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Looks like many more European travellers are going to get Discovered. Discover Airlines — which Lufthansa has previously been calling its “leisure airline” — is now flying on key business routes, like Paris, and is expanding more. And that’s bad news for passengers… sometimes.

Discover is one of the Temu Lufthansas, along with Lufthansa City, Edelweiss, Air Dolomiti, and even Eurowings to an extent. They look like a Lufthansa duck and quack like a Lufthansa duck… sometimes. Sometimes they don’t. And neither passengers nor staff know when.

The Temu Lufthansas are one of the big problems airlines are creating for themselves today: it’s basically business class shrinkflation. Or what used to be sold as a chocolate bar now not containing enough, er, chocolate to be legally sold as chocolate, and now being sold as a “crispy wafer”.

One of our readers got Discovered when Lufthansa staff denied them access to the Lufthansa business lounge in Munich, when ticketed in Discover business class, even though they should have had access. You might not earn miles or status points, depending on which airline’s program you’re part of.

Lufthansa used to really push the idea of Discover as its group “leisure airline”. You know, only to places where passengers aren’t intelligent enough to know they’re getting Temu Lufthansa, or not discerning enough to care. Now major European business destinations are getting Discovered.

Passengers just *love* the Discover Airlines experience! *In theory*, Discover should now be under the same Lufthansa roof in FRA and MUC, but we hear a lot of things about getting shunted off to distant parts of the main FRA terminal, full-time busgating, etc etc.

Let’s be super clear: Lufthansa isn’t some amazingly great experience, and parts of the Temu Lufthansa experience are *better* than full-fat Lufthansa, as we discovered flying Eurowings earlier this year. But it needs to be honest about what passengers are getting.

Don’t think I’ve ever done short-haul business class in either LH or Eurowings, but I’m flying to LAS on Discover again in December, and will report back on whether the experience has improved since last time. Swiss is my fave LH group airline, with ITA close behind.