If you decide to put out bad analysis, as UNITE HERE did last week regarding Lufthansa complaints, and someone calls you on it, what would you do? The smart answer would probably be to just let it go and stop calling attention to the work, especially since it has more holes than Swiss cheese. But fortunately for us, UNITE HERE has decided to go the opposite route.

The union is using one of oldest tricks in the book: going after my credibility to muddy the water. This is just dumb. They really shouldn’t want to bring more attention to a flawed report like this. Now I’ve just dug in deeper and found even more problems with it. While I was waffling before, now I’m not. UNITE HERE has truly earned the Cranky Jackass Award.

You can read the union’s entire response here (pdf) if you’d like, but I’ll pull out the most fun parts. Let’s start with the opening.

One of the things I appreciate about your site is you are very open about your relationship to companies in the airline industry. And just one month after Lufthansa gave you a free round-trip, business class ride on its A380 from San Francisco to Frankfurt, perhaps I should not be surprised at your dismissive response to my report.

Ah yes, the back-handed compliment. A time-honored tradition that’s used to cover bad work. If someone calls out real issues, just call his or her credibility into question but look completely pleasant while doing so. This takes the focus off your bad analysis and tries to shift the issue. (Sounds like the author may have a future in politics.) It’s true, I’m very open about these things, and I did just fly Lufthansa at the airline’s expense. That doesn’t mean I won’t gladly rip Lufthansa a new one if it’s deserved. The problem here for the union is that it’s not.

You can read the rest of the response yourself if you’re interested in more sugar-coated insults, but let’s focus on the weak defense of the report itself and break that down.

The Department of Transportation data in the report is real, and to my knowledge is the only reliable U.S. source of compiled complaint information on international
airlines. If the DOT is willing to use these numbers to “to determine the extent to which carriers are in compliance with federal aviation consumer protection regulations,” then they’re good enough for me. Even if I am just a research analyst at a union.

*sigh* The issue is not whether this is the only place to get complaint data or not but whether or not it’s statistically valid and can be used to explain a trend or not. In this case, the year-over-year change in complaints from 2009 to 2010 moved by roughly less than one-thousandth of one percent over total passengers carried by Lufthansa to and from the US (using my rough passenger estimate). Even the initial number itself is so tiny that it’s not significantly different from zero. So regardless of what the purpose of the complaint reports are in the eyes of the DOT, that doesn’t magically mean that we can consider each number valid for any kind of analysis.

You’re right, I could have used the raw numbers, but I sort of agree with you that the raw numbers themselves aren’t incredibly exciting on their own. They’re small
because, well, how many people actually go through the effort to submit their airline complaints to the U.S. government? (If you care about an answer, you can look at the DOT analysis for the new passenger rights rule, where the DOT uses the ratio that every 1 complaint submitted to the DOT represents about 61 complaints submitted to the foreign airlines.

Excellent. Let’s just forget about using raw numbers because they aren’t “exciting.” I see. So we’re not looking for statistical validity here. We’re looking for excitement. You can apply any ratio you want to these numbers, but that still doesn’t make the small change valid. And this ratio is just an estimate by the DOT anyway, so using it would make a statistically insignificant change even less valid, if that’s possible.

The result of that comparison was clear. Lufthansa complaints went up, Air France and British Airways complaints went down. Is the sample number of complaints
small? Yes. But if the increases were random, would Lufthansa have seen them in 7 out of 8 top categories from 2009 to 2010? If they were random, wouldn’t Air France and British Airways have seen more fluctuation too?

This is my favorite part. I hadn’t even touched the Air France and British Airways numbers in my initial post, so I should thank the union for giving me even more firepower to show how awful the analysis is. The result is far from “clear” as proposed.

When I spoke with the research analyst, he told me that he didn’t bother looking at the monthly complaint reports. He just looked at the year-end summary and called it a day. That makes the analysis even worse because it doesn’t look for outliers. And that’s exactly why BA’s numbers are so different. In 2009, BA saw 347 complaints while dropping to a mere 120 in 2010. That’s great improvement, right? Wrong.

A look at the monthly data shows that in October 2009, BA received an incredible 244 complaints for reservations/ticketing/boarding. Why? According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, “The increase in the number of October complaints is attributed primarily to British Airways’ erroneous offer of $40 fares between the United States and India.” That’s an outlier and can’t be used to judge overall performance for an entire year. Guess what happens if we just substitute a more typical monthly result that month? We see an increase in complaints year-over-year approaching 20 percent. Fun with numbers, right? (Not that this is a significant change either.)

