MSP-FRA: Lufthansa’s new non-stop coming

Hi Tom, I tend to be risk & stress-averse for international travel (also not a huge fan of FRA if I’m connecting) but when I saw this announcement I looked at fares next summer and saw business class for about $2,500 so I got excited… until I realized that was each way 🤣. Like many things, if this is your Plan A and all goes to plan, then great, but probably if a re-route is needed the Plan B options get onerous. I’ll probably stick to Delta myself. I say this as someone who in the last couple of years has only been able to book trips but not actually take them for family reasons — that’s why I was curious about the thoughts from folks like yourself. I think there are 4-5 frequent posters here based in MN (hoping Mardee chimes in too! 😁).

Hi Kirstin. Thanks for the post. This should be a big plus for my wife and I. We often fly United / Star Alliance to Europe, partly because we had some accumulated miles, but mainly because of the outstanding Star Alliance network within Europe. Once in Europe, with Star Alliance, we can easily connect to virtually anywhere, even smaller cities / airports. The early timing of the flight will be great for this. For example, if going to Krakow, we would now be able to go non-stop to Frankfurt, have a comfortable 2+ hour layover, and still be in Krakow by late morning. Plus there are 3 later Star Alliance FRA to Krakow flights that day in case our MSP-FRA flight is delayed for some reason. In the past, we needed to connect in the US, usually Chicago or Wash Dulles, which was fine, but now we can go direct. And yes, I just checked, and this flight is available for the same # of UA miles as we would have had to use for the previous connecting flights. :)

Hi Bob, you make a good point about connection options in FRA on Star Alliance. Here’s hoping a little competition turns out to be good for airfares!