Review of Lufthansa flight Amsterdam → Frankfurt in Economy

Goodday,

While I'm usually off on weekends, I had to travel to Zurich for a dinner meeting (not the worst to be honest) with one of our clients and decided to book a flight with Lufthansa as they offered good rates on such short notice. It also meant that I'm finally getting to experience a flight on an Airbus A220-300 and a Mitsubishi Canadair CRJ900 of Swiss and Lufthansa Cityline as I took some detour on the way back to Amsterdam the next day.

See the itinerary I booked below.

Flight

Given the departure time of it being 10 am, I was forced to use my car as I would not reach Amsterdam in time by public transport as it ran on a weekend schedule. As Amsterdam is notorious for it's parking fees and would have charged me 80 euros for two days of parking (short term), I instead booked a parking spot for three days, which reduced my rate by about 30 euros as I was now eligible to park my car at one of their long stay parking lots.

I reached one of the parking lots about two hours ahead of my departure and I was glad I reached Amsterdam a bit earlier than I usually would, but from here it is a five to ten minute ride by shuttle bus to the terminal and it runs a bus every 5 to 10 minutes. It is mandatory to wear a face mask on the busride. 

Without having any luggage with me, I decided to quickly progress myself to one of the security checks which was very busy with many people ignoring any social distancing. It took about thirty minutes for me to clear, but security was becoming busier and busier by the time I was done and it was clear to me that Amsterdam was simply unable to handle the number of passengers at these times taken social distancing in mind and it was one of the reasons Amsterdam Airport required passengers to wear a face mask at certain places within the terminal that tend to become overcrowded..

After thirty minutes I ended up in a busy and booming terminal with all shops now being open compared to three weeks ago when I took a flight to Porto. The photo belows displays the general sight of the airport in all piers and terminals.

With about an hour left to departure, I quickly took an opportunity to grab some breakfast with an amazing overview over one of the apron's.

A KLM Boeing 737-800 (PH-BCB) is being pushed back for it's departure to Budapest (BUD) as KL 1973.

A Boeing 737-900 (PH-BXS) of KLM again nearly being ready for it's departure to Rome (FCO) as KL 1601

And by the time I reached my gate, the aircraft was already on stand. Today's flight to Frankfurt would be operated by D-AINA, which was Lufthansa's first ever Airbus A320neo and is now already 4.6 years of age and surprisingly still flies around in their old livery. It is equipped with two Pratt & Whitney PW1100G engines and can carry a total of 180 passengers (not a welcoming nummber as their regular A320s can only carry 168 passengers).

Probably one of the better shots I could take from the terminal, but boarding started about five minutes before the scheduled departure time with no announcements. A trend that Lufthansa would continue on a number of other flights in this itinerary and went chaotic as people are people and they usually never obey to what they are told and on all flights it did not work out.

So the way Lufthansa intended to board was nice on paper, but would never work in reality. They first wanted Y Class, Disabled and Families with children to board. Those were group 1 and 2. Group three was followed and would consist of people being seated on a window seat. Group four were the middle ones and those seated on aisles were group 5.

It's pretty clear what is sacrificed for fitting 180 passengers inside this aircraft. It's not the worst legroom I've had, but definitely not something you would expect from a legacy carier, which Lufthansa is suppose to be. I think EasyJet may even be a bit more generous in terms of legroom and the seat is like an ironing board with little comfort to it…

The seat however comes with a nice view over the wing and I definitely love the sharklets on the A320s. 

Push back was about 10 minutes past our scheduled departure time and it definitely went faster than I anticipated. The load was approximately 70% for this flight to Frankfurt.

An Air Baltic A220-300  (YL-CSJ) in special livery was pushing back too for it's flight to Tallinn (TLL) as BT 622. The special livery isn't the best nor the worst, but it would have definitely been better if Air Baltic had decided to paint their winglet and engine to a matching colour scheme. 

A Boeing 787-10 (PH-BKD) of KLM departing to Curacao as KL 735. One of the few transatlantic flights that is considered safe by the Dutch authorities and would not require a 14 day quarantaine if returning.

Also a shortened safety demonstration was served by Lufthansa (on all flights) to simply show how to open and lock a seatbelt and they simply direct you to the safety card in case of other emergencies. A worrying factor to be honest.

Departure would be from 18L today and with an early left turn would put us in a direct line to Frankfurt for a short hop of 40 minutes.

The literature in the seat pocket contained only a safety card and a sickbag. No magazines were distributed on flight and I think KLM is one of the few European carriers that still delivers you a magazine to read.

The cabin however seemed to be in an excellent state, was very clean and showed no signs of wear. 

As face masks are required to be worn during the entire flight, having individual air vents is an absolute plus (while I find them a welcoming addition without face mask too).

Shortly before the service starts, the cabin crew informed us that during Covid-19 a limited service is given to us. It consisted only of a bottle of water on all flights. I understand the point that the service may be reduced due to these circumstances, I don't understand the fact that the service is stripped down so much….. a prepacked cookie or some coffee/tea would not have increased contact between cabin crew and passengers.

Also the cabin crew on today's flight was poor to say at least. They were not rude, but were very cold and distant and showed no mood in serving us today (understandable if they have to serve us like this).

A letter was distributed shortly before landing explaining the regulations of Germany for tourists/visitors.

By the time they finished distributing those letters, we were already in approach to runway 25C of Frankfurt with a firm smackdown on the runway, which meant that we were only running late by a single minute.

While boarding was chaotic, the flight attendants kept pushing us to disembark following their guidelines after certain people ignored the explanation given to us on how to disembark, which was to remain seated till flight attendants called your seat row to avoid people overcrowding the path.

It did not take long to disembark and it gave me a final view over our aircraft that brought us over from Amsterdam, while catering trucks were already ready to supply the aircraft with the drinks for the ongoing flight.