I highly recommend reading the entire response. In particular, I like the union’s effort to call into question the safety of the engines on the A380. Enjoy.

One thing that’s certain is that you can make statistics say pretty much whatever you want to get your point across. That’s exactly what the UNITE HERE union is doing with what appears to be a smear campaign against Lufthansa. After talking with the research analyst behind the report, I still can’t figure out why the union is bothering with this.

Earlier this week, I received an email from news@lufthansaalert.org with a report produced by the Lufthansa Traveler Alert site. That site is apparently the new campaign by the UNITE HERE union to make Lufthansa look bad. The report, titled “Customer Complaints Spike at Lufthansa, Decrease at British Airways and Air France,” was six pages of hilarity. See, the union has opted to use percentages despite the incredibly small numbers involved.

As highlighted in the email, there were four key points of the report. As I mentioned, you’ll notice that only percentages are used in all of these. That’s because the numbers are so incredibly small that it’s impossible to actually take them seriously. But when you use percentages, it looks a lot worse. Here are the four points.

Point #1 – Last year, Lufthansa’s total passenger complaints went up 70%. Meanwhile British Airways and Air France both saw decreases in total complaints.
Sounds awful, right? Well let’s use real numbers. In 2010, Lufthansa received a whopping 118 complaints via the DOT versus 68 in 2010. I did a little back of the envelope math and with around 30 flights each way per day between the US and Germany and a 75 percent load factor, Lufthansa serves around 5 million customers in the US in a year.

You think that change in the number of complaints is in any way an indication of a serious issue? I highly doubt it.

Point #2 – Lufthansa customer complaints increased in 2010 in seven of the top eight complaint categories: flight problems, baggage, rescheduling/ticketing, refunds, fares, oversales and disability access.
As you can imagine, since we’re already looking at a tiny sample size, breaking it down into categories makes it even worse. Baggage complaints were highest with 32 for the entire year. That’s up from 22. Next is a tie between Flight Problems and Reservations (not rescheduling as they suggest)/Ticketing/Boarding at 23. Everything else is single digits. Were they up? Sure. But it’s hard to consider this a trend with such a tiny sample size.

Point #3 – When 2006 data is compared with 2010 data, Lufthansa saw a 23% increase in total complaints while British Airways and Air France saw complaints drop by over 30%.
Point #4 – In each of the top four customer complaint categories – flights problems, baggage, ticketing/rescheduling/boarding, and refunds – Lufthansa trended worse than did British Airways and Air France when 2006 and 2010 data are compared.
This is rehashing the exact same thing. In 2006, Lufthansa received 87 complaints. It went down to 84 in 2007, then up to 61 and up to 68 before finally getting to 118 in 2010. What’s to say it’s not just an anomaly? The parting shot in the report tries to address that.

So far in 2011, with just January and February numbers tallied, Lufthansa has had over twice the number of total complaints filed compared to its total in Jan-Feb 2010.

Very convenient that the data was cut off in February. The March numbers have been out for well over a month and this report just came out, so March could have been included. Why wasn’t it? Well, because Lufthansa had only 8 complaints versus 21 the year before. Oops, might as well just leave out any periods that don’t help the cause, right? This is just nuts, but that brings up the biggest question.

Why the heck is the union doing this?

Normally, you would think that the union was looking to sign a better contract or get more people hired to help fix the problem, but that’s really not applicable here. UNITE HERE only represents the North American-based employees at LSG Skychefs, the catering business. So, the union has nothing to gain if Lufthansa made the strange decision to try to rectify these “problems.” None of them seem to have been about catering, so it’s not like the union can claim the airline needs to hire more of its workers to fix the problem. And even though it continues to be in ongoing negotiations with Lufthansa about a new contract, this certainly won’t impact those negotiations at all, at least not positively.

I spoke with the research analyst about the report and he really kept repeating the same two points.

1. “No comment about negotiations except that they’re ongoing.”
2. “We believe the data in the report speaks for itself.”

Unfortunately for the union, it’s the lack of data that really speaks volumes. This is just a misleading piece of propaganda that falls flat on its face.

It may be a very small piece of the travel experience that few of us will have the chance to try, but it’s still fun to explore what airlines are doing for their international First Class passengers. Lufthansa is certainly no slouch in this area. In particular, the airline’s First Class Terminal in Frankfurt has always captured my imagine. Combined with the new First Class that rolled out on the A380, it’s a fantastic experience. Let’s walk through a trip from the perspective of someone starting in Frankfurt.

