Two servings of Japanese hospitality - OZ C, NH F, LH C

[stargold]

My recent travels have been recorded with newly acquired LX3.

Very happy with it, especially indoor shots.

You get used to having to remove the lens cover before taking your shot.

Great TR as always.

Now you have me obsessing about trying NH F!

Ooh, so the LX3 gets a then? Good to know! (The lens cover is still a pain whichever you look at it! though, having said that, I had a DSLR before so it shouldn't be too foreign a concept!) The thing I look forward to most is usable indoor shots without flash...

Thank you and good to know I'm spreading my NH F obsession to others

[Nick C]

Excellent write up on the NH portion!

ps. You still have another couple of months to do a redux TR! The NH 744s are staying slightly longer in svc.

[HUGE AL]

Note to self: when on the same NH F flight as HUGE AL, remind the CP to safely hide away at least one bottle for the rest of the F cabin...

I welcome the challenge as I know quite a few of them.

[stargold]

Flight 3: LH4726 FRA-LHR 18APR (SA), A300-600, Seat 1A
STD: 1005 (On Time) STA: 1040 (On Time)

(Originally booked on: LH4810 FRA-LCY 17APR (FR), Avro RJ85, STD: 1810 STA: 1840)


Pre-flight: The Steinburger Frankfurt Airport Hotel

The Steinburger hotel that the misconnected passengers were accommodated in turned out to be a pretty nice little hotel. It was clean, had a big window with decent light and the shower was reassuringly powerful - just what I want in a short-stay hotel. The building smelt clean, the decor was reasonably modern and the staff were generally nice as well. I would gladly stay here again if I need an overnight stop at FRA.


The bed - it was a single room.


The writing desk and half of the large window


The shower with the water pressure that I wanted to take home!

After getting to sleep so late the previous night, I woke up feeling rather surprisingly refreshed at around 7:30am. I realised what a good idea it turned out to be to make some effort changing my flight from the absurd 7:30am departure into the 10:05am departure - if I hadn't managed to find the baggage agent who changed it for me, I would have had to get up after barely 3 hours of sleep. Truly horrible.

Anyhow, I took a quick shower and packed my luggage again, then headed down to the ground floor to have some breakfast. There was a separate breakfast room for the ANA passengers in a different part of the hotel rather than the normal breakfast room - I'm not sure whether this was due to capacity reasons or cost reasons - but the breakfast spread in the separate room was not too bad. Not the best I've seen (unlikely to be really, outside Asia), but acceptable. There were a few familiar-ish faces from the previous night though we didn't chat or anything.

A good sized breakfast later, I headed back to my room, made sure I wasn't leaving anything behind, then brought all my bags downstairs and checked out. Given that they barely got my name when checking in previous night, checking out was a pretty simple process - I wonder what they would have done if I had consumed the entire minibar, since they didn't have my credit card as security and didn't have anything more than my name


Back to Frankfurt Airport, and the short hop back to London

The complimentary bus to the airport arrived at 8:30am and it was once again quite a lot of effort putting all the bags into the bus, then getting them all off when I arrived at Terminal 1 at 8:40. Naturally, as we were turning in the bend approaching the terminal, I looked very longingly at the First Class terminal and wished that I had access After lugging all the bags onto a cart, I made my way to the departures hall and ended up wandering around a bit lost for a while before finding the C-class check in counters - airports don't often throw me but FRA is always such a maze.


The Business Class check-in desks


There was a small queue and when it was my turn, I approached one of the counters where I was greeted very warmly by a male agent who was probably the friendliest Lufthansa ground staff I have ever encountered. I explained the misconnection situation due to the incoming flight delay and that I was being reaccommodated on today's flight, and he then tried to check me in. However, there was a problem with the e-ticket as the coupon for the FRA-LON segment was marked as "Invalid", and he advised me that I would have to go to one of the ticketing counters to rectify it. So, off I trot to the ticketing counters where thankfully there was no-one waiting. After explaining the same again, the ticketing agent (not as friendly as the previous one) changed the status of the coupon to "Active" and printed my boarding pass straight away - he added that I just need to go to the baggage drop-off. However, there was a long snaking queue for the bag-drop and it was much quicker to wait in line at the C-class check in counter again.

When it came to my turn after a short queue, I approached the desk where a rather wooden female agent was waiting. I gave her the boarding pass and told her I need to check in the bags. When I put the bags onto the scales, there was a problem - the total came to 40kg, and the allowance for this particular flight was only 30kg. Of course, had the previous evening's delay not caused the misconnect, I would not have encountered this problem at all since I wouldn't have collected the bags at FRA. But here I was, stood in front of a check-in agent who I was certain would not cut me any slack, with 10 kilograms overweight. I honestly thought she was going to insist on me paying, but when I hesitated for a while and told her about the previous evening's woes and that I arrived into FRA in NH First Class, she said "I think it will be difficult, but let me go and talk to my supervisor". A few minutes later (felt much longer, mind you!) she came back and said "Just this time!" and all was alright in the world again. She also told me that we were departing from a bus gate - ugh


The famous huge departure board, old style!

[stargold]

I made my way towards the security check where the queue was thankfully very brief, despite being a busy time in the morning with plenty of LH widebody flights flying off to both USA and Asia. Security and passport check completed, I realised that the bus gate area had no lounge - by the time I realised this, I had walked down the stairs into the holding pen and it didn't really seem worthwhile to find a lounge with only 5 minutes to go till boarding. So I sat down and waited for the boarding call.

It looked to be a very full flight judging by how many people were waiting inside the holding pen. Boarding was announced on time at 09:35 and I managed to get onto the first bus out, just. Most people really don't like bus gates, and with good reason - in my case today, the bus just sat there for a good 10 minutes instead of departing for the apron position, making me more and more frustrated in my uncomfortable standing position right next to the door. No wonder people love the FCT at FRA where you get driven to the aircraft in complete comfort!


