It’s not often when you read a 5-star Skytrax airline like Lufthansa and Poor man’s Business class together. A few weeks ago I wrote about Lufthansa’s intention to launch a regionally configured Airbus A319 on the Pune to Frankfurt route. Lufthansa is all set to restart the route from November 1, 2018. When they announced the route, the business class on this flight was supposed to be just like the way it works in Europe, 2 seats blocked on a 6-across economy class row. It looks like Lufthansa is sort of enhancing their Business class on this route.
Lufthansa Pune to Frankfurt Route via Baku
Intra-Europe Business class is the same as Economy class but with a blocked middle seat. For this route, Lufthansa is blocking 2 seats instead of one. So, each row will consist of just 2 Business class seats.
Lufthansa’s Business class seat map for Pune to Frankfurt flight
Not enough for a Business Class passenger, but better than what Lufthansa was offering before. It essentially is a poor man’s business class, which people have access to in Economy class if they are in luck. With this, the configuration will change to 22 Business class seats and 72 Economy seats. A cut of 20 Business class seats is surely a big blow. Lufthansa seems to have taken the high road here.
Lufthansa will provide the same meal service it provides on all of its long-haul flights. They will offer some sort of voucher for business class passengers to download movies and magazines for Economy class passengers. Lufthansa was one of the first airlines to switch to e-Inflight magazines. Good news is that Lufthansa will provide Wi-Fi since all its A320 family aircraft are now equipped with FlyNet.
Bottomline
Lufthansa is trying hard and coming with different ways to improve comfort for passengers on it’s Pune to Frankfurt flight. Wish they could take the other route which airlines like British Airways have. By other routes I mean, operating specially configured A319s. Passengers from Pune have the option to travel via other cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi if they want a more comfortable journey.
Does that change your intention to fly via Pune to Europe if you are a premium passenger?
(H/T: One Mile At A Time)
The flight will now be canned from February 2019 onwards
I think Pune needs to be promoted as an International Airport to reduce pressure on Mumbai.
One can save 2 hours with this flight instead of driving to Mumbai.
The business should be charged at premium of 50 to 75% to economy to avoid the feeling of cheating for passengers
If Lufthansa wants to take this route seriously it’ll have to come up with a sub fleet with proper business class and lie flats. And the fact that the flight involves technical stop at Baku doesn’t help either.
Could a A321neo or 737-MAX9 make it all the way to Germany?
Having service to Pune can be a great win for LH (hence their previously using Privat) but it needs the right aircraft and configuration. There’s no way I’d fly from the US to FRA and connect to what’s currently on offer. I’ll continue to fly United to BOM and fly onward next day on whatever Indian carrier is around (I usually fly Jet but they may not be around much longer).
Pathetic pricing for a pathetic hard product. PNQ is very close to BOM and LH has good connectivity to BOM. Why can’t LH contract a helicopter company to ferry passengers from BOM to PNQ? That way, the passengers get the undiluted Business Class experience along with convenience of reaching PNQ in lesser time.