Lufthansa starting A380 service FRA-SFO May 10th
 

I just found out that Lufthansa will be operating their FRA-SFO flights using the A380 starting May 10th. Coincidentally, I am on vacation that week and was planning to fly to Europe May 7th. Does anyone have thoughts on whether I should delay my departure until May 10th to be on the "inaugural" A380 flight from SFO to FRA?

http://presse.lufthansa.com/en/news-...icle/1866.html

Depends on how bad you want to be on a new plane and guaranteed personal screen. And how much it'll cost you to change the ticket. And the effect on your itinerary and trip.

Check prices. Interesting how the foreign airlines are getting planes and the U.S. airlines are downsizing their planes to 757's across the Atlantic when possible. They just can't fill those seats. Well with $7.00 for a beer, one doesn't need to wonder. Why can't they have "happy hour" during the first two hours of the fight. Two drinks for $7.00. Oh no, the CEO won't get a Million Dollars in bonuses.

misterfuss - I wouldn't make the change, but to each their own.

<i>Interesting how the foreign airlines are getting planes and the U.S. airlines are downsizing their planes to 757's across the Atlantic when possible. They just can't fill those seats.</i>

Not really true. They are just different business models. The US carriers focus on point-to-point and one-stop traffic where they can drive a revenue premium. This is reflected in the newer planes that the US carriers have ordered - types like the 77L, the 787, etc, which are smaller planes that better serve point-to-point markets.

Continental, for example, flies a lot of 757s across the pond. And they serve a lot of cities with those planes that the European carriers simply don't, including it seems, every landing strip in the British Isles.

Delta, which also uses a mix of 757s and 767s across the pond, serves 31 European destinations, and they operate trans-Atlantic flights from something like 10 different US cities. Lufthansa, for their part, serves 17 US destinations from 2 European airports.

For both Delta and Continental, with extensive short-haul networks unmatched by the European carriers, the resulting number of possible one-stop trans-Atlantic itineraries exceed the European carriers by several orders of magnitude. If you travel between Boston and Frankfurt, you may not care, and would be glad to take Lufthansa, but if you are traveling between Birmingham and Stuttgart, you probably appreciate the ability to make only one connection with Delta.

Next time I fly a US airline across the Atlantic, I'll ask wally to find me one of those flights that the airline "can't fill those seats". Yeah, I want 3-4 seats for myself so I can lay down.