The not-so-premium "bus gate zoo" experience!


We did eventually depart and, a criss-cross across the airport terminal area later, arrived at the apron position where the A300-600 aircraft stood waiting. Part of the reason why I chose this particular departure was because it was operated by the A300-600 - one of the few intra-European aircraft with proper Business Class seating instead of just a convertable Y seating (or worse, just an "empty middle seat for your comfort" Y seating) in Business Class. I seldom get a chance to board an aircraft in an apron position and it was certainly great to be able to take some photos of the ground-level views of this ageing but reliable old bird.


The engine always looks huge when you view it up close and personal!


The registration of today's aircraft: D-AIAZ


I heard even the tires cost an absolute fortune... Another unusual (for me!) view


People hurriedly ascending the boarding steps in the rainy weather


If the A300-600 engine looks this big, I wonder how big the 77W's GE90 looks from the same angle?!


Whereas the boarding steps for the rear door was open to the rain, the forward door's steps were covered by a roof - some special treatment for C class, at last I walked into the cabin and turned left, to find the proper Business Class seats as expected. They are the same design as the previous-generation longhaul Business Class seats but I'm not sure how much of the old seats were reused for this cabin, if at all - one crucial difference was that unlike the longhaul Business Class config, these seats did not have a legrest, and the pitch was considerably less. Still, much better than the sorry excuse of the "Business Class seat" that you normally get on intra-European flights.


The very smart looking Business Class seats


People settling into their seats


Excellent legroom on my bulkhead seat 1A


A nice change to see proper C seats for a European flight!



I was welcomed onboard by an enthusiastic and friendly male FA, one of the two guys that were serving the C cabin on this flight. He offered to hang my coat, and even hung it up on the crew coat hanger near the jumpseat instead of the closet in the back so that the coat was closer to me when I needed it back. Very thoughtful indeed. Then he came around with some magazines and I took a copy of Time to read on the flight with an interesting article on the US military involvement in Afghanistan.

[stargold]

I realised that the A300-600 may well be one of the aircraft that I don't fly again before it's retired on most airlines, so I asked the nice FA whether he might be able to take my camera and take a photo of the cockpit for me - he was initially hesitant but took my camera with a wink and came back a few minutes later with some nice shots of the cockpit. There were no pre-takeoff beverages offered so I asked for a glass of orange juice, which was brought quickly with a smile. I was relieved to find that the adjacent seat 1C remained unoccupied - in fact, only 1A and 1K was occupied in Row 1. The front C cabin was perhaps two-thirds full by the time the door closed at 10:20am. The weather was still rainy and miserable, but at least it would be sunny when we reach cruising altitude! While waiting to pull away, I saw one of the Avro RJ85s that I could have taken if I caught my flight to LCY as planned - perhaps next time.


The flight crew busy preparing for departure, I guess!


The "Jumbolino" - looks quite cute, don't you think?


Take-off video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sLyTtfgXSw

We took off at 10:35 and reached cruising altitude fairly quickly. Once the seatbelt sign was turned off, the FAs started preparing for the meal/snack service and the trays were handed out by around 10:50. It was a rather tasty cold meal, consisting of some roast beef with horseradish and two types of salmon, served with some warm rolls. The quality of the food was pretty good and I enjoyed it. I had chosen coffee with my meal which was surprisingly good, and a second round of the drinks was offered at around 11:10 (10:10 London time). After the trays were cleared away, I did some reading and looking out of the window - nice to escape the moody weather by going up into the sky


The cold meal - I liked it


By 10:30 the seatbelt sign was turned on and we began our descent. The wind must have been in the wrong direction, because the approach was from the Windsor side instead of doing a nice tour of central London. We landed on time, and quickly reached our gate at Terminal 2.

The landing video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZVtURw4irA

Once the boarding bridges were attached, the 2L door was opened and the crew bid me farewell as I left the aircraft. The passport control had a long-ish queue, but nothing compared to the hideous mess that T3 immigrations can become. After clearing passport control and going to the baggage claim, my bags came out reasonably quickly amongst the first batch and I was on my way out into the arrivals hall.

All in all, Lufthansa performed solidly on this routine flight and I felt there wasn't really a lot they could have improved upon, given the short flight duration (plus the realities of intra-European travel). I was very satisfied with the flight with decent food and good service - perhaps helped by the proper Business Class seats which do make a little bit of difference even on a short flight like this.


==========================
This completes the rather "epic"-length Trip Report - looking back at the previous instalments, I really can't believe I wrote that much. Thankfully the long ramblings seem to be tolerated/appreciated by most, but perhaps I really must learn to be more succint in the future!

It was, in many ways, my absolute fantasy trip, flying on SQ 744 F on the outbound and flying NH 744 F on the inbound. Both flights were excellent - in fact, near perfect - and I hope both airlines can maintain their lofty standards in the future.

Thank you for reading and safe travels! I will be heading back to Korea again in July but no idea which airline/what routing I will be flying yet - naturally, there will be a trip report afterwards and I hope to bring you more interesting photos and commentary for your enjoyment. By way of a small teaser, expect some new airlines in my next report

[Lobster]

Thanks for the excellent trip report

[Nick C]

Great finale!

Most definitely the last LH A300-600R "Kont-Schaufel" TR as well.

[9V-JKL]

Thanks stargold for the TR.

I heard even the tires cost an absolute fortune... Another unusual (for me!) view

Airlines don't usually buy aircraft tires outright. They're leased them and are charge based on the number of Landings.

If the A300-600 engine looks this big, I wonder how big the 77W's GE90 looks from the same angle?!