Lufthansa launches new routes from Belfast City and Gatwick

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• James says:

  26 Apr26 April 05:52

  BA’s token improvements with its food offerings are nothing particularly mid blowing. You also still have to pay significant inflated prices. BA are still the carrier falling further and further back in the completion. Once a great carrier BA lives on its past and survives as a very average airline because of its network reach.

  • Peter K says:

    26 Apr26 April 06:45

    That depends on your needs. In CE they are streets ahead when it comes to special dietary requirements than pretty much all the LCCs.

    • BJ says:

      26 Apr26 April 07:27

      Not only LCC, our original AF CDG-BCN in J had no special options either.

  • Rhys says:

    26 Apr26 April 09:17

    And Lufthansa as well, where all you get is a cold dish.

  • Jack says:

    26 Apr26 April 23:20

    No you do not on some routes they are cheaper and offer more than any LCC does. BA has had to adapt as all airlines have you cannot have everything free and low fares something has to give. They offer great service and it is not a average airline people fly them as the service is way better than the likes of Ryanair and they fly to much more convenient destinations. BA is still a great airline people need to stop living in the past times have changed hugely for airlines.They are massively ahead in CE especially with dietary needs

    • bafan says:

      27 Apr27 April 05:52

      BA should not be compared with Ryanair.

    • David says:

      27 Apr27 April 17:54

      By BA, do you mean London Airways? The service is barely passible but I’d rather avoid the poor LON airport facilities and surly Border Force staff on your return even with a black UK Passport.

• BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

  26 Apr26 April 06:46

  It looks like Eurowimgs no longer offers any direct UK – Berlin flights

  • Rhys says:

    26 Apr26 April 09:17

    Nope!

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      26 Apr26 April 09:26

      Might want to edit that sentence then!

• sigma421 says:

  26 Apr26 April 06:46

  BA truly seems to feel that the need to give some sort of catering to those at the back in short haul is a burden it has been forced to take on. It doesn’t even see it as a profit centre like LCCs do, just a pain.

  • Jonathan says:

    26 Apr26 April 14:10

    We won’t be thanking Alex Cruz who happily gloated about implementing BOB without any idea whatsoever is to how it’d work n the short – short flights, and poor availability of heavily popular lines

• Tony says:

  26 Apr26 April 07:16

  BA Euroflyer improving the food?! How about improving the service on board? Forcing passengers to fill the foot well under the seat in front with hand baggage and coats. Makes a 4 hour flight with 28” seat pitch unbelievably uncomfortable. Euroflyer…no thanks. They make Ryanair look a quality carrier!!

  • BJ says:

    26 Apr26 April 07:33

    Our LHR-BCN fligvt was on a very new a321neo from LGW fleet. We were in row 3 and I was surprised by the generosity of the pitch although I’m short so not hard to please in this respect.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      26 Apr26 April 08:15

      Aren’t rows 1-13 a greater pitch on these planes ?

      • Rob says:

        26 Apr26 April 09:31

        1-12 I think.

      • BJ says:

        26 Apr26 April 11:54

        Certainly felt like it. The plane flew in empty LGW-LHR. Intended aircraft was doing 2x Milan rotations earlier in the day but I think I read there was industrial action in Italy that day so perhaps it got caught up in that.

  • TGLoyalty says:

    26 Apr26 April 08:16

    Surely they were forced to because it’s a full flight and everyone had hand luggage? What else are you going to do?

    • Nick says:

      26 Apr26 April 08:52

      LOL be very careful what you wish for…

  • Rhys says:

    26 Apr26 April 09:18

    That’s the policy at all airlines if a flight is full. Personal item & coats in the footwell, larger pieces above.

    • Andrew says:

      26 Apr26 April 10:13

      Got to say I hate this policy. I always pay for a checked bag specifically so that I can travel comfortably with just a very small rucksack. I would not be happy being forced to have my rucksack and coat by my feet just because someone who didn’t feel the need to pay for a checked bag has brought a borderline-oversized rollaboard, large ‘personal’ item and duty free shopping on board.

