Well I feel compelled to put pen to paper or digits to MacBook. If you’ll all bear with me I feel this report needs a prologue. You see over the last few months we have been avid readers of the Nickbots trip report, loving its detail, sense of excitement and general wonderment. We were also starting our holiday with Lufty F, and then various carriers round SE Asia before an SQ whale jet ride home. And so we concocted our plan to go one further and write a TR to trump the Nickbots. Oh yes, we were going to include video footage, aeroplane serial number plates, gross takeoff weights and so forth. And yet we fell at the first hurdle as the champagne took effect and we forgot to take even one video.
The whale jet ride home would also be carrying two other Gods of the Air in the form of jhm and Phaleesy. You see it’s now the early hours of the morning here in London and jet lag has ensured I’m wide awake. So as I log into SQ Talk I see these two Gods have beaten me to a TR on the SQ318. So we have failed at the second hurdle too. However, we have a cunning plan so to speak.
You see we’re going to write what we feel is the first direct comparison on SQ Talk of Lufty F with SQ J. In fact you could almost say, with the exception of CX F, any carriers F compared with SQ J.
And so dear reader we begin on a cold (-2C) grey and drizzling London day in early December as our car service drops us outside LHR T2. Oh the sense of excitement is palpable, well with us, you see we’re about to take our Luftwaffe F, or J to connect with F, flight. We walk into the terminal and for those not familiar with T2 LHR, it’s the oldest, nastiest of all LHR terminals. Low ceilings, cramped, just plain horrid really. Now we were about four hours early so I thought I’d see if we could transfer to an earlier flight to allow us more time in the FCT at FRA. The boyf goes off to Travelex to collect some currency and I approach the LH ticket desk.
Hello, could I possible move onto the earlier flight to FRA please. I have a flexible F ticket? No it’s not possible says this women with a touch of Eva Braun about her. To be fair she was from Menzies aviation rather than Lufthansa. It wasn’t a big deal so I left to head over to Travelex. En route I was stopped by Eva Braun to be told she had made a mistake and I could move to the earlier flight but would have to pay £20. I think an LH employee had overheard our conversation. So I go back to the ticket desk with Eva and she amends the bookings, charges £40 as there are two of us, we pay cash and receive two MCO receipts.
Now whilst all this was going on, I had sight of the F check-in desk. One family and enough luggage to sink the QM2. Ten minutes later, and they were still there. So we joined a J queue and were soon at the desk. This too was manned by Menzies aviation. Now I thought Helga here was doing a very good job. She noticed we were travelling in F and went over to the F desk to collect a First boarding folder, then again to get the HON tags to ensure our Tumi’s were first out. I was checked in fine but the boyf had a problem with his tickets as they were out of sequence. Oh yes, Eva Braun had taken money to amend two tickets but only amended one! Helga goes off to chat to Eva and all is resolved.
A fabulous introduction to F I must say and our stress levels were building. You see we had less than 30 minutes to catch the earlier flight now and still had to run the gauntlet of the BAA muppets. No sign of any LH ambassador to escort us through security. Oh No what could possibly go wrong now. You have to laugh at this point or lose your sanity. Security was actually a breeze and manned by humans for once only I happened to look at our boarding passes whilst removing my shoes. Two months ago we had phoned Luftwaffe to request specific seats, had them allocated, and all was showing fine in our PNRs. Helga had decided to ignore this however and chosen different seats which weren’t even together.
We had just enough time to rush to the Senator Lounge where we encountered our very first Lufthansa employee. What a contrast. She couldn’t have been nicer, more friendly, helpful. New boarding passed were issued with the seats we had originally requested. And all it took was 8.6 seconds. Another piece of good news, our FRA flight was delayed by 20 minutes so we could actually go into the lounge and have breakfast.
Now for those not familiar with the Luftwaffe lounge set up at LHR I shall explain. It’s far too small and is split into a SEN side and a general rabble side. Only SEN card holders are allowed access to the broom cupboard side and other *Gs have to sit with the J customers and other unwashed. We had always been in the poor side previously and there isn’t much praise one can say for it other than it’s somewhere to sit. Well the SEN side wasn’t much better. I can see why they restrict access as there wasn’t enough room to swing a cat, let alone a mink.
