The Lufthansa Group has been working on a new design for the booking platform for a long time. The goal is to have a uniform design for all airlines (Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian, …) that only differs in its colour accents.
The new design could already be tested on the smartphone for some time. Now, Lufthansa has apparently started to roll out the new design to all devices. The flight search on Lufthansa.com on the desktop PC is now sent to the new design by default. It looks tidier but lacks some well-known functions.
If you don’t like the new design, we’ll show you how to continue using the old design at the end of the article. Fortunately, this is still possible at the moment.
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Booking Process on Lufthansa.com Now in a New Design
While the new design was recently designated as a beta test, it is now active on Lufthansa.com by default. So as soon as you search for the desired connection, you end up in the new booking platform. Below is a comparison of the old (left) and new (right) booking mask for the same connection:
At first glance, a few changes are immediately apparent:
- The price of the next higher travel class, e.g. premium economy, is missing in the new design. The price for premium economy is now only displayed after a connection has been selected, which makes comparisons more difficult
- The exact flight number is only displayed with a further click
- The cheapest price is no longer highlighted in yellow. This makes it more difficult to find the best price
- The yellow and green color is gone completely, the new website is just white and blue
The fare selection has also been redesigned:
The new design then runs through to the last booking step. For instance, the booking of additional services and seat selection has also been revised. The latter can now only be found in the last booking step:
The Booking Classes Are not Displayed
Unfortunately, the new website is missing information that is very important for frequent flyers. So far, it has been possible to find out the booking class with just a few clicks:
Clicking there, the booking classes for each individual segment and each fare were displayed:
This and other shortcomings of the new website and app were discussed in many forums several months ago. At that time, Lufthansa was well aware of the shortcomings and had announced that it will bring back key features by mid-2023:
As it is based on a new technology, some functions will not be available for the time being. This includes scanning and saving entry documents, purchasing fixed-price upgrades and upgrades with award miles, and displaying the booking class when booking a flight. *
The most important functions will find their way back into your app by mid-2023
Email from Lufthansa to beta testers
It remains questionable whether Lufthansa still counts the display of the booking class as one of the most important functions. Because Miles&More will be switched to a new points system from 2024 anyway, in which the booking class no longer plays a role.
Even if the booking class is not currently displayed, it is currently at least still being transmitted in an API request. If you dig through the browser’s developer tools, you can find them there.
But it is easier to use the old website:
How To Bring Back the Old Design
At Travel-Dealz, we developed a tool called Go2 – a unified flight search form for more than 60 airlines (and frequent flyer programs). You can use it on its own website (and then click on Lufthansa) – or via the form below:
Simply enter the departure airport, destination, dates, number of passengers and travel class. You will then end up on the old Lufthansa booking site, where you can see the booking class as usual. If you wish, you can also search for one-way flights or multi-stop connections.
Conclusion
One can argue about design. There will be some users who will prefer the new, cleaner design over the old site (I’m not one of them).
But I find it incomprehensible that Lufthansa is switching to an unfinished platform without providing an alternative itself. The old site wasn’t pretty, but it was at least functional.
What do you think of the new booking platform? Please leave a comment with your opinion.
Cover Picture: Lufthansa (Composite by Travel-Dealz)
Comments (6)
Absolutely hating the new website which is not only regressive but slow as hell. Since the pandemic started have been seeing a total decline in all aspects of service levels at Lufthansa. This is another feather in their cap. Rethinking of taking my loyalty somewhere else after having maintained my Senator Status since the last 6 years.
I checked today and either on Lufthansa, Swiss and/or Austrian, the booking classes are visible now. The “Compare fares” – on screenshots in article, was updated to “Compare fares (and booking classed)”. After clicking, the first line is showing “Booking class”.
This is indeed new and has only been implemented today. Thanks for letting us know 🙂
I really hate the new Lufthansa page.
In the old one, I could look up my booking and change flights and choose any date whenever I wanted. I could compare prices and choose a seat before I made my final decision.
That is all not possible now. When I click on rebooking, I only have a five day choice–I can’t look at a following week or month(s) and decide when to fly later.
There are so many features that are missing–too many to count.
I am really disappointed–Lufthansa “fixed” something that didn’t need fixing.
Now, I must call the help center to change my flights, but won’t be able to tell them when exactly I want to fly, because I can’t see the times, the layovers, luggage/no luggage, the cost of flights that could possibly interest me.
What I used to be able to do online myself, now I have to spend hours on the phone with an agent to do everything for me.
Oh-and-I am angry that I must deal with the call center–it’s an automated nightmare, and you waste so much time until FINALLY someone–a human–answers your call.
I am so frustrated and dissatisfied, I know I will have to avoid Lufthansa because of this.
What they think they simplified, they only made more complicated–and NOT user friendly.
I have checked booking different prem econ classes eg Basic out and Flex return. The result is that all legs follow basic rules, rebooking fee and no refund but you pay full prem econ flex fee for the return leg, something is wrong in LH IT system!!
well, the rebooking fees are different compare to the old site when checking the fine print. I wonder how the rebooking agent will handle this? The real test is to do a booking and after the booking logg in with Lufthansa ID and check the rules!!