Welcome to the fourth and final part of my trip to Prague. Today I'll cover my Lufthansa flight from Munich back home to Tel Aviv. Originally I was supposed to fly with Helvetic\Air Baltic to Zurich and then continue but then due to late night flights and risky connection times, I rebooked myself to Lufthansa via Munich.
Flight routing
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So I landed in Munich almost 2:30 hours before my next flight so I had enough time to look around MUC's terminal 2, which is considered to be one of the best in Europe and even in the whole world, but first I need to figure out where do I have to go.
G concourse where I arrived from Prague:
It's clear who's the dominant airline here:
Finally found my way to concourse H which is basically the non-Schengen floor of concourse G.
After a quick and efficient passport control, I was already in the airside, with not even security check (well, at least for now..)
I bought myself a Schnitzel sandwich which costed me 9.95 Euros, Reasonable in terms of airport food prices.
From now on I wouldn't have anything good to say about MUC, soon you will figure out why:
Reason 1: on the right you can see a smoking lounge, there are many of them around the terminal branded in different cigarette brands, and they make the terminal to stink.
Reason 2: There is a nice and comfortable seating area near the Napcabs, However it was quite dirty with trash everywhere.
Reason 3: The distances inside the terminal are really long, I arrived at gate G42, then I had to go to gate H\G20 for passport control only to get all the way to gate H46 for boarding.
Reason 4: The flights to Israel are only boarded from a separate located at the far end of the terminal with extra security check.
Once you get there and pass the security you can't go back.
After some time two policemen came to me for a random customs check, never seen it before on departure.
Passengers flying with LH to TLV without connecting from other destinations have to do check in, security and passport control in a separate terminal 1F and then they are bussed to the gate in terminal 2. I've only seen this kinds of things in FCO in 2014 (Terminal 5).
That's our ride for today, Lufthansa Airbus A321 NEO, registered D-AIEE, only 3 years old (2019).
Boarding was delayed few times and then they started pre-boarding, so everyone (tbh including me) heard they are calling for group 3 and came to the gate but we were refused and the boarding was delayed again. Then they started boarding for groups 1+2 (business class) and economy passengers again tried to board and refused. And finally, we were allowed to board.
in Israel, we don't use this boarding groups things, it has no chance to work here.
The crew were kind and warmly welcomed us onboard and I went to my seat, 12F. The seats were slim and hard as expected, but the legroom was ok. Pillows and blankets were put on the seats, unfortunately that's something you won't get on any airline nowadays so that's a nice touch.
At least I got a nice engine view:
Then announcements and safety demonstration were made and we taxied to the runway and took off only 20 minutes after schedule, earlier than what I expected after all the delays in boarding.
Takeoff video:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qdnqwHmHfVs
Unfortunately, there was no wi-fi, streaming or any other kind of entertainment on this 3.5 hours flight.
The inflight service included only sandwich and drinks. Unlike Austrian, Lufthansa's sandwich was not even warmed up and was almost frozen.
It was a dried tomatoes cheese sandwich which wasn't bad except it was frozen. At least the FA were honest as one of them said that it's better than what was served last week.
My usual tomato juice:
Some aerials of the Balkan:
The LH chocolate:
Then I fell asleep for about an hour and woke up just before reaching Israel's coastline.
Landing view:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mr_LZ_FYP2U
We had a smooth landing in Tel Aviv and just on time. Then we taxied to a remote stand (it's always happening to me in TLV, no matter which airline\aircraft), and we were bussed to the terminal.
That's something interesting I've never seen before: all the remote stand flights with number of passengers onboard, even though it's not accurate as XCs B738 has less than 202 seats. (Located at the passport control area for remote stand arrivals)
Passport control was really quick, then I walked through the ''bad side'' as we call it in Israel to the landside.
Then to baggage claim, after 5-10 minutes of waiting, mine arrived too.
Then I got out of the terminal through the famous arrival hall and my dad picked me up and drove me home, and that's officially the end of this trip.
Thanks for sharing this FR! It looks like it would be better to stick with carriers with wide-body traffic to TLV since at least you would get better IFE than what most of the narrow-bodies currently offer. The experience pretty much sums up the current state of LH, not very good.
Flights to the US are the same in MUC, all of the UA flights are grouped at the other end of the H gates and you have to clear a security check with probing questions to get into the boarding area and cannot leave and are stuck to the minimal bathroom/food options in that blocked off zone. That said, MUC in general is easier to transit in than FRA since it has the vertical alignment of gates to switch between Schengen/non-Schengen.
This is what they used to offer on <2 hour flights, but at least this is better than the catering on intra-European flights that is limited to chocolates even on >2 hour flights.
Thanks for this FR.
Really mediocre experience, this sandwich used to be served on 1 hour flights withing Europe.
Catering was hugely downgraded on LH.
You walk a lot in MUC but at least it's more organized and easy to navigate than FRA.
Thanks for sharing this series! So I guess the LH group have all gotten cheap with catering in and out of TLV since you’re once again getting just a sandwich on a route that used to have a full meal pre-pandemic. And this sandwich is really sad. At least OS was a warm sandwich.
Thanks for sharing!