Last year there was excitement in Munich with the news that Lufthansa would transfer some prestigious services away from Frankfurt in favour of Munich.

In particular the Bavarian capital would gain more non-stop links to Asia.

Now comes news that one of these links is likely to suffer a ‘downgrade’ from this autumn.

Originally Lufthansa said its mainline division would be operating the Munich-Bangkok route from October 27.

It would be using a three-class A350 which is the most modern plane in the Lufthansa fleet.

Now it appears there’s a change of tack. Leisure subsidiary Sunexpress (a joint venture between Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines) starts daily flights on the route from June 3.

And now, says Lufthansa, that route will no longer be taken over by its mainline division on and from October 27 using an A350.

I quote from the media statement “In the 2019/2020 winter schedule effective October 27 Eurowings will be connecting Munich with Bangkok.”

If this is the case it represents something of a downgrade. Why? Because in addition to a different onboard experience (compared to Lufthansa’s three-class A350), Eurowings (a leisure subsidiary of Lufthansa Group) has different A330-200 premium seating  – see seat plans below.

Why the change? As Business Traveller has explained previously Europe-Bangkok is considered a low-yield route attracting mainly leisure travellers, who tend not to buy high value and profitable (for the airlines) tickets.

Therefore European carriers tend not to offer their very best product to Bangkok (indeed some European carriers have withdrawn from the Thai capital altogether owing to the yields).

Note that at the time of writing (March 11) neither Lufthansa nor Eurowings had changed their website displays for Munich-Bangkok on and after October 27.

Lufthansa tells Business Traveller that both it and Eurowings will be updating their websites in the coming days.

lufthansa.com, eurowings.com