Lufthansa oversold business class and bumped me down to Premium Economy. For a recent trip to Sweden and Norway, I had booked a return flight using Avianca LifeMiles: 60,000 miles + $146 in fees for business class: Bergen to Frankfurt to Detroit. I knew there was a problem when checking in: my seat assignment for the second leg, the long overseas flight, was shown as waitlisted. At the airport in Bergen I was told that only the gate agents in Frankfurt could help me. In Frankfurt, they offered only 500 to 650 Euros for people to voluntarily downgrade. Of course, no one did. So, in the end, I and one other passenger were involuntarily downgraded. Lufthansa gave me 500 Euros ($540 USD) compensation. The good news? I got to review Lufthansa Premium Economy. The bad news? It wasn’t good.
It’s well known that Lufthansa’s business class on the Airbus A340-300 is pretty bad compared to most other business class products. Business class seats are arranged 2 x 2 x 2 which means that not everyone has direct aisle access. And there’s virtually no privacy. Still, the seats lie flat and you get improved catering and amenities over economy and premium economy. I wouldn’t want to fly this business class overnight to Europe, but I figured that the daytime flight home would be fine. I guess I’ll have to test that theory on some other trip.
Bumped Down
I don’t know why I was one of the two “lucky” business class passengers that got bumped down to Premium Economy. My guess is that they bumped people who didn’t already have assigned seats at check-in. Unbelievably, I had forgotten to pick seats in advance. This is crazy because I always pick seats first thing after booking (and I wrote a post about how to do so: How to select seats on partner bookings), and of all of the business class products in the sky, Lufthansa’s is probably the number one where picking seats in advance is important: I should have grabbed side-by-side middle seats for my wife and me so that we wouldn’t have strangers next to us and we’d each have direct aisle access. But somehow I didn’t. My wife, who didn’t get bumped down, got assigned a window seat and had the pleasure of having to climb over a stranger anytime she wanted to go to the bathroom.
Before accepting my bump, and while waiting futilely in the hopes that someone would voluntarily downgrade, I researched options. I found that the EU has rules about compensation when a person is involuntarily downgraded. In fact, Lufthansa publishes the rules here: lufthansa.com/tr/en/passenger-rights. Specifically, for flight distances of more than 3,500 km, the compensation is “75% of the ticket price paid per segment.” Great! Except that I paid in miles. And I didn’t pay with Lufthansa miles, but with Avianca LifeMiles miles. I did a quick Google search to see what has happened to others in a similar situation and it wasn’t good. In the brief time I looked, I couldn’t find any examples of anyone succeeding in getting compensation for an involuntary downgrade when they had used miles.
Once business class had boarded completely full, I gave up and accepted my Premium Economy boarding pass. The desk agent offered me 500 Euros compensation and said that was the most she could do. The amount was “controlled by the computer.” She asked for my credit card so that she could apply the compensation to it. I handed her my debit card so that I wouldn’t lose any rewards from my credit card. After a few days the money posted to my account.
When I got home, I went ahead and filed a claim with Lufthansa for the 75% compensation too. I don’t expect it to result in anything, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try and it would be good information for the blog. Lufthansa’s form allowed for uploading documents but it didn’t have any place for adding notes. So, in addition to uploading my original receipt from Avianca LifeMiles for the award purchase, I also uploaded a PDF document where I explained the use of miles and how much they’re worth. I wrote:
We booked this flight for two passengers for 120,000 Avianca LifeMiles airline miles plus $ 291.60 USD. The price for my ticket was: 60,000 miles plus $145.80 USD.
LifeMiles sells their miles for 3.3 cents each, so one could buy 60,000 miles for $1,980.00 USD. That brings the total cost of my ticket to:
$1.980.00 (price for 60,000 miles) + $145.80 (fees)
= $2,125.80 USDMy understanding is that I’m eligible for compensation of 75% of the amount paid which equals $1,594.35
I don’t expect that this will be paid and I won’t be upset when it is not, but I’m interested in seeing what happens. I’ll post an update once I have more information.
Lufthansa A340-300 Premium Economy Bottom Line Review
Overall, Lufthansa’s Premium Economy is like flying economy but with a better seat. Other than the seat, I think they forgot to put the “premium” into the product.
The seats were comfortable with a decent amount of leg room. I found that the amount of recline possible was better than expected. No, it’s nowhere close to lie-flat, but the seat reclines enough to be able to nap without your head falling forward. I thought the video screen and movie selection were decent, but we were given only cheap disposable headphones and so I had to watch movies with English subtitles turned on in order to follow what was happening. Since I usually fly business class (thanks to airline miles!) I had fallen out of the habit of traveling with my own headphones. I’ll have to get back to that! Another annoyance was that the handheld video controller is stored near the passenger’s leg: My leg kept brushing against it when I was watching movies and a cursor would suddenly appear on the screen. That was just a minor annoyance though. Service was pretty good overall. The worst part of the flight was the catering: clearly premium economy gets the same stuff that is offered in regular economy and it wasn’t very good at all. Overall, I have no doubt that Lufthansa’s premium economy is much better than regular economy, but that’s primarily due to the seat itself. The rest of the experience didn’t seem premium at all.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Comfortable seats with decent leg room and plenty of recline
- Good service
- Each seat has a water bottle holder
Cons
- Mediocre food
- Cheap disposable headphones
Photos
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