Lufthansa A350 Allegris Review (vs. Austrian B767)

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As you might know, I flew Lufthansa home from Tokyo back in early April. This trip involves two long-haul flights with Lufthansa Group: Lufthansa Allegris on the A350 for the first segment and Austrian Airlines Boeing 767 in business class for the last segment. This is my Lufthansa Allegris review, and wow, the contrast between these two cabins was so stark that I could not believe they were both operating in the same decade.

Booking the Flights

About two weeks before departure, I booked a series of flights Tokyo – Munich – Vienna – Montreal for just 87,500 Aeroplan points and ~$200 CAD in taxes, which is a spectacular deal. I found availability on each long-haul segment and had to call Aeroplan to piece it together as a single one-way itinerary. Note that beginning June 1, this itinerary will cost 102,500 Aeroplan points.

My main motivation for taking these flights is to check out Lufthansa’s brand-new Allegris cabins and review their new business class for myself. Granted, I’d ideally try it on a transatlantic flight with Swiss, as it’s shorter and I like them a bit better, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Let’s just say I thought 14 hours was way too long to be onboard a Lufthansa plane, but I yearned desperately to be back when I boarded my Austrian Airlines Boeing 767 flight.

About Lufthansa Allegris

Last week, Anshul reviewed the Swiss Senses A350 business class in the Business Suite, and note that Lufthansa Allegris and Swiss Senses are identical cabins. There are five different seat styles in business class:

1. Classic Seat
2. Privacy Seat
3. Extra Long Bed Seat
4. Extra Space Seat
5. Business Suite

The only free seat is the Classic Seat, while every other seat incurs an extra charge. For what it’s worth, the five seat types really are different:

• The worst and free Classic Seats are window seats, where the seat is closer to the aisle
• The Extra Space Seats are the single seats in the centre section, which are like extreme throne seats
• The Privacy Seats are the window seats, where the seat is closer to the window (these would be my second preference)
• The Extra Long Bed Seats are the middle seats on either side of the Extra Space Seats
• The Business Suite sare the first row bulkhead seats, including both window and middle seats (this is the best seat)

By the time I booked my flight, the only seats available for selection were paid, and I had no intention of paying any amount of money to select a seat. Of course, my goal was to sit in the Business Suite, for which Lufthansa was charging $900 CAD for the privilege.

Would You Pay $900 for the Business Suite?

Anshul paid $750 for a 7.5-hour overnight flight, while I could have paid $900 for a 14.5-hour daytime flight. Mine is definitely the better value if you had to choose between the two, but I’d rather sit in the Business Suite for no additional fee. 😏

By the time I booked my flight, the only seats available for selection were paid, and I had no intention of paying Lufthansa $900 CAD for the Business Suite.

Through some internet sleuthing, I learned that all paid seats — including the Business Suite — could be assigned for free at airport check-in. My strategy was simple: avoid online check-in, arrive early, and ask nicely.

And so, in a shocking deviation from my usual airport habits, I showed up three hours before departure. Lufthansa check-in didn’t even open until T-2.5 hours, and there were already two people ahead of me in line. Were they after the same thing I was?

When my turn finally arrived, I refreshed my ExpertFlyer seat map and promptly requested 8A. The agent replied that I was already in a window seat, to which I answered: “Yes, but I’d like row 8 anyway.”

Lufthansa vs. Austrian Hard Product

The Seat

Spoilers: this seat is absolutely insane, in the most positive way possible.

WOW. This is undoubtedly one of the best business class seats — if not the best — in the sky today, and I will happily fly on it any day of the week. The walls must be the highest in the industry, noticeably taller than Qatar’s Qsuite.

The sense of privacy is especially elevated when you open the door to walk to the bathroom and see that nobody else in the cabin has a door at all. Only Business Suite seats have a door.

The amount of storage is unparalleled. In the main closet, I hung my jacket and stored my pyjamas. Then I put all the bedding, including the mattress pad, which is only for Business Suite passengers, in the storage area underneath. In the bin on the left side of the seat next to the ottoman, I put my shoes after changing into slippers.