When you get to the airport, you immediately bypass Lufthansa’s main terminal area in favor of the First Class Terminal located just to the west. This free-standing building is only for those travelers flying in international First Class on Lufthansa or connecting to international First Class on Austrian and Swiss. If you’re in First on United? Too bad. HON Circle members also have access to the terminal when they fly. These people fly 300,000 600,000 miles over a two year period, so it’s a very exclusive group.

If you’re driving, someone will take your car and valet park it (apparently not very common in Germany, at least not when compared to the US). If you have a rental car, you can leave it and they will return it for you. You walk in to find a welcome area with desks to check yourself in. After processing there, you walk through the security area into the lounge itself.

The main part of the lounge has plenty of loungers, massage chairs, and workstations. There is a large bar in the main area which has the largest selection of whiskey in Europe – 86 different options.

On the side, there is a sit-down dining area where you can order food.

Going toward the west part of the lounge, you’ll find the cigar lounge, which smelled so friggin’ good. This is an old boys club, for sure.

Past there you find the restrooms along with a couple of day rooms for those who need some rest.

Unlike in the day rooms that British Airways has in the Concorde Lounge at Heathrow, these do not have bathrooms built in. There are a few shower rooms that you can use independently. Some have tubs.

When it comes to boarding, First Class passengers do not pre-board with the rest. They board at the last possible minute by going downstairs to the passport control area. Your passport was sent ahead when you checked in, so you just pick it up and then pick the car you want to take you to the airplane. It’s a mix of Mercedes and Porsches models, and while they can’t guarantee you’ll get the car you want, you will get one of these.

You could technically arrive at the First Class Terminal at 20 minutes before your flight and still likely make it onboard (assuming your gate isn’t too far away). They do ask for at least 30 minutes just to be safe, however.

Once you get to the airplane, you come up from the ramp and go right onboard. About 200 to 300 people per day take advantage of this set-up. There are also First Class lounges in the terminal for those who may be connecting from other airlines or simply do not want to go over to the First Class Terminal itself. Munich also has a First Class lounge as do a couple of places around the world, but none as extravagant as this.

Once onboard, then it’s time to take your seat. You might remember when I wrote about Lufthansa’s plan for the 747 First Class with a seat and a bed. That’s really just a temporary solution. The new First Class standard is what has been delivered on the A380. This has fully flat beds in a sound-cocoon. We weren’t able to experience it in flight, but it’s supposed to be an incredibly quiet experience. For this, I took a video to show it better.

If you’re rich, then step right up and buy these fares. A roundtrip from New York to Frankfurt is only a mere $16,000 or so while a roundtrip originating in Frankfurt starts at just over $11,000. Bargain! You can always try to save up enough points as well in order to get this excellent experience.

I know I said trip reports would only be on Wednesdays now, but I changed my mind. Lufthansa flew me out to Frankfurt only to come back less than 24 hours later on the inaugural A380 to San Francisco, all in business class. I’ll start with the flight out so you can see the differences between the 747 and the A380. Overall, I like what Lufthansa is doing, but I simply cannot sleep in that angled lie-flat bed. The good news is that a replacement is in the works.

[Full disclosure: Lufthansa paid for the flight and one night hotel on this trip]

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May 8, 2011
Lufthansa 457 Lv Los Angeles 255p Arr Frankfurt 1035a
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 104, Runway 25R, Depart 4m Early
Frankfurt (FRA): Gate C15, Runway 7R, Arrive On Time
D-ABTK, Boeing 747-430, Lufthansa White Colors (named Kiel), ~99% Full
Seat 1K
Flight Time ~10h20m

I arrived at LAX about 1.5 hours early so I could have some good quality time in the lounge. Having grown up in LA, there really is nothing like entering the great hall of the Bradley Terminal to get you excited about going somewhere special. This time was no different, but I walked right past the ticket counter and headed through security quickly with my boarding pass I had printed online.

The new Star Alliance lounge in Bradley is nice, and most importantly to me, had a back room with a great view of the new concourse being built as well as all the departures. I grabbed some water, tried to ignore the thrashing the Lakers were taking on the TV, and enjoyed the view. A rep came through about 45 minutes before departure and said that boarding would begin soon, so all passengers should start heading downstairs.

One of the other journalists on the trip (best known as Adventure Girl) just happened to have been seated next to me in the first row. Lufthansa is one of the few airlines that puts business class in the nose of the 747 instead of upstairs. I was happy to take advantage of seat 1K in the nose, where the fuselage is so narrow that only four seats across can fit.

