Flying Lawyer

I am. It was not "refuelling" but "fuelling". They had to start with tanks half empty to take of the short DUS runway and went on the short hop to Frankfurt. In those days LTU had no feeder services within Germany and fares were still extremely high. They had maybe 60% pax from DUS and another 40% pax from FRA.

mosburger

After which BA, AF/KLM, AY and others with established NRT connections from DUS would immediately start a price war. Anyway, I strongly suspect that pax numbers for MUC-NRT are larger than DUS-NRT would be as the former has a reputation as an excellent transit hub and the flows come in from all over Europe.

Tim2008

Starting May 1 2008 LH will base 3 A340-300 in DUS.
Destinations will be EWR, ORD and YYZ
There will be an introduction fare of 333€ including taxes for all destinations in W class

Tim2008

EWR daily
ORD 6/7
YYZ 5/7

fradoc

YYZ, very interesting! Is there that high demand??? (Obviously the Rhinelanders love Canada ).
Z-wise, there is a ZSPEC to NYC. The ZSPECE from ORD and NYC is still loaded in the system.

djohannw

Direct punch for LT who (used to?) flies there during the summer...

Greetings - Dirk

supermasterphil

This is excellent news. I hope they will have a long price fight with CO serving CGN and I know CO has problems to fill up this flight anyway. One of them will loose
I have my doubts that LH will be able to sell all seats as well with basically three flights a day, FRA, MUC and DUS, (MUC and DUS A343, FRA A333) plus the business jet out of FRAl. Maybe they realized that EWR is way more convenient than JFK...

fradoc

Yes, I forgot. EWR and YYZ, double punch! Never thought about that...

Hmm, I do not think there will be a price war. CO is the one to beg for pax, not LH. Of course, it is bad news for CO to find LH now with three flights in DUS, way before the market could find out about a potential value of the
CGN-EWR flight (i.e. corporate travel agencies set up new contratcts w/ CO).

djohannw

Actually CO is doing very good out of CGN from what I have heared, especially in their front-cabin. And they cater a different crowd on their EWR-flight, which is people connecting to varoius US-destinations (EWR-DUS has no such potential, and ORD is not that well-suited for connections to east-coast and Florida). So I think CO sees things still rather relaxed...DL however with their ATL flight might have a different feeling as they currently have problems filling their 763 with enough yield.

But you make a very good point about LH's capacity to EWR. There are:

LH 484 FRAEWR 0815 1115 73W
LH 408 DUSEWR 1000 1220 343
LH 402 FRAEWR 1245 1510 744
LH 412 MUCEWR 1515 1820 343
LH 482 FRAEWR 1715 1959 333

That's a lot of seats waiting to be filled now...

Greetings - Dirk

sadiqhassan

Does anyone know how well EK's DXB-DUS-DXB is doing? It is one of the few routes I have seen downgraded from a 777-300ER to a 330-200.

Cheers,

supermasterphil

Disagree. I have been to the last two Continental MiniDos in the US and both times I talked to the Continental guy about EWR-CGN-EWR. The route to CGN is one of the weakest they have, I guess more competition can only hurt them. Whatever you hear from the airport in Cologne how great this flight to New York is doing is bogus. Furthermore, the availability of first class seats on this flight is always wide open, so I have my doubts they sell enough business seats as desired.

I am curious if LH will be able to fill up all mentioned flights. They will have to take one out again, I didn't know they would also bring LH 482/482 back...

supermasterphil

What do you mean? Are you aware that they added a second flight? As far as I know, they change flight leaving in the early afternoon is either a 773 or a 332 and the night flight is always a 332, same like out of MUC.

I know that at least the cargo is doing great on both flights, it's always filled up and hard to get a spot on the short term base.

fradoc

OK, then my parents' observation of a half-empty BF cabin (>6 empty seats) on their recent flight is not a accidental one-time observation. (They enjoyed it anyways ^)

sadiqhassan

Yes. First they added a second flight then upgraded one (both?) to 777-300ERs. After a while they (quitely) downguaged both flights back to A330s.

Cheers

supermasterphil

Was it that way? I remember that they started service with A332 as EK55/56, then they changed the flight to a 772, then they started second service as EK58/59 on a A332 as well but the earlier flight was both on A332 or 772 according to demand.