I've traveled endless times with Lufthansa, mostly for intercontinental trips, and also for some inter-European flights and, throughout the years, I have learned to respect it as one of my most reliable airlines in the world.
Lufthansa never gets me excited. You won't hear me saying "Wow, I am flying with Lufthansa" because, truth be told, their planes aren't the best, their meals aren't the yummiest, their seats aren't the most comfortable, and the look and decoration of the planes is dead boring. Unless you travel in Business, you will find that Lufthansa offers a happy medium (or just a medium) on those fronts.
However, Lufthansa does something that I value more than comfort: reliability, especially when problems arise, great prices for single or multi-country intercontinental trips (without the need of buying an around-the-world ticket), good stopover policies, and great staff. They did have a huge network of stops throughout the world before they even joined Star Alliance, and now is even larger. They are best pals with some of my favorite international lines. These days the inter-European trips are done by subsidiary or budget-ish airlines but subject to the terms and conditions of Lufthansa (that is always a guarantee to me), and some of the inbound-outbound trips in Australia are done by Singapore Airlines or THAI, and these airlines get me always excited.
So many bad stereotypes about Germans in Australia, and my experience with the crews has been always fabulous -- the smiliest, friendliest, and most h-e-l-p-f-u-l on-board crews in the planet. Certainly, you can find here rude staff, or staff who don't care and don't want to help. That happens in every single airline. However, I have never found any of those. My experience with them has always been excellent.
Most importantly, when problems have arisen, regarding delayed flights or lost/delay of baggage, their response was immediate. From the manual. No begging needed on my part.
These days, they have online check-in, which is great, but they can be tight regarding regulations for in-cabin hand luggage.
You cannot love a company that does not respect customers or does not treat them well. In that regard, Lufthansa got my love, perhaps not my passion.
DEC 2022 UPDATE - GONE DOWN THE HILL AND NO MORE LOVE FROM ME.
I had several intercontinental trips with the airline this year and they've gone downhill. Service has been dreadful, with 13h flights with limited number of attendants and many of them unwilling to give you a hand with anything, plain rude and barely any customer service skills, reduced number of free snacks and water during the night, like water shouldn't be a luxury. There were several people complaining about an obnoxious rude vulgar flight attendant. Having that sort of cow in this sort of plane is unacceptable, and she seemed to be that way, like it's her personality so, if it was up to the customers, she would be sacked. Beside this, their planes are old, their entertainment system hasn't been updated and they are worse than anyone else I traveled with in my last trip overseas. The screens were non responsive, the amount of movies limited. Seat leg space has grown to... tiny, Head lockers too small for an intercontinental flight.
The European short segments of my flight with them were also average. Poor service. No entertainment program for a 3h flight. No free food, just a bottle of water. Average customer service and they were serving drinks in glass glasses, so one customer broke one and there were pieces of glass all over, which not a safety point that you get from them.
Avoid if you can. I will do my best not to fly with them again.
