Review of Lufthansa flight from Johannesburg to Frankfurt in Economy

Intra-Africa travel can yield a great value when using United MileagePlus awards, if done correctly. Travel between most city pairs in Africa are usually the same award price, whether they're an hour apart or across the continent. When travelling from far southern Africa to far northern Africa, you can often get a complicated routing through Europe. For someone looking to get from point A to point B, this may be viewed negatively, but for a backpacking AvGeek, it's a huge positive. My itinerary below cost 52,500 Mileage Plus Miles and $192.30 in taxes and fees. It was ticketed as a roundtrip from Johannesburg to Casablanca, but it afforded me an 8 hour daytime layover in Frankfurt, a two night stopover in Cairo, and a 17.5 hour overnight layover in Lisbon. For comparison's sake, a one way Business Saver Award from Frankfurt to Johannesburg is 55,000 miles plus taxes and fees. Even Frankfurt to Casablanca would cost 55,000 miles, a bad value for such a short distance, but that's the price of Europe region to Northern Africa region. I was technically just travelling from Southern Africa region to Northern Africa region and back. The value of itineraries like this are even greater when you consider the high cash price of intra-Africa airfares.
Johannesburg to Frankfurt (Economy, Lufthansa): You are here
Frankfurt to Cairo (Economy, Lufthansa):
Cairo to Casablanca (Economy, EgyptAir):
Casablanca to Lisbon (Business, Portugalia):
Lisbon to Frankfurt (Business, Lufthansa):
Frankfurt to Johannesburg (Business, South African):

My journey to the airport started at the Sandton station on the Gautrain, a clean and efficient rail network in Johannesburg. The Sandton station was walking distance from my hotel, and from there the Gautrain took me all the way inside the airport. The Sandton station is modern and clean, but pretty bland. I took these pictures at Park Station in downtown Johannesburg. The boarding platforms of most Gautrain stations look pretty much the same.

Modern interior of JNB. Touts often make their way inside the terminal and offer to help you find your way around, carry your bags, etc. These touts are not sanctioned by the airport and you shouldn't engage with them.

Before heading to my gate, I meandered around the airport to do some light spotting.

I was right behind the Lufthansa crew as I made my way towards the gate.

Our A380 getting prepped at the gate.

This is a pic of the document check that I actually snapped a couple weeks later when I was at JNB for a different flight.

The boarding line. They boarded by rows, back to front, but there was no enforcement of any kind.

This is a pic of the tail end of boarding that I also took when I was back at JNB for that other flight a couple weeks later.

Boarding. This was my first time on an A380. I didn't expect much of a difference experience between this and other widebodies, but the cabin did feel a lot more spacious. I was seated at 7:06 PM, scheduled departure was 7:40 PM.

Very impressive detailed map. We pushed back and started taxiing at 7:44 PM.

Takeoff. We were wheels up at 8:08 PM.

At about 9:00 PM, an initial round of drinks were served and cleaned up at around 9:30 PM. Dinner was received at 10:14 PM, with another round of drinks shortly after. During the middle of the flight they passed out water and apple juice.

A nice after dinner drink.

The multiple viewpoints offered on the map were great.

The cabin lights came on just before 5:00 AM with breakfast served shortly after. The breakfast trays were collected at 5:37 AM.

We were wheels down at 6:29 AM (5:29 AM Frankfurt time). Taxi was relatively quick and we didn't have to wait for a gate.
One last look at the plane while on the way to immigration.

After immigration (which went smoothly), I headed for the train station and went downtown.

I stopped in this coffee shop to use the WiFi to check in to my EgyptAir flight and choose my seat. EgyptAir allows check in 48 hours before departure. This coffee shop also had some great food. I had a bit of trouble before I found this place. The WiFi of the first coffee shop I went in to was broken (found out after spending $8) and the second place had a complicated log in procedure involving a local mobile phone number (also found this out after already buying something). The coffee shop I ended up in just required a straight-up password and the connection worked great.

Spotted this nice C-17 over downtown.

After walking around downtown a bit more, I got on the train to make my way back to the Flughafen for my onward flight to Cairo.

Getting through security was brutal when I got back to the airport, it took about 40 minutes. Even the business class lane was clogged. I'll probably end up skipping a full trip report for the Frankfurt to Cairo flight since it was just standard Lufthansa short haul. But here's a quick pic of our meal, it was actually pretty good.