifted once airlines and airports demonstrated compliance with the new policies.
What might be different starting tomorrow?
The biggest change that I see is that security personnel will increase the number of ‘random’ interviews that they conduct with passengers heading to the USA. These interviews can happen either at the check-in area or at the gate.
Airlines have announced substantial changes as a result of this policy change. For example, Cathay Pacific has suspend ‘remote check-in’ at locations away from the airport and bag drop off services in cities such as Hong Kong.
Lufthansa Group is asking Economy Class passengers to be at the airport at least 90 minutes prior to departure to allow for enough time for the added scrutiny.
The TSA has been intentionally cryptic with what other security measures take effect tomorrow, but considering the nature and sensitivity of security, it’s understandable that they’re not telling us everything that they plan on doing. In their comments however they did indicate that this security enhancement is being done in order to prevent something like an Electronics Ban from being reinstated.
I guess for that alone, a little more screening at the airport is a small price to pay.