We pushed back on time and took off into the afternoon sun. It was an incredibly smooth flight most of the way. The flight attendants were friendly and were frequently coming up and down to tend to the customers. The seat itself was comfortable for lounging, so I got comfy and started watching movies. Meanwhile, the flight attendants came through with hot towels and a menu with our choices for dinner. The food was actually pretty good, though I don’t like to eat much on those overnight flights. I picked braised short rib for the entree, and did enjoy it, but I couldn’t eat much because it was heavy. I thought it was strange that they bring out the entrees all on one serving cart, and then pull off the foil covers in front of you. That didn’t seem to fit the premium look

At this point, I popped an Ambien and tried to sleep. This did not work out as planned. The seat is one of those angled flat beds which, despite arguments otherwise, are REALLY angled. I could not get comfortable at all, but I did manage to snooze briefly. At one point, I woke up halfway down the seat, face down, with my legs kicked up on the bulkhead in front of me. I have no idea how that happened.

Eventually, I gave up and just watched movies in my drug-induced haze. The sun came up only a couple short hours later, and it was time for breakfast. Soon enough we were descending over the green hills of Germany into the Frankfurt Airport. I’ll cover the ground experience in Frankfurt in a separate post. But now, let’s look at the A380 return in comparison.

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May 10, 2011
Lufthansa 454 Lv Frankfurt 945a Arr San Francisco 1205p
Frankfurt (FRA): Gate C15, Runway 7L, Depart 6m Late
San Francisco (SFO): Gate G101, Runway 28R, Arrive 8m Early
D-AIMD, Airbus A380-841, Lufthansa White Colors (named Tokio), ~95% Full
Seat 14K
Flight Time ~10h50m

This was the inaugural A380 flight to San Francisco, so Lufthansa definitely made a big deal out of it. A380 boarding in Frankfurt (covered soon in my airport post in greater detail) occurs on two levels. From the top level, Biz and First Class passengers board directly from a lounge area that feeds two gates. With 8 First and 98 Business, this lounge fills up. Lufthansa does subway style boarding where you swipe your own boarding pass and then a gate opens for you to pass. Then, on the jet bridge, they check your passports before you board.

We boarded directly on to the upper deck. If you turned left, you would go into the very private First Class (another post, I promise). To the right is 98 seats of Business in what’s really 3 separate cabin areas. The seats are six abreast, and yes, they are still those old angled flat seats with just a little refresh. Apparently, this won’t last forever. I spoke with CEO Carsten Spohr and he confirmed that they are committed to a fully flat seat. The seat has been picked and he says it’s very innovative, but it won’t be announced yet. Others told me that it will be introduced on the first 747-8 when it comes into the fleet early next year.

I quickly realized that these seats are much better when not in the bulkhead. On the 747, my screen came out of the seat and the magazine net was on the bulkhead, out of reach. When there’s a seat in front of you, the screens are better positioned as is the magazine rack. Other than that, I didn’t notice many changes. The controller was simplified a bit and the inflight entertainment system was faster. It still, however, was not touch screen. I’m told it’s a touch screen in economy but not in Business because people can’t reach it anyway. Not true. I would have preferred a touch screen over scrolling using arrows on the controller.

The best enhancement to the inflight entertainment? There were three cameras – one on the tail, one in the nose, and one underneath. I can watch that channel all day (or, um, at least half the flight). The air show map is greatly improved as well with better detail on where you are and cooler views of the route. One other big improvement? Being on the upper deck means, as on the 747, there’s a storage compartment between the window seat and the sidewall.

As expected, the A380 was very quiet on departure. That long, slow takeoff roll just makes you think you’ll never get airborne, but of course, we did. We turned left and headed north . . . for a long time. We went along the west coast of Denmark and then up along the coast of Norway. Finally, near Bergen, we headed out to sea and went well north of Iceland and Hudson Bay.

I had a salmon appetizer followed by some traditional Swabian dumplings. It was very good. And every meal was accompanied by a pretzel roll. I cannot understand why they can’t make them in the US like they do over there. Man, those are so freakin’ good. After the meal, the crew came around with a cake to celebrate the inaugural, but I passed. I went exploring.

First point? There is nothing more fun than peeing while staring out the window. Every plane should provide that opportunity (and an increasing number do).

Our Business Class cabin was mostly reserved for invited guests, and having so many onboard, we had several opportunities to talk to people. I was able to speak with the A380 Product Marketing Director from Airbus, Lufthansa’s CEO, and several crew members. Just as on the previous flight, the service was excellent from the crew. As the flight wore on, I got tired. Having slept only a handful of hours in the last two days meant that I was getting loopy. I was able to nap for about an hour but not in the bed position. I had to treat it as a lounger and then I was ok. I stayed in the position to watch a movie and found it comfortable for that as well.

