What went wrong with Lufthansa's Allegris

Lufthansa says the 2.5 billion euros it put into Allegris, its new long-haul cabins and service, is the most it has ever spent on its product. The business class seat it designed is very good. Yet two and a half years after the first flight, most Lufthansa long-haul passengers still sit in the old cabin. Some of the new seats have flown empty for months because they had not been certified.

Lufthansa built a cabin that was very hard to make, very hard to approve and very hard to install. Then it tried to roll it out while its main airline was losing money.

A late start, then missing pieces

Allegris first flew on May 1, 2024, on an Airbus A350-900 from Munich to Vancouver. The new first class suites were not ready, a delay put down to supply chain constraints. They were added to the A350s later.

The bigger problem was the Boeing 787-9. Lufthansa's own Allegris fact sheet from 2024 said the 787 would follow in the second half of that year. In the end, the first Allegris 787 did not carry passengers until October 9, 2025. The jets were ready long before that. Their business class seats were not.

Too many seats to certify

The root of the trouble is choice. Allegris business class comes in five seat types: a standard seat, a privacy seat by the window, an extra space seat, an extra long bed, and a business suite with doors. Trade reports say the business seats come from three different manufacturers. Every version must be certified on every aircraft type, and the US Federal Aviation Administration signs off on seats for Boeing jets.

That is where the 787 stalled. When the jets entered service from Frankfurt, only the first row of business class could be sold, according to Aviation A2Z. That meant 4 of 28 business seats were for sale on each flight.

Lufthansa said on February 16, 2026 that 25 of the 28 seats could now be booked, for travel from April 15. Three seats in the second row were still waiting for approval at the time.

The A350 had its own version of this. In early 2025, One Mile at a Time reported that the first economy row on the Allegris A350s, seven seats in all, had to stay empty. Those seats need airbag seatbelts because of the hard-shell premium economy seats in front, and the belts were not yet certified. In August 2026, Italian site The Flight Club reported that Lufthansa and SWISS A350s were still flying with seven unsold seats.

SWISS hit a different snag. One Mile at a Time reported that its new first class on the A330 is so heavy that the airline would carry ballast of about 3,000 pounds in the rear of the plane to keep it balanced.

Paying for the seat you already bought

Even when the seats work, many travelers feel nickel-and-dimed. Lufthansa sells most of the better business class seats as paid extras. Only the standard seats are free to choose for everyone.

When Allegris launched, the privacy, extra space and extra long bed seats cost about 100 to 230 euros each way to reserve, according to One Mile at a Time. The suite cost 400 to 600 euros. Lufthansa no longer publishes the prices. Top-tier status holders get some seats free, but nobody gets the suite free except for operational reasons.

To a passenger who paid several thousand euros for business class, that feels like a toll on the product that was advertised.

The old cabin is still everywhere

The slowest part of Allegris is the retrofit. New jets arrive with the cabin. Existing jets mostly do not.

German site Frankfurtflyer counted Lufthansa's long-haul fleet in September 2026. Of 101 active long-haul aircraft, 25 had Allegris: 10 A350-900s and 15 787-9s. Not one older aircraft had been converted. Two-thirds of the fleet still flew the old business class, which has no direct aisle access for every seat.

Lufthansa says it will retrofit A350s in 2027 and still plans to convert its 17 Boeing 747-8s. Its eight A380s are getting a newer 1-2-1 business seat, but not Allegris. The Boeing 777-9, which was meant to be a core Allegris aircraft, is years late. The first one with Allegris is now expected in 2027. We looked at when you might actually fly the 777X separately.

Money made it harder

All of this landed while the core Lufthansa airline was struggling. In the first half of 2025, the Lufthansa brand lost 274 million euros even as the wider group made a profit, according to Aviation A2Z. Airline chief Jens Ritter warned that the airline could not afford its incoming long-haul jets without structural change.

Delayed aircraft, empty premium seats and slow retrofits all cost money. A cabin meant to earn more per seat spent its first two years leaving some of those seats unsold.

Is Allegris a failure?

No. Lufthansa says more than one million passengers had flown Allegris by early 2026, and the business class seat is one of the best in Europe. If you get it, especially on an A350 or 787, it is a big step up.

But it is a lesson in complexity. Lufthansa chose many seat types, several suppliers and a slow retrofit plan, and each decision added risk. Until the older A350s and 747-8s are converted, booking Lufthansa long-haul is still a gamble on which cabin you get.

Our advice is simple. Check the aircraft type before you book. On Lufthansa, the A350-900s delivered since 2024 and most 787-9s from Frankfurt have Allegris. The 747-8s, A340s and older A350s do not. You can find more on our Lufthansa page, plus the airline's new Allegris routes this winter and what Lufthansa still does well.