X'mas Present from Lufthansa: New First Class on A340-300 (SIN-MUC)

[cmy]

This is my first ever TR, hope you folks will find it enjoyable!

After buying miles from US Airways promo twice and feeling the urge to do a last-minute trip, I decided to do a last trip for the year to celebrate Christmas and New Year in Europe, with the hope of catching some Christmas snow. Found good availabilities on ANA search tool for the period I was eyeing on and hotel prices looks cheap too, hence the trip was ticketed in early Dec 2011.

Checked flight24.com for the flight registration daily prior to my trip, hoping to get a retrofitted bird for my flight (there's only 3 of these on A34, and maybe Lufthansa wanted to give me a Christmas gift, one was sent from Munich on 23 Dec and I kinda knew it would be my plane for this trip.

Will let the pictures do most of the talking for me.


Quick Visit to the SKL in T2:



Flight is light today, am the only one in F though the check-in agent did commented someone is coming along in F (turns out to be a middle-aged lady who I presumed to be the Captain's wife).

NEW FIRST CLASS!

[cmy]

Van Laack Sleeper Suit and Porsche Amenity Kit


And a visit to the bathroom:







Hot Towel Service. SQ should learn this:

[cmy]

Cuisine on LH red-eye flight:

[CarbonMan]

Very nice, CMY! Keep them coming.

[calvinoeh]

thanks for sharing and I agree... Keep em coming!

[cmy]

thanks for encouragement, CarbonMan & calvinoeh! here's more...

Tadaaaaa.....Bed for the night:


Chocolate & Bottled Water as bedtime snack:


Breakfast Menu:




Freebies and Souvenir from the lovely FA:


Reviews: First impression wise, I prefer Lufthansa's color scheme over SQ's 77W in First Class and you don't need to get up and flip over to make a bed. However, some seats are cranky. For my 1A seat, after I tried a few buttons to make the seat lower, it simply refuses to come up, which the FA says they will need to do a reset. Likewise, my 1A's IFE malfunctioned, simply not loading any movies despite 4 resets.

By then, I was so tired that I simply just took 2A for the rest of the flight. Despite this, the IFE is a let-down. It takes forever to load an application or movie. For the latter, it's at least 3 mins before you get anything moving. Tried the language learning program and I simply gave up after 5 mins of waiting.
And btw, Seat 2A seems to have a little more leg room than 1A.

Food-wise, the portions are of the right sizes though I find the food of average quality, especially the eggs for breakfast, it's rather bland.

Service on the other hand is great throughout the flight by a wonderful female FA of Ghana/Kenya descent and a rather chirpy male FA with the former serving me most of the time. Was rather surprised to learn from her that she is still a student and flying is her part-time job and she flies only once a month! According to her, 30% of Lufthansa crew are part-timers. Their rest days are better than SQ, it seems with an average of 5 days rest upon return to their Munich base.

This is also the ONLY flight so far that I had a Captain coming out of the cockpit to have a quick conversation with me, none so far from my past SQ's first class flights. Perhaps he was out to chat with his wife on 1K and saw the only other lone ranger in the cabin and hence walk over to say hi. I like the way when he asked if I liked the New First Class product and in his exact words, "If you like the New First Class, don't complain . If you don't like it, PLEASE write in with your comments so that we can do some improvements." Maybe he thinks Singaporeans are whiners?

He was also nice to tell me that Munich had just sent a telex to him that FCL is closed when our flight arrive at 6am due to Christmas and will only open later at 8am and apologise for this and suggested that I could spend some time walking around the Terminal before the lounge opens. (Was informed by the Purser later that Senator lounge would be open still and so I was there till FCL opens).

[SQ_SIA]

lol "SEASON" greetings........

[coffeeblack]

So. Cool. Thanks so much for this trip report!

[whatsthequestionnow]

Thanks for the report

[marcuslai]

What a smart looking cabin ! Thank you for the many photos; I hope to be able to fly in one one day with my mcdull kids

[ginkoka]

Nice! Can you show us what's in the amenity kit, and what the sleeper suit looks like?

[cmy]

Nice! Can you show us what's in the amenity kit, and what the sleeper suit looks like?

Oh dear, I did not take a pic of either. Found a pic of the contents in the Porsche-designed Amenity Kit here: [URL="http://travel.bart.la/tag/cabin/"]

The Van Laack sleeper suit consists of a dark blue long-sleeved polo in a very soft and comfortable material with a ash-grey nylon-feel trousers.

I much prefer this to SQ's Givenchy sleeper suit which is kinda overly warm for me.

[coffeeblack]

I much prefer this to SQ's Givenchy sleeper suit which is kinda overly warm for me.

!!! SO i wasn't the only one! I swear after I wore it i was sweating buckets...

[9V-SIA]

Nice report. Thanks!

Surprised your brand new seat needed to be reset

Just joined LH frequent flyer programme

[Kyo]

Great first TR, gives me the impetus to finish off my own one now I'm back in SIN

!!! SO i wasn't the only one! I swear after I wore it i was sweating buckets...

I just wear a simple t-shirt on top as it's always been too warm for my liking. The other half seems to love both the top and the bottom, however...

9V-SIA, switching to the dark side, finally or just crediting FQTV/FQTS separately now?