In the “drawer” on the top surface of the left console, I put my daypack. Then, when I went to bed, I put my glasses in the dedicated glasses holder because why not?

The In-Flight Entertainment Displays

The iPad-looking screen on the right side of the cabin allows for controlling the seat position, the seat temperature, and flight attendant call button. This screen also works as a world map that you can pinch and zoom to your heart’s content and also offers a video introduction to the suite, which is funny.

The main 27″ 4K display is INCREDIBLE. Lufthansa paired the system with five high-quality exterior cameras, and the responsive display let me seamlessly switch cameras at lightning speed and toggle between the tablet and the main screen at will. Honestly, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning.

You can also connect your own Bluetooth headphones to watch entertainment onboard, though the lack of HDMI is a miss for such a modern cabin.

The Bed & Amenities

With no seat in front and endless leg room, the sleeping experience is truly first class and you can lower the armrest to increase the sleeping area. I don’t sleep well on planes, but I managed an incredible 7 hours. Being able to adjust the bed temperature sounds like a gimmick, but it really does work.

The amenity kit was nothing special and served as a good reminder that I was indeed flying Lufthansa and not, say, Qatar. 😉

I believe Lufthansa offers sleep shirts in business class on flights of over 10 hours, so I requested a pair. The flight attendant told me it’s only for overnight flights, but he’ll see if there’s any left over from the outbound flight. He came back with a sleep shirt and a pair of first-class pants, of which only XXL was left.

I did not see anyone request or wear pyjamas during the flight, but I have a hunch that being in the Business Suite helped my case.

Austrian Airlines 767 Business Class

In the world of business class, this is far from the worst seat available today. Yet, coming off Lufthansa Allegris, it felt like I had stepped back a few decades.

This single picture is all you need to know. Okay, just to be fair, we can look at the bed as well.

In all fairness, the bed was perfectly comfortable. What worked against Austrian was that the Montreal departure was a daytime flight where I wasn’t looking to sleep.

There was also no wifi available, which left me a little dumbstruck. There are simultaneous flights today operating with free Starlink (my Air France flight to Toronto was equipped with it), paid wifi (Lufthansa charged €29 for HND-MUC), and no wifi at all.

The last daytime flight I flew with no wifi was COPA’s B787-9 (from Panama City to Santiago), and I had mentally categorized Austrian as being in a different league.

Meal Service

Main Meal

It’s not all bad news for Austrian, however, as the meal service was phenomenal and exceeded Lufthansa’s.

My personal opinion is that the airport where meals are catered matters more than the airline. Singapore Airlines catered out of EWR? Yuck. Air Canada catered out of Tokyo? Sign me up.

My Lufthansa flight departing from Tokyo had good food (I chose the Japanese menu), but Austrian still easily takes the win. Only after the flight did I learn that Austria is known for having great catering, so I’m happy to confirm that it is indeed the case.

Lufthansa actually had an advantage in the above photos, as I included the mid-flight snacks I ordered. Austrian actually had an additional soup course and a phenomenal dessert. Lufthansa was offering a chocolate truffle, but as I dislike chocolate desserts, I had an (unremarkable) fruit plate.

Earlier that day, I flew Munich – Vienna and Austrian served possibly the best bread I have ever eaten on an airplane. It was brioche, and of course, made me think of how poor North American catering is in comparison.

And how fun are these triangular plates? I’m a sucker for anything “fun” onboard.

Pre-Landing Meal

It was a similar case for the pre-landing meal. Usually, the second meal is treated as an afterthought, but I found myself actually looking forward to it on Austrian. I usually try to order a fun/local non-alcoholic drink onboard and Lufthansa’s lemonade was good, but Austrian’s coffee options blew it out of the water. I also tried Lufthansa’s signature Avionic cocktail (pictured above with the Japanese food) and found it only okay.

The Wiener Eiskaffee was a great way to end the flight, and it’s certainly my first time having an ice cream in coffee on an airplane.