Choice of breakfast items: cornflakes. Exhaustive list isn’t it? I just took a glass of non freshly squeezed orange juice.
We headed off to the gate when our flight was called. No priority boarding. We decided to wait until all the self loading cattle had boarded. Unfortunately our timing was off and we stood in a queue with whY travellers on a jet bridge that had no heating on a freezing cold day.
The whale jet ride home would also be carrying two other Gods of the Air in the form of jhm and Phaleesy. You see it’s now the early hours of the morning here in London and jet lag has ensured I’m wide awake. So as I log into SQ Talk I see these two Gods have beaten me to a TR on the SQ318. So we have failed at the second hurdle too. However, we have a cunning plan so to speak.
You see we’re going to write what we feel is the first direct comparison on SQ Talk of Lufty F with SQ J. In fact you could almost say, with the exception of CX F, any carriers F compared with SQ J.
And so dear reader we begin on a cold (-2C) grey and drizzling London day in early December as our car service drops us outside LHR T2. Oh the sense of excitement is palpable, well with us, you see we’re about to take our Luftwaffe F, or J to connect with F, flight. We walk into the terminal and for those not familiar with T2 LHR, it’s the oldest, nastiest of all LHR terminals. Low ceilings, cramped, just plain horrid really. Now we were about four hours early so I thought I’d see if we could transfer to an earlier flight to allow us more time in the FCT at FRA. The boyf goes off to Travelex to collect some currency and I approach the LH ticket desk.
Hello, could I possible move onto the earlier flight to FRA please. I have a flexible F ticket? No it’s not possible says this women with a touch of Eva Braun about her. To be fair she was from Menzies aviation rather than Lufthansa. It wasn’t a big deal so I left to head over to Travelex. En route I was stopped by Eva Braun to be told she had made a mistake and I could move to the earlier flight but would have to pay £20. I think an LH employee had overheard our conversation. So I go back to the ticket desk with Eva and she amends the bookings, charges £40 as there are two of us, we pay cash and receive two MCO receipts.
Now whilst all this was going on, I had sight of the F check-in desk. One family and enough luggage to sink the QM2. Ten minutes later, and they were still there. So we joined a J queue and were soon at the desk. This too was manned by Menzies aviation. Now I thought Helga here was doing a very good job. She noticed we were travelling in F and went over to the F desk to collect a First boarding folder, then again to get the HON tags to ensure our Tumi’s were first out. I was checked in fine but the boyf had a problem with his tickets as they were out of sequence. Oh yes, Eva Braun had taken money to amend two tickets but only amended one! Helga goes off to chat to Eva and all is resolved.
A fabulous introduction to F I must say and our stress levels were building. You see we had less than 30 minutes to catch the earlier flight now and still had to run the gauntlet of the BAA muppets. No sign of any LH ambassador to escort us through security. Oh No what could possibly go wrong now. You have to laugh at this point or lose your sanity. Security was actually a breeze and manned by humans for once only I happened to look at our boarding passes whilst removing my shoes. Two months ago we had phoned Luftwaffe to request specific seats, had them allocated, and all was showing fine in our PNRs. Helga had decided to ignore this however and chosen different seats which weren’t even together.
We had just enough time to rush to the Senator Lounge where we encountered our very first Lufthansa employee. What a contrast. She couldn’t have been nicer, more friendly, helpful. New boarding passed were issued with the seats we had originally requested. And all it took was 8.6 seconds. Another piece of good news, our FRA flight was delayed by 20 minutes so we could actually go into the lounge and have breakfast.
Now for those not familiar with the Luftwaffe lounge set up at LHR I shall explain. It’s far too small and is split into a SEN side and a general rabble side. Only SEN card holders are allowed access to the broom cupboard side and other *Gs have to sit with the J customers and other unwashed. We had always been in the poor side previously and there isn’t much praise one can say for it other than it’s somewhere to sit. Well the SEN side wasn’t much better. I can see why they restrict access as there wasn’t enough room to swing a cat, let alone a mink.
Choice of breakfast items: cornflakes. Exhaustive list isn’t it? I just took a glass of non freshly squeezed orange juice.
We headed off to the gate when our flight was called. No priority boarding. We decided to wait until all the self loading cattle had boarded. Unfortunately our timing was off and we stood in a queue with whY travellers on a jet bridge that had no heating on a freezing cold day.
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