Throughout the month of July, LUFTHANSA selected several long haul flights to trial a new concept that they are considering for roll out that will be known as Business Class Signature service. The concept is focused solely on their Business Class product and is designed to bring a new level of personal attention and detail to the Business Class passenger.
In the title I referred to it as a ‘Soft Product’. In airline-speak, ‘Soft Product’ is often referred to as any part of the onboard experience that is not related to the actual seat or aircraft (normally referred to as ‘Hard Product’). Soft Product typically includes catering and flight crew; things that can be unique from one flight to another.
As far as these test flights were concerned, the biggest focus was on flight attendant interaction and responsibility toward passengers. During these flights, Flight Attendants (FA) were assigned a specific group of passengers for whom they would be responsible for during most of the flight. For most flights, this resulted in an FA having 8-12 passengers to look after to ensure a passenger’s onboard experience.
The logic behind this concept suggests that if an FA can focus his or her efforts on a small group of passengers, it will allow for far more interaction between crew and passenger as well as delivery of a far more personalized experience for the traveller. As it stands now in Business Class, FAs are left to deal with the entire cabin of passengers and basically see themselves as simply delivering beverage and meal service, but never personalizing the passenger’s experience since there is little time to get to know upwards of 50 or more passengers! With Business Class Signature, FAs will be able to focus on a small group of passengers, get to know them and based on this increased ‘touch’ be able to deliver a very personalized experience.
Based on feedback from both crew and passengers, this pilot program was extremely effective and successful. Further ‘tests’ are planned and more enhancements will be introduced over the coming months. If all goes to plan, expect to see an official fleet wide launch in Summer 2015.
If any of you were aboard one of these flights and experienced Business Class Signature, please share your thoughts about it!
I think they have done something like this in the past, but maybe just not formalized. About 3-4 years ago I was going back and forth to Germany quite frequently in biz and requalified for Senator status by April or May that year. There must have been an extra little star by my name or something after I hit that threshold because the flights after that had way more personalized attention. Things like, the pilot coming over to introduce himself to me, a senior FA stopping by frequently to make sure I was happy/comfortable with the service, taking my meal selection before anyone else in the cabin, bumps to First class, targeted bonus mile offers, etc. Sometimes it was a little embarrassing because they would only recognize me and I had more than one seatmate inquire who I was in an attempt to determine the reason for the VIP treatment! I think I had 200K status miles that year which was a lot of butt-in-seat. I’m amazed at the people who achieve HON, they’ve gotta be flying back and forth to Asia in biz or first on a monthly basis.
Erik,
The Flight Crews definitely are aware of your status and even today Senators and HONs are greeted personally by the pilot (when time permits), purser and flight crew. You can definitely tell who has SEN or higher status when aboard LH aircraft.