LH Premium Economy: A class apart

After being in India for over 55 years now, the German carrier is gearing up to offer better products and services in this market. In a conversation with , Wolfgang Will, Director, Lufthansa Passenger Airlines, South Asia, explains the strategic importan

important is India for Lufthansa?

We have been in India for the past 55 years and this reflects the country’s importance for our airline. The Indian market has become extremely competitive in the last five years. In a bid to meet the needs of the travellers here, we have continuously expanded our services. We have added new routes as well. Last year was very satisfactory for us. We also commenced our A380

oper- ations last year and from Day 1, we had full flights. We are not divulging the numbers but we get high load factors, which is over 85 per cent. Our customers are dis- tributed across India. Obvioulsy, Delhi and Mumbai are vital markets. But Bengaluru, Chennai and Pune are becoming lucrative markets for us as well.

Is the airline being used more for direct or transit operations?

Currently, we have more passengers from India that are using Lufthansa as a transit carrier. About 75 per cent of the passengers fall under this category. In fact, this is the trend globally. We have positioned ourselves as a strong hub with airports in Frankfurt and Munich. The vast majority of passengers are going beyond Frankfurt or Munich to destinations within Europe or North Atlantic. We cover 280 destinations worldwide

is economy the country?

your class’ ‘premium doing in

We launched a brand new service, ‘premium economy class’ last year in November. With this, we have now unveiled a fourth compartment as an option between first class and business class. This segment is a separate compartment with better seats and various other features. We are very focused on business travellers and because of company policies and cost-cutting programmes, a lot of companies are changing their travel policies and don’t allow everybody to travel on business class. So premium economy is catering to such customers. We started this service in our Bengaluru-Frankfurt route last year. Now in April, we introduced this service on the Delhi-Frankfurt route as well. We will look at unveiling this in the other routes as well.

response to 16 Distribution Cost Charge.

Lufthansa is adding a 16 Distribution Cost Charge to GDS bookings of Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian Airlines and Brussels Airlines flights from September 1. Fees and charges are normal in our