We're going in the economy section;
which is better between these two carriers as far as leg room and onboard service?

Check the plane. The LU 777 seats can be tight.

If you can get economy plus on United, it's well worth it. (You can buy your way into Economy Plus by signing up for the program. $300/year) It's a nice amount of extra legroom.

Also, United has individual entertainment units in economy. Last time I flew Lufthansa to Germany, they used drop down screens to show only one movie.

Food is similar, except that Lufthansa may give you wine with dinner. I don't think United does, but I could be forgetting.

United and Lufthansa are allied airlines. From our part of the country (Salt Lake City), if you book either you often fly the same flights, though not necessarily at the same price.

We had a problem with Lufthansa overbooking our return flight out of Munich. It was pain but they got us on a Swiss Air flight out of Zurich and reimbursed us the price of the flight. I am not sure any other airline has ever treated me so well when a mistake was made.

Regards, Gary

We recently flew Boston - Munich RT on United/Lufthansa. As noted, (out of Boston at least) they essentially operate as the same airline - the flight going over had a UA flight number and was operated by Lufthansa; going back was the reverse. Go figure.

Booze on Lufthansa was free, there was a charge on United (The hell with toiletries - has anyone else noticed you can carry on a lot of nips in your 1-qt plastic bag?).

Lufthansa operated an older 747 going over, with the TV-style movie screens; United had a newer 777 with screens in the seat back and a much wider range of entertainment options, in addition to a bit more pitch between seats. The UA 777 also had a 2-5-2 seating arrangement unlike the 3-3-3 on the British Airways 777s I've been on a lot lately - that was nice for the two of us at a window/aisle pair, not so nice for whoever gets stuck in the middle, I guess. The food on United was marginally better, which I guess is damning with faint praise.

Otherwise, economy is economy pretty much, so go prepared to be uncomfortable for a few hours no matter who's operating the flight (did I mention how many nips . . .?).

This site shows seat width and pitch (distance between seats) for most major airlines serving the US:

http://www.seatguru.com/