Throughout the summer Lufthansa will totally renew its European business and economy class seating.
The mammoth German airline is throwing away tens of thousands of existing seats across its short-haul mainline fleet in favour of new generation seating from manufacturers Recaro and B/E Aerospace.
Says Thierry Antinori, Lufthansa's executive VP for marketing and sales, "This is part of the quality offensive we launched last year. It will offer passengers within Germany and Europe even more comfort."
Passengers in business class benefit most. They will get a proper four across (2-2) layout on Airbus A320 and B737 flights with a fold down table ensuring a degree of privacy between the aisle and window seats. This resembles the dedicated layout offered by Air France mainline within Europe but is more generous than the five across (2-3) configuration offered by some rivals including British Airways.
New seat side coat hooks enable jackets to be hung even when the centre table is folded down. Seat width is increased slightly to 48 cms and, because the seat back is slimmer, there's an extra 4 cms of legroom.
There's no change to the economy configuration but the new seats are said to be more comfortable thanks to the absence of metal or carbon structures in the seat back. Some economy class rows will gain an extra 4 cms of legroom depending on where you sit on the plane.
However, because of space constraints the new seats will not be available on Lufthansa's commuter subsidiary Cityline's smaller BAe146 and Canadair jets on less busy routes.
Lufthansa points out that the new seats weigh less so annual fuel consumption will be cut by five million litres.
The seating will be progressively installed between April and October this year.
For more information go to www.lufthansa.com
Report by Alex McWhirter
