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Lufthansa’s Ill-Fated Rollout of New Look Cabins Suffers Yet Another Problem as Economy Seats Have to Go Unoccupied Due to Certification Issues

Lufthansa’s Ill-Fated Rollout of New Look Cabins Suffers Yet Another Problem as Economy Seats Have to Go Unoccupied Due to Certification Issues

a row of blue chairs

The calamitous introduction by German flag carrier Lufthansa of brand-new cabins and seats has suffered yet another setback after it was revealed that the airline will have to keep some Economy Class seats unoccupied for months to come because of certification issues with a safety device.

Lufthansa announced its so-called Allegris new cabin and seat concepts back in 2017, but the project has long been ridiculed for the lengthy delays it has suffered, as well as highly questionable design choices that have become a thorn in the side of airline chief executive Carsten Spohr.

After repeatedly being forced to delay the rollout of the new seats, the first plane to have Allegris cabins installed eventually took to the skies in May 2024. Even then, however, the space at the front of the Airbus A350 airplane where state-of-the-art First Class was meant to be fitted was left empty because of production problems.

Thankfully, Lufthansa has finally resolved the issues with the new-look First Class cabin, but that doesn’t mean that the airline has overcome the myriad other problems that still plague the often mocked Allegris project.

The A350, on which the Allegris concept debuted, has become incredibly popular with airlines, not only because of its long-range and fuel efficiency but also because Airbus has dedicated a lot of effort to maximizing the use of the cabin footprint for passenger seating.

But in the case of Lufthansa’s A350s, there are currently seven Economy class seats that cannot be occupied because a safety device fitted to these seats is yet to be certified.

As reported by airliners.de, the row of seven seats sits directly behind the Premium Economy cabin. Unlike other airlines, however, Lufthansa opted not to install a fixed bulkhead between the two cabins.

This isn’t an issue on Lufthansa’s planes that don’t feature Allegris cabins, but the airline’s new Premium Economy seats have fixed shells that could pose a blunt trauma risk in the event of a sudden stop, severe turbulence, or crash.

To get around this problem, rather than opting for the fixed bulkhead option, Lufthansa decided to install seatbelt airbags on this row of Economy seats. Unfortunately, the airbags are yet to be certified, and it seems as if the airline has no idea when they might actually be approved.

“Row 19 will remain blocked in the Allegris A350 for the next few months,” a spokesperson for the airline bluntly points out.: “The reason is the pending certification of the airbags of these seats, which are required due to the hard shell of the front row of Premium Economy.”

In the meantime, the seats are strapped off to prevent passengers from sitting in them in the middle of the flight.

This snag, however, seems trivial in comparison to the problem that Lufthansa is facing with the Allegris Business Class seats that will be fitted to the airline’s fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

Lufthansa has ordered 34 Dreamliners, and 13 have already been built. In fact, six of those have the Allegris seats installed and should have been delivered by now but the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is refusing to certify the Business Class seats.

The issue appears to be with crash tests performed on the seats, raising the possibility that an easy or quick fix will not be forthcoming.

In fact, Lufthansa is taking the problems so seriously that the airline has considered taking delivery of the planes without the bespoke Business Class seats certified and flying them just with Premium Economy and Economy seats occupied.

The Business Class seats on the Boeing 787 are essentially the same as those that have been fitted to the Airbus A350 but they are made by different manufacturers, and as Airbus is based in Europe, the certification process was handled by the European Air Safety Agency.

In contrast, the FAA is responsible for certifying the seats on the 787 Dreamliner, as Boeing is, of course, an American company.

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