Service

This is another area where Austrian was significantly better than Lufthansa. As far as Lufthansa crews go, mine was pretty good. The flight attendants always greeted me by name, and everything was promptly delivered when I used the call button.

My main flight attendant wasn’t necessarily smiley and chatty, but perhaps that is the German way. I briefly asked where she was from (Berlin) and about Germany, which seemed to indicate that I was open to conversation. She later stopped by my seat to provide Munich restaurant recommendations for my evening in town, unprompted, which was a welcome surprise.

My Austrian crew, on the other hand, delivered a level of polish I rarely encounter on European airlines. A flight attendant greeted me by name at the door, walked me to my seat, and offered a seat tour so I could familiarize myself with the features. She also apologized that all passengers would board through the business class cabin because this aircraft lacked doors in the middle of the plane.

Austrian served the meal directly to my tray table course by course rather than on a single tray, setting the airline apart from Lufthansa and SWISS despite all three belonging to the Lufthansa Group. The service flow was better as well as I never waited more than a minute before my empty plate was cleared and the next course was brought over.

The Austrian crew promptly collected any garbage at my seat and always proactively offered drink refills. Conversely, I always had to use the call button to get a drink refill outside of meal service on Lufthansa.

My Allegris Flight Wasn’t Perfect

Before you walk off thinking the Lufthansa Allegris Business Suite hard product is perfect, let me acknowledge the various electronic issues I encountered onboard. From reading other reviews online, it does appear that electronics malfunctioning happens more often than not in both Allegris business and first class.

When I first got onboard, the wireless charging did not work. This didn’t bother me at all as I never use wireless charging (it’s so slow and hard to position my phone to charge without sliding at all). However, a few hours in, my flight attendant call button kept going off on its own with a loud ringing sound, which caused the flight attendants to keep coming by to ask me if I needed anything before turning it off.

Halfway through the flight, I could no longer connect my Airpods Pro 3 to the entertainment display and the purser decided to “reset” the electronics system because there were apparently many issues in the first class cabin as well.

After the reset, Bluetooth and wireless charging worked, but my call button did not, and neither did the seat ambient lighting.

While it was annoying, I would still choose to fly Lufthansa Allegris because the hard product is really that good, especially since I didn’t pay anything extra for the Business Suite.

The Business Suite Experience Can Be Greatly Improved

Aside from more drastic changes, like serving meals course-by-course rather than on trays, there are plenty of smaller ways Lufthansa could better differentiate the Business Suite experience and justify the substantial surcharge.

Condor, for example, includes pyjamas, slippers, and a snack basket with its Prime Seat, while United’s Polaris Studio adds caviar, upgraded champagne, expanded dining options, and special pyjamas.

Lufthansa offered an uninspiring list of additional beverage and snack options for Business Suite passengers.

Since my flight, Lufthansa has updated its business class offerings through its FOX program — but that’s not Business Suite-specific.

A few soft product adjustments, such as offering a full set of pyjamas and a caviar course (which they’re catering for first class, anyway), would significantly elevate the Business Suite product. Even offering turndown service (which costs Lufthansa nothing extra) would go a long way toward making the Business Suite feel meaningfully distinct from the rest of the cabin.

Takeaway

Lufthansa Allegris and Austrian Airlines business class could not have felt more different despite both belonging to Lufthansa Group. Lufthansa’s new Allegris Business Suite is, in my opinion, the best business class hard product in the sky today, with exceptional privacy, storage, technology, and sleeping comfort. Meanwhile, Austrian’s aging Boeing 767 cabin felt dated the moment I stepped onboard, especially coming directly from Allegris.

At the same time, Austrian absolutely dominated on soft product. The catering, coffee program, and polished service flow were all significantly better than Lufthansa’s. Lufthansa does very little (essentially nothing) to separate the soft product between the Business Suite and the rest of the cabin. Lufthansa has built an incredible hard product, but there’s still a lot of room to elevate the actual Business Suite experience and better justify the substantial seat selection surcharge.