lufthansa
 

We are flying round trip Chicago to Prague in April, what are coach seats like, food and are they charging for drinks ?

we've flown Lufthansa several times, SFO-ATH and were quite comfortable considering we were in economy. Drinks are free. They keep you hydrated throughout the journey with choices of water or juice every hour or so... pretty civilized.

I actually found the seats rather cramped and I'm not very tall. The inflight service was ok.

Free alcohol which I was told includes after dinner drinks. Leave the $5 bills at home.

We have flown Lufthansa many times. If you like coffee in the morning make sure you have it before you board the plane. They don't serve it until after breakfast...not with it. Otherwise it's the same as most other airlines. Nothing bad nothing special.

We actually found Lufthansa's coach seats to be pretty uncomfortable (not much padding) and cramped.

Food was all right and the flight crew was pretty nice.

But if you have any problems or if they've lost your luggage you don't want to have it happen with Lufthansa. They are not very good at handling lost luggage (mine was lost for 13 days heading to Europe and for 4 days leaving Europe). We give them really low marks in customer service.

We flew Lufthansa to Frankfurt in December. Seats in coach seemed unusually cramped. Very uncomfortable. No personal entertainment screen, unlike superior AirFrance. And worse yet, the only movie the showed was "Flicka"!!! Truly a flight from hell.

LH is one of the few "major international airlines" that do not have any personal video screens in coach for any of its planes.

AF/KLM have them on most, but not their 747s.

My luggage was delayed on my outbound flight and lost on my return flight. To be fair...there were 3 connections and I was changing from Air Canada to Lufthansa. I found the luggage department in Rome quite helpful. The bag was put on another flight and it arriveed 3 hours later.

We've flown them several times in the past 3 years and overall found them above average. Seats were neither better nor worse than others. Crews were what you'd expect from a German airline - efficient and professional (on two trips crew was outstanding, but we may have gotten exceptionally good crews). Food was better than average with a couple of choices and in sufficient quantities. Drinks were free and served before, during and after dinner (on transatlantic flights). Several trips throughout the cabin during flight with water, fruit and snacks. Have heard several complaints about the IFE with no individual screens etc, but since we sleep, read and listen to music it wasn't an overriding problem with us.

Maybe I just had a bad flight, but one of my worst flight experiences was on Lufthansa.

First, the airline double-booked seats and actually printed double boarding passes for the seats. Once on the plane, the "foreign" passengers(American, Asian, Arab) who were double-booked lost their seats and had to wait for everyone else to board and then were assigned where ever there was an empty seat (fortunately, I got one).

If you read any of my other posts, I am NOT someone who whines about Americans being treated badly by foreign companies. But in this case, that seemed to be what was happening.

The airline also apparently didn't follow the reserved meals, because they had given out all the "special" meals (vegetarian, kosher) to passengers who didn't reserve them. Then, the passengers who did reserve the meals were out of luck and had to starve the whole flight (I was sitting next to an Arab-looking couple who could not eat the regular meals for religious reasons; they were very unhappy with the airline giving away their reserved meals).

The flight attendants spent most of the time in the back of the plane smoking, and would nto respond to passenger requests.

When I left the plane, I notice that every single aisle had trash, meal trays turned up-side down on the seats, and so forth, left behind by angry customers. I don't condone that, because the flight crew doesn't care what you do to the plane - they just leave and it becomes the cleaning crew's problem (not fair to the cleaning crew).

It was a surreal experience.

I flew Lufthansa to Munich in 2005 and vowed never to fly with them again. Seats were ultra firm and cramped, and in-flight service was nearly non-existent. Our luggage was checked through to Bern and we experienced no problems with that. I'd happily pay a few extra dollars to fly a different airline.

Melissa

Ah, these replies are disheartening. We're flying Newark-Franfurt-Venice on Lufthansa in June. I will miss the personal screens as I do tend to spend a couple of hours watching something. Well, I will just hope for the best.

Lufthansa will get you there on time. Very efficient. But from the ticket agents to flight crew its a cold sterile experience.

>whines about Americans being treated badly by foreign companies. But in this case, that seemed to be what was happening.
This is totally unthinkable. It's more likely that people who had reserved first (or online) or with only electronic ticket or transferred from another (local) flight or whatever rational reason, were served first. It must have been a reason beyond your knowledge. They are very sensitve about treating their customers equally. (even if it's equally bad ;-)

We flew Newark-Frankfurt last fall and the only complaint I'd have is no personal tv screens.

There was more food/drinks given to us at our seats than we really needed plus they had water stations set up all over the plane that you could get up and help yourself to at any time.

The seats were comfortable. It's one of the few flights I've actually been able to fall asleep on.

logos -

I really do not jump to these conclusions lightly (really. :-) ). But in this case, that really seemed to be the case.

The airlines gave out two boarding passes for the same seats. On the airplane, there were a couple dozen of us with double-booked seats. The flight attendants selected who would get the seat and who had to stand around (on the plane, with people trying to squeeze by you) and wait to see what was left over after everyone else was seated.

Now, if this happened at the gate or when we were checking in (where the employees have access to a computer), then I can see what you are saying. They could determine who reserved first, who was a frequent flyer, etc.

But we were singled out on the plane. There is no way the flight attendants could tell which of us booked first, just by looking at us. And no, the first person to sit down didn't always get the seat. I saw an Asian couple removed from their seats, and they had to stand in the aisle like the rest of us so others could sit down.

Like I said, it could just be that I had the one bad flight in the airlines history (that's just the kind of luck I seem to have). But this incident was so bazarre that I never flew with them again.

Edited to add: the flight attendants didn't even ask our names. Somehow they just "knew" from looking at us who booked first? That was a neat trick.

Has anyone flown on one of Lufthansa's BAE 146-200 planes? That is what they use on their Germany to Naples route. I guess it's smaller than a 737?

Bae146 is a smaller 4-engine jet. Lufthansa seem to put 6-abreast in economy, while I know many airlines usually put only 5.

They sit about 90-100 passengers.

Do they have an OK record? I don't like small planes, although I guess this isn't all that small....