German flag carrier Lufthansa has finally been given the go-ahead by U.S. aviation regulators to start filling most of the Business Class seats on its brand new Boeing 787 Dreamliners… a month ahead of schedule, although that schedule had already been significantly delayed several times.
On Monday, Lufthansa confirmed that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had, at long last, certified 25 of the 28 Business Class seats in its new ‘Allegris’ cabin.
The first flight with 25 of the 28 seats occupied by passengers actually took off on Sunday with a regularly scheduled service between Frankfurt and Toronto. The remaining Boeing 787s with the Allegris cabin will be allowed to use the majority of Business Class seats by Wednesday at the latest.
Until now, Lufthansa has only been approved to occupy four of the Business Class seats on its Dreamliners due to lengthy certification woes.
How lengthy? Well, Lufthansa took delivery of its first factory-fresh 787 Dreamliner in late August 2025, and even then, the airline had delayed taking on the planes from Boeing for months while it tried to get the certification issues sorted.
In the end, Lufthansa realized that certification of these bespoke seats was going to take a lot longer than anyone had envisaged, so it started flying the planes with nearly all of the Business Class seats blocked out.
During this time, only four of the larger Business Class Suites at the very front of the cabin have been available to book, but last month, Lufthansa announced that it would finally put 25 of the 28 seats on sale, as it grew confident that certification was nearing.
Lufthansa opened up bookings from April 15, although, in the end, certification came a month early.
The biggest issue with Lufthansa’s new Allegris Business Class cabin is that the FAA didn’t have to certify just one new seat but rather five different designs with various features that all needed to be certified separately.
Even now, three seats in the second row of the cabin still haven’t been certified. The reason hasn’t been explained by Lufthansa, but it’s likely down to their position behind the larger Business Class Suites in the front row that have a much higher wall surrounding them.
Lufthansa has now put on sale last-minute bookings from March 18, on flights from Frankfurt to Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Austin, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Toronto.
From March 29, Lufthansa’s Dreamliners will fly from Frankfurt to Austin, Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Cape Town, Shanghai, Hyderabad, and Hong Kong. And in June, New York JFK and Los Angeles, followed by Delhi in July, will be added to the plane’s destination rotation.
Lufthansa has been flying its Allegris Business Class seats fully occupied on its Airbus A350-900s since 2024, so why it has taken so long for U.S. regulators to certify the same seats that are already in use on another aircraft type remains unclear.
One reason could be that the seats used on the A350 are manufactured by Thompson Aero, whereas the same seats on the 787 Dreamliner are made by Collins Aerospace.
Lufthansa is currently in the process of retrofitting its Airbus A380 superjumbo fleet with new Business Class seats, but in order to avoid another certification fiasco, the airline has opted to install an off-the-shelf product known as Vantage XL.
Unlike the Allegris seats, Vantage XL has already been approved for use on the A380, lowering costs significantly.
