Lufthansa will install its new Business seats with direct access to the aisles and “throne” seats on its fleet of eight superjumbos Airbus A380 after concluding that the gas-guzzling four-engine aircraft will fly for the foreseeable future, CEO Carsten Spohr confirmed on Thursday.
At the start of the pandemic, Lufthansa grounded its fleet of Airbus A380s, and the intention was that these planes would be taken out of service and would not be returned to service until “in the event of a surprisingly rapid market recovery.” Faced with the strong recovery in demand for transatlantic leisure, the airline has taken the decision to start re-operating Airbus A380 from summer 2023. The goal is for the company to eventually bring back the eight A380s it still has (initially 14, but six of them have been sold), and Lufthansa has already planned five A380 routes for’summer 2024.
Initially, Lufthansa planned to re-fly only six of its A380 fleet (out of eight), but the airline is now bringing its entire fleet back from long-term storage, and Carsten Spohr sees the aircraft as an integral part of Lufthansa’s global fleet for the long term. At first, the return of the A380s was mainly described as a temporary measure, given the delivery delays of the Boeing 777-9. The airline has not committed to retaining these planes long term, although that has now changed.
Lufthansa’s CEO doesn’t know how many years the A380 will actually stay with his company, but it will last long enough for the airline to incur capital expenditures for a complete renovation from the cabin business class with the new product “Allegris” from Lufthansa which was initially expected to debut this year. The long-awaited Allegris business class will present an alternating configuration 1-2-1 Or 1-1-1 with direct aisle access for all passengers – a big improvement over Lufthansa’s existing, rapidly aging business class product.
The much-delayed product won’t debut until spring 2024, when Lufthansa takes delivery of a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with the freshly installed cabin. The cabin will then equip a completely new Airbus A350 before renovations of older aircraft are considered. “It costs money, but it is important to remain sustainably profitable,” Carsten Sphor told Aerotelegraph.
The timetable for the renovation program has not yet been revealed. It is also unclear whether Lufthansa could modernize the cabin First class of the A380.
