Lufthansa Opens Luxury Terminal

In an effort to capture more premium-fare travelers, Lufthansa has introduced a first-class-only terminal in Frankfurt, due to open Dec. 1st. No longer will the wealthy traveler have to endure the hardships of airport concourses open to anyone able to buy a ticket. Lufthansa offers luxury for first-class ticket holders, providing them with:

[T]heir own personal assistants, offices, showers and baths and lounges with access to on-demand movies, music or the Internet, the airline said today. The passengers will be taken to their planes in DaimlerChrysler AG Mercedes-Benz S-Class cars or Porsche AG Cayenne sport-utility vehicles.

"With the first-class terminal and the first-class lounges, we're continuing to build on our top position in the top segment while other airlines abandon it," Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Mayrhuber told journalists at a press conference.

With about 16% of the airline's passengers buying premium tickets in the first nine months of the year, Lufthansa anticipates that about 350 high-end travelers will be checked through the new terminal daily. There are also plans for the spare-no-expense treatment to be expanded to Munich, where a similar terminal is scheduled to open in 2006.

So, for those that can afford the high price of a first-class ticket, the squeeze-the-sweaty-bodies-in-the-sardine-can business practices of the cutthroat low-cost airlines and their customers can be completely avoided.