Flying on Lufthansa in First Or Business Class? Check Out The New Lounges!

For those of you lucky enough to be able to afford a first- or business-class ticket -- or have Senator status -- on Lufthansa are in for a treat.  The carrier is shelling out more than $130 million in the next two years to build new and upgrade existing facilities world wide, which I wrote about in the March 12 issue (subscribers only) of Aviation Daily.

First up in the hopper is the new Senator and business lounge at Berlin Tegel Airport in conjunction with the city's hosting of the recent International Tourism Exhibition. Senate customers include those who fly at least 130,000 miles a year, while business lounges are for business-class passengers.

Work on a new First-Class lounge at Munich Airport began in November 2006 and is scheduled for completion this summer. The lounge will have a gourmet restaurant, a comfort and bar area, working and restrooms, a separate cigar lounge and bathroom amenities. Lufthansa is enlarging the existing Senator and business lounges in Terminal 2.

At its Frankfurt hub, Lufthansa will open a new First-Class lounge in Pier B in the spring and a new Senator Lounge in the new passageway between Piers C and D in Terminal 1 next year. The business lounge at Dusseldorf Airport is being extended at the space previously occupied by the Senator lounge. Other lounge projects include New York and Paris.

Through some fluke on a trip coming back from Tel Aviv to D.C.in 1999, I got an upgrade on Lufthansa from Frankfurt to DC.  That is a story for another blog, but as part of the upgrade, I got to sit in the first-class lounge.  Let me tell you -- those Germans know how to run a lounge.  They had a chef available to cook whatever you wanted.  There was a full bar where I got a nice lesson on German wines that perseveres today.  There are showers and daybeds available for a nap.  I could go on, but it would just depress you.

Photos courtesy of Lufthansa