Review of Lufthansa CityLine flight from London to Frankfurt in Economy

Flying from city! yes!

Hello dear Flight Reporters and readers!
Today I will start a series of flights that took me from London to St Petersburg.
Of course there were some direct flights with BA, but it was too expensive and not convenient for us as the flight was leaving in the morning. 

I must also add that living and working in east London, and I was travelling with friends from the office I was more enclined to leave from City rather than going all the way to Heathrow.

Miles & More earned: 300 

There was no App at the time - at least not that I remember so I checked in the old fashion way on LH website and printed my BP in the office (too late I no longer work there you can't tell my boss XD).

This was the sweet time when you could select your seats for free before checkin and we did so to sit next to each other.
For information, here is the seat map of an 100 seats E190 on lufthansa: 

Going to Russia, even for a 5 days tourist trip is not that easy.
First you need to register to an online visa application - and this is very intrusive. Besides usual stuff like evidence of Identity, they also ask for the lask 3 bank statements to make sure you have enough cash to leave the country, your job contract, the name of your boss and even his work direct phone line…

Of course I should also say that you need to be "invited" by someone or a company. As we didn't know anyone over there, one of us found the trick to be invited by a tourist agency that is specialised in selling tickets of the railway company.
We asked for a quote and paid for an invitation and Bob is your uncle! 

You then need to go to the office that deals with VIsa application in the City of London near Barbican tube station.

It was really impressive, they were not that funny at all. You can see on the screen I went there on the 6th of june so about a month and a half before travelling. 

You fill in some more forms… and your passport is taken away from you for weeks… I am not kidding.
I was passeportless for weeks… 
Before I finally received it casually by the post.. 

at london - city airport

We arrived with the DLR, it was just a short journey by train away.

And here is the coolest London airport!
For those who have never flew from City it is cool for 3 reasons:
1. It is located near Canary Wharf business district.. It is like having an airport at La Defense in Paris, or in the Queens in New York
2. It small and super fast to reach airside
3. It is cool 

There are some self checkin machines for PAX in a rush - It wasn't so common to see that at the time.

We still went to the checkin counter to check in our luggages all the way to LED.
Lufthansa was the first counter.

Going airside was super fast and especially because the four of us were travelling without a cabin luggage.

onboard the e190

Here was our plane. I guess there were some sort of priorities respected..

Aircraft: Embraer E190AR
Registration: D-AECI
Engines: 2x CFM34
Age: now 11 Years
Layout: Y100

A view from the cabin.. I think the orange headrests are for J?
I don't think I have made such a perfectly aligned cabin picture before… 

After the safety demonstrations done manually, we started to taxi towards the 27 runway.

It is always impressive to take off from EGLC/LCY, the airplanes are usually putting full on thrusters then release the brake…

And after a sharp turn we were flying above essex. 

Now over Netherlands where the service started - a bit late though considering the time of the flight.

The lady handed over a sandwich first…

Then came back again with drinks this time with her colleague>

A quick glance at the safety card..

Now somewhere over Cologne I guess

The magazine found onboard is okm had a few interesting articles not the most thick I would have ever seen.

A nice article about the Washington air museum, and with THE beauty as a centre piece…

And my favorite page for the fleet geeks

Not that many differences with nowadays fleet, except the B737 and CRJ700 are gone.

AT FRANKFURT - FLUGHAFEN FRANKFURT AM MAIN

We parked away from the jetway gates as most of the times with FRA airport.

and onto the vast and iconic terminal buildings with these upside down triangles.