People like to talk about how big the A380 is, but it really doesn’t feel that large. Part of it is that it’s not particularly long, and you never see the other deck. Lufthansa has premium cabins upstairs and coach down below. The stairs are blocked off and people cannot go between cabins. (We were an exception since we were journalists covering the flight.) Because of that, it feels smaller than a lot of other, longer airplanes.

Later in the flight, they served a second, small meal which I followed that up with some leftover cake from earlier. We had gone so far north that by the time we came down, we had great views of Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens, and Mt Hood. The winds were so light, and the flight was only a few minutes longer than the flight east. That was a problem. They had this timed for media coverage, so we had to circle for about half an hour before we came in to a cloudless San Francisco.

We got off the plane on the top deck again and then went through customs. Then we came right back to the gate for a celebration before I, Adventure Girl, and Johnny Jet headed over to our United flight back to LA.

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May 10, 2011
United 274 Lv San Francisco 301p Arr Los Angeles 425p
San Francisco (SFO): Gate 72, Runway 28L, Depart 6m Early
Los Angeles (LAX): Gate 75B, Runway 24R, Arrive 8m Early
N482UA, Airbus A320-232, United White Top Colors, ~80% Full
Seat 18A
Flight Time 52m

That flight was uneventful despite a runway change before departure which made for an interesting dance to get airplanes lined up right. I’m glad Channel 9 was on for me to listen. But I promptly passed out once airborne from exhaustion and woke up on the way into LA.

Overall, I really enjoyed the Lufthansa service and the food. That seat, however, just didn’t work for me in a world of truly flat beds. It’s good to see that Lufthansa is recognizing this and will be making the switch next year. That combined with the service and food will make for a very serious competitor to just about anyone.

[See all photos from my trip on the Lufthansa A380 SFO inaugural]

Airlines have spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure out a way to squeeze a seat and a bed into a very small space on an airplane, and they’ve done an admirable job. But any time you try to create multiple uses in one place, it’s not perfect. Lufthansa has decided to go a different way. Back to 1950. First Class fliers on some 747s will now get a seat and a bed. And as far as I’m concerned, this might be the best First Class product in the air. (Not that I’ve tried them all . . .)

Tell me that doesn’t look sweet. It’s made even more awesome by the fact that it’s on the upper deck of the 747. Eight of these babies upstairs and that’s it. Amazing.

As I’ve said, airlines have put some serious research and development into creating the perfect experience in a very small space. The problem, however, is that no seat can also be a perfect bed. Except for the Craftmatic adjustable, beds are not meant to fold up. Sure, they can be very comfortable, but most airlines get to that point by putting an increasingly thick mini-mattress over the bed to hide the bumps and dips.

What you get is a pretty comfortable bed with a mostly comfortable seat. It works well considering the space constraints, but Lufthansa looked it in a different way. They applied typical German efficiency.

Lufthansa’s First Class on the 747 is dated. It does go fully flat, but you sit right next to someone. In a world of insanely-private suites and opulent amenities, it’s just not that competitive. So Lufthansa looked at the space and said, “Huh, instead of selling 16 First Class seats, why not sell only 8 of them so it’s more private?” And that’s exactly what they’re doing on the 747s starting April 22. So First Class customers will have two seats all to themselves.

But on 10 of the 747s, Lufthansa is pulling out eight of those seats and installing real beds instead. So there will still be eight First Class seats sold, but instead of two seats, you’ll have a seat and a bed. Works for me.

My only problem with this whole plan is that it’s only on 10 of the 747s. I’m told that these airplanes will not be dedicated to any specific routes, so it will really be luck of the draw. And that’s a bummer. It’s also kind of a waste since people won’t be willing to pay extra if they don’t know that they’ll actually get it. But it was emphasized to me that there will be only be 10 done “for now” because that’s how many they can get done this year. My guess is that we’ll either see more retrofitted later or we’ll just see more of the 747s retired.

Beginning next year, Lufthansa starts taking delivery of the bigger 747-8, and those will have this new First Class as well as a new business class. So it seems this year is something of a transition year.

I do like where the airline is going with this. You can now have a true bed and a comfortable seat for reclining and eating. Sounds like a nice way to pass the time to me. Combine that with the private First Class Terminal in Frankfurt and you’ve got an incredible experience from the time you arrive.