Review of Lufthansa flight from Munich to Cairo in Business

I work as a tour guide in Iceland and mid-December is one of the few very quiet times of the year – perfect time to travel. I was planning to go to Gambia with Royal Air Maroc but Morocco decided to cancel all flights to and from the country. I booked a Lufthansa flight from Paris to Cairo only four days before departure at a very reasonable rate of 550 € return in business class, and I had already booked a one-way flight from Paris to Budapest with Swiss. Here are all my flights:

Play, Keflavík to Paris, economy class
Lufthansa, Paris to Munich, business class
Lufthansa, Munich to Cairo, business class (here)
Egyptair, Cairo to Aswan, business class
Egyptair, Aswan to Cairo, business class
Lufthansa, Cairo to Munich, business class
Lufthansa, Munich to Paris, business class
Swiss, Paris to Zurich, business class
Swiss, Zurich to Budapest, business class
Wizzair, Budapest to Keflavík, economy class (no flight report)

I arrived from Paris shortly before 15.00 and I had four and a half hours before my connecting flight to Cairo. I went to the H gates used for the non-Schengen flights, passing through the automated passport control (no priority for business class passengers; waiting time was about 10 minutes).

Let’s go to the Lufthansa business class lounge.

The staff at the entrance of the lounge asked me very nicely to buy the exact type of face mask required to enter. They were available at a nearby shop for 0,99 € each.

The Lufthansa business class lounge at Munich Airport is large, comfortable and was not crowded at this time.

There’s an excellent choice of food such as pretzels…

…hot meals…

…fruit and cakes…

…excellent home-made desserts…

… and not less excellent, although not home-made sweets.

Two coffee machines.

Drinks…

…and more drinks.

Toilets and showers are available at the lounge.

I spent almost four hours writing flight reports and booking hotels using the very good internet connection.

I went to the gate at about 18.50. The airport was strangely deserted with almost all shops closed. Was it maybe because of Covid regulations?

Entry documents to Egypt (especially the vaccination certificate or the PCR test) were first checked at gate H19 before boarding started at gate H20.

Families with young children were boarded first but then boarding became chaotic. Groups 1 and 2 were supposed to go next but everybody just went to the gate, so there was no priority boarding for business class passengers. The plane was at a remote parking position (felt like it was somewhere near Passau) so boarding was by bus. Going up the steps and entering the plane was slow so quite a few passengers were waiting their turn outside in the rain.

The plane on this flight was an A320, registration number D-AIZC, delivered in January 2010, almost 12 years ago.

The plane has Lufthansa’s Eurobusiness configuration in business class: standard economy seats with the middle-seat blocked. There’s a movable divider between business and economy class. There were only three rows of business class on this flight. The load was 10/12. The cabin felt very crowded. I could not even put my hand luggage to the overhead bin; I had to put it under the middle seat of the row in front of me. This is obviously not the most luxurious way to travel between Europe and Africa. Legroom at seat 2D:

I could not take photos of the cabin as it was already full when I boarded but you can see photos of exactly the same cabin in my previous flight report (Paris to Munich).

On the plus side the crew was very friendly. A disinfection wipe was offered at boarding.

There was a blanket (no photo) and a small bottle of water at each seat.

A small but nice amenity kit was distributed. I don’t think anybody used it on this flight.

“We need to offload the luggage of two passengers who could not produce the necessary covid documents” said the captain, explaining why our departure was delayed.

Push-back was at 19.52 for a scheduled departure time of 19.30. We took off at 20.05 from runway 26L.

While the hard product in business class is the same on this Munich to Cairo route as in most intra-European flights, the soft product is better.

The inflight menu was the following:

I noticed that several passengers did not understand that the menu included an appetizer, a choice of main and a dessert. Also not everybody speaks English in Egypt so it would make sense to have the menu in Arabic as well.

Drinks and some packed snacks were served. I had some white wine and sparkling water.

The entire meal was served on a tray.

Smoked beef tenderloin with Pickled Root Vegetables, Pumpkin and Spundekäs Mousse. It was very good.

Stuffed Cabbage Roulade filled with Veal, mashed Potatoes, Broccoli and fried Onions. It was good.

White Chocolate Mousse on a Sponge Layer with Cranberries and Almond Brittle. It was also good.

I spent the remaining time of over two hours reading a book. There are no screens on this plane.

Apples were offered towards to end of the flight.

We landed at 00.24 and were at the gate at 00.28 for a scheduled arrival time of 00.15.

Cairo Airport was quite deserted at this time of the night. I first had to hand over the health declaration form and my temperature was checked. I then got my visa: visa on arrival is available for most European passport holders. You can buy the visa from the money exchange booths that can be found before passport control. The price of the visa is 25$ but you can also pay in Euros. Passport control was very quick.

A Meet & Assist service is available and bookable through travel agencies. A person waits for you inside the terminal building and escorts you to the passport control but it’s really not necessary.

I booked and paid in advance for an airport transfer that simply didn’t show up. It took me some time to find a taxi. I paid 200 EGP (about 11 €). The regular price may be even lower but this is really not much – the airport is quite far from downtown Cairo and traffic is often heavy.