      • Rhys says:

        26 Apr26 April 10:15

        I think if you don’t have a bigger carry on then you can justifiably put your rucksack up…but if you have both, then it’s not guaranteed.

        • Andrew says:

          26 Apr26 April 11:03

          You’d think so but I’ve had the argument with a flight attendant at least once.

      • BJ says:

        26 Apr26 April 12:02

        What I hate most is pax sitting in rows 1X-2X consistently getting away with boarding the plane and putting their bags in first empty space above seats in rows 1-10. Personally I prefer small item below seat in front of me, it’s just easier for me if I want stuff.

        • PlaneSpeaking says:

          26 Apr26 April 12:31

          What’s wrong with rows 1 and 2 stowing their bags in the overheads? We generally go for the row 1 bulkhead seats (let’s not start a debate on the pros and cons of bulkhead seats!) and we have no option to place our regulation size bags overhead as nothing is allowed on the floor in row 1.

        • Londonsteve says:

          26 Apr26 April 13:58

          I think he/she meant those seated in rows 10-20, i.e. Economy pax taking advantage of the relatively empty overhead lockers above the CE cabin. Those in the know, they know that there will be precious little space once they get to their row so it’s best to get rid of your bag as soon as you see an empty space.

        • Rob says:

          26 Apr26 April 14:02

          On a recent EU flight I was on everyone had to leave by the rear doors. Total chaos due to people who had put bags in lockers at the front but sat at the back.

        • BJ says:

          26 Apr26 April 15:07

          Yes @Londonsteve, that’s what I meant. And @Rob illustrating one good reason why it should be strongly fiscouraged.

        • PlaneSpeaking says:

          29 Apr29 April 13:20

          Ah, sorry BJ and thanks Londonsteve. In that case, I couldn’t agree more!

  • Brian says:

    26 Apr26 April 10:13

    Having to put hand baggage and coats under the seat in front of you is at least partly not BA’s fault, but is down to people taking the p*** when it comes to hand luggage and hauling on all sorts of things that really should be checked in.

    • His Holyness says:

      26 Apr26 April 10:24

      It’s not the pax’s fault. If every pax brings a bag there is simply not enough room due to the config. If they had chosen to have a cabin with a lower density configuration then there would be no issue to put bags underneath the seats. I much prefer to have my bag there and it in no way impedes my legroom despite being 6’3” on airlines that have a generous configuration.

    • Londonsteve says:

      26 Apr26 April 14:01

      It would be really simple to start including checked luggage in the price of all tickets, therefore encouraging people to avail themselves of the opportunity to travel with a full-size suitcase and minimise the quantity of stuff they take into the cabin. Unfortunately all ‘full service’ carriers decided to start emulating their budget rivals and decided that checked luggage is a luxury you need to pay extra for. Wizz Air meanwhile decided that it’s far more expensive for them to transport a suitcase compared to a passenger and usually charge more for a suitcase than for the ticket.

      • Jek says:

        26 Apr26 April 16:10

        That’s only a small part of the problem. I try to avoid checked in luggage like the plague and will use hbo even if checked in luggage is free. The queues at checkin are usually way too long and it takes forever until luggage arrives. On SH, checked in luggage adds at least 2h per flight!

  • Jack says:

    26 Apr26 April 23:24

    personal items should as requested go under the seat as is the same for most airlines. the lockers are for lager bags especially on full flights people who cannot follow this basic instruction waste time and cause delays. I completely get your point and on less busy flights you can often put it up but on full flights it is more complex as space is limited. Not everyone wishes to or wants to pay for a bag to check and not everyone needs one . the pitch is all 30 inches on gatwick fleet which is mainly non neo planes

• BJ says:

  26 Apr26 April 07:23

  AMS-LGW in CE last week was a rather nice prawn salad, decent warm bread abd a delicious chocolate pot My partner ordered Asian Vegetarian special meal that was a very lightly spiced rather bland vegetable and bean salad, warm bread and a less-pleasing (probably vegan) chocolate pot. LHR-BCN on Friday was afternoon tea comprising quite awful sandwiches but delicious warm scones. Returned the sandwiches for an extra scone (declined the offer of a third as two were more than filling). To follow was a too dry bland sponge cake (might have been lemon, I’m not sure) which I left after tasting. Surprisingly the coffee and tea served on each flight was hot and decent. Fliggt attendants on both flights were mostly very young, not an oldie in sight so I guess BA is finally getting its wishes with crew and contracts thanks to the pandemic.

