More than two years after announcing it planned to carry out multi-million-dollar upgrades of its Airbus A380 superjumbo fleet, Lufthansa has finally announced a date for when the planes will start to go into the hangar for top-to-tail refurbishments.
On Friday, the German flag carrier revealed that the first of its eight-strong fleet of double-deck A380s will head to the Elbe Flugzeugwerke maintenance company in Dresden for two months of extensive retrofit work.
Set to rejoin Lufthansa’s fleet in Munich in April, the 15-year-old aircraft (registration: D-AIMC) won’t, however, return with the airline’s flagship ‘Allegris’ Business Class seats on board.
This won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has been following Lufthansa’s ill-fated rollout of the long-haul passenger experience concept dubbed ‘Allegris,’ which features fully bespoke First and Business Class seats designed by and for Lufthansa.
The concept was first envisaged back in 2017, but after a series of embarrassing setbacks and delays, Allegris only rolled out on a Lufthansa Airbus A350 for the first time in May 2024.
Even then, the first plane had to be deployed without any First Class suites because the seats still weren’t ready, and problems continue to plague the program:
- Most Allegris Business Class seats on newly delivered Boeing 787 Dreamliners still aren’t certified, meaning that Lufthansa is deploying these aircraft with its most lucrative cabin almost empty.
- The Boeing 747-8 jumbojets in the Lufthansa fleet might only have Allegris seats on the main deck, with Business Class seats on the upper deck substituted for an off-the-shelf product.
Lufthansa has also opted against installing Allegris on its A380 superjumbos, and the decision comes partly down to how long it would take to get aviation safety regulators to certify the bespoke seats for use on the plane.
Instead, the airline has confirmed it has plucked an off-the-shelf Business Class made by Northern Irish-based manufacturer Thompson Aero Seating, known as the Vantage XL.
As the Vantage XL has been used by a number of international carriers, including Australian airline Qantas on its own A380s, the seats don’t need their own approvals
In other words, Lufthansa can install the seats and get the plane back into service without waiting for a lengthy certification process to be completed.
Lufthansa customers might already be familiar with the Thompson Vantage XL seat as it was already installed on several second-hand Boeing 787 Dreamliners that the airline acquired from the Philippines Airlines.
The Vantage XL has also been picked by the Lufthansa Group for upgrade programs on its leisure subsidiaries, Discover Airways and Edelweiss, so there will be a fair amount of commonality, which should make ongoing maintenance easier.
Given that the 1-2-1 configuration of the all-direct-aisle-access Vantage XL seats is as space efficient as Lufthansa’s old Business Class, the reconfigured Airbus A380s will return to service with slightly fewer seats.
There will still be eight First Class seats, 52 Premium Economy Seats, and 371 seats in Economy, but the number of Business Class seats will drop from the current 78 to 68.
Lufthansa has customized its version of the Vantage XL seats in its standard dark blue fabric, alongside grey and beige surrounds. Some of the features of the Allegris seats will not be present, including integrated seat cooling and heating, as well as a tablet to control all of the seat functions.
Lufthansa doesn’t expect to complete the retrofit program of all eight A380s until mid-2027.
