#64 out of 94 Airlines A minimum of 10 flight-reports within the past two years is required to appear in the rankings.
1615 reviews
Hello and welcome to the second of three parts of my first trip report!
In this one I will cover the Frankfurt - Porto sector onboard a Lufthansa A321-2 in Business Class.
Let's just jump right into it and begin with the (re-booking) history of this flight.
Lars
Key information:
- LH1178 from Frankfurt FRA to Porto OPO
- A321-2, D-AIDN in new color scheme
- Flight time ~2 hours 40 minutes
- load factor in Business: 14/16 -> 0,875= 87,5%
I booked the original routing just after Christmas on lufthansa.com, for roughly 400€ in Business Class vice versa.
Stuttgart STR -> Zurich ZRH on an Helvetic E190-E2
Zurich ZRH -> Porto OPO on SWISS FIRST on their B777-300 ER
And back:
Porto OPO -> Frankfurt FRA on Lufthansa's A321
Frankfurt FRA -> Stuttgart STR on Lufthansa CityLine's CRJ 900
About two weeks after booking, a friendly woman from SWISS called me on my mobile and asked me whether I wanted to fly in SWISS First, as the flight from Zurich to Porto got an aircraft change onto the Boeing 777 due to very high demand of Portuguese emigrants! Of course I immediately said yes, I mean who does not want to fly in SWISS First, even though with Business Class catering as First wasn't sold individually.
About three months later, Corona came. And SWISS stopped flying from Stuttgart to Zurich. I received some five emails letting me know that one of my flights got cancelled, but I was still hoping for the next update on airlineroutes.com, but SWISS just didn't want to restart flying to Stuttgart, so I really had to re-book. Version 2 of my trip looked like following then.
Stuttgart STR -> Frankfurt FRA on a Lufthansa A319
Frankfurt FRA -> Porto OPO on a Lufthansa A321 Neo
Porto OPO -> Frankfurt FRA also on a Lufthansa A321 Neo
Stuttgart STR -> Frankfurt FRA on a Lufthansa CityLine E190
I wasn't really pleased with this one, as I wanted to fly SWISS and LH instead of twice LH. Only positive thing to mention would be the Lufthansa A321 Neo with the new Economy/Business class seats! Nevertheless, I got re-booked again, now just 5 days later! Lufthansa had cut down the Frankfurt Porto route to now just twice instead of thrice daily, but flying only once to Stuttgart on Saturdays, making it impossible to fly to Stuttgart on the same day. Without asking, they just booked me onto LHs next STR flight on Sunday, leaving me alone in Frankfurt for a whole night. After staying three (!) hours in Lufthansa's call-center line, I was so absolutely angry that I just made them book me a night in Frankfurt Airports Sheraton hotel. Was kind of ok, I thought.
But work made my father having to get home on Saturday and not just on Sunday. So we sat around the kitchens table and did brainstorming! :) We evaluated which options were left to us. MUNICH! Lufthansa was flying from Porto to Munich five times weekly, also on Saturdays! That would mean that our final destination would be Munich and we would only take 3 instead of the 4 flights we had paid. But work goes first, always! That had meant that my final routing was as following:
Stuttgart STR -> Frankfurt FRA on a Lufthansa A319
Frankfurt FRA -> Porto OPO on a Lufthansa A321
Porto OPO -> Munich MUC on a Lufthansa A319, later changed to a Lufthansa CityLine A319!
No Neo, no SWISS B777, no glamour. Just three normal flights. Thanks Corona.
But now lets start the real trip report :)!
As I came from Stuttgart, there was no security and no check-in in Frankfurt, I directly headed to the Lounge after de-boarding the flight from Stuttgart.
There were 2 Business class lounges open in Frankfurt, I chose the A26 one, which is only opened between 11 am and 2 pm, as I had already visited the A13 one often enough in my life.
Reaching the upper level by escalator, you were greeted friendly by the first staff who scanned your boarding pass.
After entering the lounge there is the bar and the buffet to your right, and many seating capacity and the showers to your left. I choose the left seating area with beautiful apron view and got myself some coke and chips.