• JJ says:

  26 Apr26 April 07:29

  Euro Wings, while not in Star Alliance do post into my UA account without issues.

  • Marc says:

    26 Apr26 April 10:22

    Probably worth noting that Eurowings has partnerships with United, ANA, and Air Canada to earn and spend miles in their respective programmes.

    • Novelty-Socks says:

      26 Apr26 April 18:54

      Eurowings has been a great source of redemptions for my United miles, especially at peak times. I got seats selling for £900 on LHR-HAM over Easter for a fraction of the equivalent cost in miles.

• David S says:

  26 Apr26 April 08:48

  Flew CE last week from LHR to FAO and the food was dreadful. The menu to great fanfare talks about great British food. There was a nice Prawn salad of which there looked to be 2 portions in total on board as my wife was disappointed in 2A and only one person in Row 1 had this dish.
  The other choices were a Punjabi Vegetable Curry and a Pasta dish. The starter was a weird Hummus dish.
  However the person opposite me had a lovely piece of fish so I asked him what specific dietary meal he had asked for . The answer was Diabetic so I’m going to pick something like this in future.

  • His Holyness says:

    26 Apr26 April 10:16

    No way…? BA promising the best of luxury, the finest of dishes and not delivering? I don’t believe it 😂

  • Bagoly says:

    26 Apr26 April 14:00

    Perhaps an article on BA Special Meals?
    Not least to draw out more comments about them.

    I can’t eat spicy, and I like few vegetables – but they no longer offer “bland”.
    Kosher seems to be OK but very boring; the steward last time suggested I try Child!
    Perhaps Diabetic would work for me, even though I’m happy to have lots of sugar.
    I am happy to have high lactose, salt, fat or calories !

  • Londonsteve says:

    26 Apr26 April 14:04

    It doesn’t seem to work during breakfast as the special meal tends to be the same as one of the standard options, usually the omlette in my experience. You’d need to go for vegan or potentially kosher/halal to get something different than this. Although I’m not sure how much more appetising it’s going to be.

• Sking says:

  26 Apr26 April 09:23

  Lufthansa is not the first flight between NI and Germany – both Ryanair and Easyjet have previously run Berlin services. It is however the only currently scheduled service between the two countries.

  • Rob says:

    26 Apr26 April 09:28

    I don’t think anyone would have assumed there had never been a NI / DE flight.

    • Londonsteve says:

      26 Apr26 April 14:07

      Actually I did. “This is the first flight on any airline between Northern Ireland and Germany.” I think that’s fairly unquivocal, it’s saying that there have never previously been directly flights between NI and Germany, this is the first direct connection, ever.

      • DaveJ says:

        26 Apr26 April 16:10

        Yes. How else are people meant to read that?

        • Rob says:

          26 Apr26 April 16:19

          The idea that, in the entire history of commercial aviation, no-one has ever run a paid flight from Northern Ireland to anywhere in Germany is so ludicrous that I assumed no-one would read it that way …. and indeed if it was true it would have been major news and mentioned.

        • Simon says:

          26 Apr26 April 20:25

          I’m not normally one for the grammar police but find this article bizarrely written. “This is the first flight on any airline between Northern Ireland and Germany.” cannot be read any other way than no other airline has flown between NI and Germany until now. The idea might be ludicrous but having no knowledge of the history of Belfast flights that is the way I read it.

          Then there is Eurowings sentance about flights from the UK to Berlin even though as you acknowledge they don’t operate any.

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