A Closer Look at Lufthansa's A380

Airbus delivered Lufthansa’s first A380 superjumbo last Wednesday–only three years late.

With Lufthansa’s decision to place only eight First Class seats on the plane, the aircraft will hold a whopping 526 passengers.

FIRST – 8 seats
BUSINESS – 98 seats
ECONOMY – 420 seats

Starting June 11th, LH will begin Frankfurt to Tokyo Narita service on the new aircraft, the first of 15 A380s on order for Lufthana’s fleet.

Below are some photos from the dedication ceremony as well as photos inside the new plane. All photos are from Lufty’s nifty A380 website and are copyrighted by Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

^Aircraft

an airplane on the runway

close-up of a white airplane

an airplane with seats in the air

an airplane flying in the sky

a large airplane flying in the sky

^{First Class}

a close-up of a plane

a close-up of a television

a bed in an airplane

a bathroom with a sink and toilet

^{Business Class}

a close-up of a staircase

a row of blue seats in an airplane

a close-up of a seat

^{Economy Class}

a row of seats in an airplane

a close-up of a plane

^{Dedication Ceremony}

a group of people standing on a plane

a group of people in uniform

^{Don’t you love those smiling German women?}

a man in a suit speaking into a microphone

^{Wolfgang Mayrhuber – Chairman and CEO of Lufthansa}

a group of people in uniform

a fire truck spraying water on an airplane

MY THOUGHTS

1. Overall, the plane looks great, but…

2. I don’t fault LH for installing only eight First Class seats, but why not make them like Singapore or Emirates did on their A380? The seats look just like the ones Swiss Air uses on their new A330-300s so I suspect they will be comfortable, but Lufthansa could have really hit a home-run with private suites. You saw the picture of the large First Class bathroom above, but LH scrapped plans to install a shower onboard like Emirates offers on its A380. That would have been nice too.

3. Business Class is a disappointment. I don’t understand why any airline, let alone a world-class airline like Lufthansa (and Air France for that matter) would choose to put angled lie-flat seats when lie-flat seats are the industry standard now for a top-tier airline. If United can muster lie-flat seats, certainly Lufthansa could have, especially on its new flagship aircraft.

4. Standard seats in Economy Class only have 79cm (31.1 inches) of legroom. That is tight.

—

I look forward to giving LH’s A380 a try, perhaps as early as August. Lufthansa has waited a LONG time for this aircraft and I congratulate them on finally adding a “superjumbo” to their fleet.

2 Comments

kd5mdk Reply

May 31, 2010 at 12:17 am

Is there demand for 98J seats on many flights? I know BA has a 70J model of the 744, but this does seem like a lot to me.
Marc Reply

October 11, 2011 at 8:11 pm

They cram even more people in economy than before. Also, the two seat groupings an the left and right widnows have been replaced by 3 seats each. I tend to fly economy so I will try to avoid this monster.