The apron view. Nice for planespotting if you don't care having reflections. Big tip: Use a tissue with a bit of water, clean the window, forming a circle just as big as you lense, and hold the lense directly onto it.
After about one hour I moved to the "restaurant" section, which was empty apart from one chinese couple. That changed after two really big spanish families proceeding to Bilbao came in. Now about the food:
That was the menu:
I tried the first three. To begin with I got myself the Munich Potato Soup, which was quite acceptable. Then I combined the Sausages with the lemon potatoes. the sausages were normal but the potatoes didn't meet my taste at all, sorry to say that. Everything was served by staff, no self-service apart from the chocolate mousse and Haribos.
The potatoes soup, served alongside a pretzel. The pretzel was extraordinarely, and guys trust me I know if a pretzel is good or not, I am from Bavaria.
She just looked weird but tasted amazing!
Frankfurt Sausages with lemon potatoes and ketchup. Not that good, 4/10.
As dessert I didn't get me anything, I just ate the pralines from my flight from Stuttgart haha.
So, after having a mediocre lounge visit I made my way to the departure gate, passing by a absolutely crowded A13 Lounge.
Boarding had already begun when I reached the gate.
The first thing I saw after entering the gangway, was that there were 2! It's sooo amazing to board an A321 with two gangways and that has never happened to me before. The second thing I saw was the cabin crew and the purser trying to make the economy passengers go through the second and not the first gangway hahahaha.
As already mentioned, I loooove this new feature on Lufthansa's planes in new livery! I even know the captain who painted this artwork! It's Claus Harder! More known as Quax747 on Instagram, sadly, he wasn't my captain on this flight. I was greeted by a very friendly crew that handed out water to the business class passengers, but no hand-sanitizing tissues :(.
Enough legroom in row 2! Also, you can see the bottle of water handed out by the crew.
View out of the window of 2A.
We pushed back on time and took off on the same runway I landed before, 25C.
Passing by a Lufthansa A319 in new colors, but just look at the amazing contrast the clouds from.
A beautiful United B787 in new colors. Already spotted the registration of this jet one month back in Frankfurt when I came solely for planespotting reasons.
Then this paper sheet menu was handed out. Who would have guesses, the corn-fed chicken again ;). I won't count the times I have already got that dish.
Then the meal was already served. It came with two sorts of bread, which were kind of let's say … Hard. The tiramisu wasn't as good as the same one I would get on the flight back. The mango chutney was really really good instead and the appetizer wasn't as bad as well.
And the food with covers taken off.
Enter text here…
The two kinds of bread.
The corn-fed chicken could have been presented more nicely. Would that be so hard Lufthansa? Yet it was alright.
Main course number two, taken by my mom. She said it was really good.
To finish off I asked for a peppermint tea, which came promptly.
Approaching France's Atlantic coastline, the meal service was already finished. The cabin crew did not come back afterwards.
Paper work from the Portuguese government.
After 2 and three quarters of flying time, we landed safe and sound in Oporto, making an absolutely beautiful approach alongside the Douro and a beautiful turn over Portos Douro Delta the Foz.
Now guess what I saw immediately after turning onto Taxiway Foxtrot? Yeppp the SWISS T7 I would have flown in SWISS FIRST. :))
Tiny Vueling A319. The ramp agent, is that you Carlos?
View after de-boarding! That's the last pic I took of this trip.
Thanks Lufthansa for having me, I really hope you liked this tripreport and that there were enough pictures!
<u style="font-weight: bold;">ATTENTION: Spoiler next!
All in all, an okay flight. Cabin crew was one of Lufthansa's I don't wanna be here crews, food was mediocre and the fact flying Lufthansa A321 instead of SWISS FIRST in their 777 makes it even worse. Thanks Corona!
4 Comments
I see, we'll be two in Tegel on the 7th... I'm thrilled as well. Unfortunatly I won't be flying the A350 though :(
The meals service is definitely nicer than what many airlines now offer, shame that covid is now a perfect excuse for crews to do the minimum and then hide in the galleys.
I fully understand how frustrating it was to miss the 77W due to this crisis.
Login to post a comment.