Lufthansa Boasts About Taking Delivery Of New Boeing 787 With Business Class Seats It Can’t Use

Lufthansa has just taken delivery of its first Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which features its next-generation cabins dubbed the ‘Allegris’ concept. There’s just one problem… Most of the seats in the Business Class cabin will remain empty for the foreseeable future.

That rather embarrassing fact has not, however, stopped the German flag carrier from boasting about the “new, improved travel experience” that very few passengers will get to enjoy in Business Class due to prolonged certification woes.

Lufthansa plans to take delivery of ten Dreamliners by the end of the year: the equivalent of adding one new 787-9 to its fleet every two weeks. That might sound like an impressively fast timeframe, but it’s worth remembering that these planes have been sitting idle for months at Boeing’s factory waiting for Lufthansa to approve delivery.

The reason these planes haven’t been delivered until now is that most of the bespoke Allegis Business Class seats, manufactured by Collins Aerospace, have yet to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Sources claim the holdup is due to serious issues with crash testing.

Lufthansa had clearly hoped to secure certification before taking delivery of these multi-million-dollar planes, but more than nine months after the issue first emerged, the airline has decided to push these planes into service with its most profitable cabin nearly empty.

The first 10 Boeing 787-9s featuring the Allegris concept will join Lufthansa’s fleet at its Frankfurt hub, and after more than a month of crew training and familiarisation, the plane is expected to debut on flights to Toronto, Canada, in mid-October.

Flights are already on sale, starting at an eye-watering one-way price of €1,477 in Economy and €2,784 in Premium Economy. Lufthansa is perhaps trying to make up some of the lost revenue from the Business Class cabin, which is mostly unavailable to book.

Of the 28 Business Class seats fitted on these aircraft, only four will be available to book, which are the Business Class Suites at the very front of the cabin. These suites have received FAA certification, whereas the remaining 24 seats must remain empty.

The obvious issue did not stop Jens Ritter, chief executive of Lufthansa Airlines, from gushing over the new planes.

“I am particularly pleased that we can now offer our guests the premium Allegris experience in Frankfurt,” commented Ritter after the first Allegris 787-9 landed in the German city on Saturday.

“With the arrival of the Boeing 787-9 today, the modernization of our long-haul fleet at our largest hub is now also receiving a major boost,” Ritter continued.

Lufthansa has 34 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners on order as part of a plan to replace its ageing fleet of gas-guzzling Airbus A330-600s, and the first deliveries were expected at the end of 2024.

One of the issues with the Allegris Business Class product is that it is a fully bespoke cabin, which isn’t just one seat design but five with different features to suit the varying needs of passengers.

Lufthansa has been flying the same Allegris seats on its Airbus A350 aircraft since 2024, although these seats were manufactured by Thompson Aero and were certified by European air safety regulators.

In contrast, the Allegris seats on Lufthansa’s Dreamliners have to be installed by the US regulators, as, of course, Boeing is based in the United States.

Once the first ten 787-9s have been delivered, Lufthansa intends to retire its last Airbus A340-600s, and hopefully, by that point, the Allegris Business Class seats will have been certified by the FAA.