When is a bad seat better than no seat at all?
You can soon fly eight hours aboard a Lufthansa A319 between Frankfurt and Pune. I can think of much better ways to torture yourself.
Some background, though. Lufthansa recently dissolved its partnership with Privatair, which used to operate a handful of routes on its behalf using premium-heavy, narrow body aircraft. One of those flights was Frankfurt to Pune, a perfect route for Privatair due to limited demand and a short runway in Pune unable to handle wide body jets.
But with the partnership dissolved, Lufthansa was forced to cancel the route. Now it is bringing it back, but with a big double twist. First, the route will operate using a shorthaul A319. Second, the flight will stop in Baku, Azerbaijan in both directions for refueling. Passengers will not be able to get on or off in Baku.
Lufthansa doesn’t offer in-flight-entertinament on its narrow body fleet. Nor does it offer any decent padding on its horrid Recaro slimline seats. Internet is coming, but the rollout has been slow. There is also no in-seat power on these aircraft.
Put simply, I cannot think of a more horrible way to spend eight hours. And yet look at the fares Lufthansa is charging:
Seriously? An 11hr35min redeye aboard an A319? What is Lufthansa thinking? I feel sorry for the corporate travelers who are forced to travel on Lufthansa. They are in for a rude awakening if they book business class and find this:
CONCLUSION
Lufthansa may figure it has a captive audience, but its stop in Baku takes out the competitive advantage of flying Lufthansa nonstop or others. Even for entertainment value, I cannot imagine myself ever taking this flight, especially from Pune to Frankfurt. Other carriers do operate long routes using small airplanes…United’s “Island Hopper” comes to mind. But at least that aircraft has in-seat power, IFE, a real regional business class seat, and great views out the window. What a joke on the part of Lufthansa…
Skytrax 5 stars! 😛
Do we know what the load factor on the PrivitAir flight was in business? LH may not be going after the business class market, and are going after economy market who wants a flight direct to Pune vs having to go through DEL or BOM
Unlikely in this case. Pune is home to numerous German manufacturing concerns. I’d imagine the route was started with that in mind. For leisure travel, Pune is one of the few cities in India with a good, workable ground transportation option to a larger airport. The Bombay-Pune Expressway gets you to BOM pretty quickly so the connection isn’t really a big deal.
Whoa, two LH A319 at Baku at the same time. Go for it. Trip report! Make sure you take pictures out of the window at Baku.
Southwest Airlines or EasyJet should be flying this route.
Matthew, do I foresee a wonderful Deep Coach experience in your future? Perhaps when Hell freezes over?
Well it‘s a simple honest offer until the contract with PrivatAir is back on track. Take it or leave it but no one is forced to take this flight. As far as I know it is back due to corporate (car industry) demand and I assume the high prices are necessary to make it worthwile. I can‘t imagine it will stay an A319 for more than one season.
I get that they may not have hadn’t a better aircraft available but if your going to claim to be a 5 star airline (which frankly what a pile of bull Skytrax is) you’ve got to do better than this.
That means creating a dedicated subfleet if needs be to handle a flight of this duration. Shame on LH.
Creating a dedicated subfleet?? It is not that easy like it sounds. It will mean to take a plane from another route to use here, or, in the best case scenario, to lease a new plane anywhere. I suppose that Lufthansa will change the plane in a few months.
Lufthansa is doing a right thing. Why waste a better aircraft on uncultured, smelly Indians ? Why offer them a product that they wouldn’t be able to appreciate anyway since they’re so used to stewing in their own feces on the streets ? Finally, why subject normal passengers to their ridiculous demands and misbehaviour which they demonstrate everywhere ? It is a good decision and hopefully other airlines will follow soon. In fact, they should stop their flights altogether.
Aw, good to see you picked a new name while on here, Debit.
I have flown this plane on routes of 4 hours within Europe. It’s not bad, the seats are actually comfortable and fares can be kept low. And it’s a direct flight.
Lufthansa resumes Privatair 737 service to Pune from Feb 2019
Posted 16 October 2018 10:00
Lufthansa in recent schedule update once again revised planned service to Pune in winter 2018/19 season. From 01FEB19 to 30MAR19, schedule and inventory listing shows the Star Alliance carrier using leased Privatair Boeing 737-700 aircraft, operating Frankfurt – Pune – Bucharest – Frankfurt routing 6 times a week, replacing planned 4 weekly Frankfurt – Baku – Pune on board A319.
LH768 FRA1150 – 0040+1PNQ 73W x2
LH769 PNQ0210 – 0635OTP0705 – 0845FRA 73W x3
Bucharest is a technical stop. Flights on/after 31MAR19 (the launch of summer 2019 season) remains not available for reservation.
Source. RoutesOnline
I saw that and will write about it tomorrow. Good news!
PrivatAir is financially unstable & only airline keeping them afloat is Lufthansa.
We traveled Pune to Frankfurt on 22nd Nov 2018 with my wife and 2 kids and I liked the flight. For me biggest selling point was avoiding road travel to Mumbai to catch international flight with kids and international luggage. This additional 3 hours road trip plus 3 hours of safe connection time at Mumbai to catch international flight adds lot of stress and makes you feel tired even before international journey begins from Mumbai.
As far as privatair flight from pune is concerned, even though its a A319 we were fortunate to find empty seats next to us so we were sitting 2 by 2 in a 3 by 3 seating so seats didn’t feel bad due to this. We were given free complimentary internet (due to no in-flight entertainment?) so I was whatsapp chatting with my friends in US and India in-flight, and i was monitoring aircraft position on google maps which was fun! Kids went to sleep for few hours as it was night and they were lying flat to sleep due to empty seats. Food and service were good and lived up to Lufthansa standards, flight attendants were nice and were changed at Baku. Aircraft was maybe 70% occupied. Seats were just OK but the seats in united 767 from Frankfurt to Washington were not any better either.
Overall a good experience, and much better than travelling to Mumbai to catch international flight.
Just seeing news of privatair bankruptcy, and hope Lufthansa keeps this segment somehow.