Review of Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Hong Kong in Economy

a terrible financial decision

Hey guys and welcome to another flight-report!

This will be the first of a new series of FRs covering my 2 month long trip to Asia. The main purpose of this trip is to visit my family in China however as usual I'll get there (and back) via a weird and unusual routing.

Earlier this year, China had finally relaxed its COVID restrictions (being one of the last countries to do so), giving me the opportunity to visit my family there for the first time in 3-4 years. While searching up flights to get there, I remembered that Lufthansa actually flies their A340-600 to Hong Kong from Frankfurt. Now the A346 is probably the number 1 aircraft on my bucket list, along with the 747-400, which we'll get into later this series, wink wink ;). To be honest, I wasn't expecting to ever be able to tick that one off, especially after the pandemic hit and airlines started retiring all of their quadjets so I knew I had to take the opportunity while it lasted.

But now here comes the hard part: the price. Flying to Hong Kong from London via Frankfurt would've costed me £1500 round-trip in economy, which was absolutely out of the question. However, after a couple of hours of messing around on Google Flights, I managed to find an open jaw return from Milan involving the A346 for 'only' €800 base. Adding seat selection and checked luggage bought the total to around €1000. For context, the cheapest option available to mainland China was around €550 on Shenzhen Airlines (which would've made an interesting FR in itself). So… yeah, I did pay double to fly Lufthansa, which is probably the worst financial decision I've ever made but they can't be that bad, right? (Cue hysterical laughter.)

From 2023, I aim to offset all of my CO2 emission from flights. All emissions are calculated using the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and I will be funding projects approved by The Gold Standard. The CO2 output for this trip is:
 
LIN-FRA-HKG: 537kg
Total for 2023 (so far): 2543kg

Video Report

Here's the video version of this FR, it's pretty much got the same thing content wise:  

frankfurt airport (fra)

I'll kick off this FR right after stepping out of my first flight from Milan, which arrived in the Schengen A gates. 

I actually transfered here on my last trip from Canada a few months ago so it's quite weird to be walking through this part of the airport again (albeit in the opposite direction).

Like my last time here, the area isn't too crowded and is very clean.

Our flight will be departing from the Z gates, which is a floor above the A gates. Access is granted after going through passport control.

This area is mainly used for North America bound flights (all of which departs in the morning and afternoon). This means that the area is absolutely deserted in the evening as the only 2 flights departing from the area this late was our flight to Hong Kong and another to Shanghai right after us. 

Lets have a walk around the empty terminal.

Photo of the seating area.

View outside the window.

Oh look! Here's our plane arriving from Bogota (BOG). Don't worry, I'll get a better photo of her later. 

Another photo of the apron, Frankfurt is very nice for planespotting.

Lets have a walk around the duty-free area (which all non-transiting passengers had to walk through).

It's just a standard duty-free area found in most European airports.  

With nothing too special in the duty-free, I opted to go back to the gates.  

And of course, there's Lufthansa logos everywhere, just in case you happen to forget about their existence here.

Anyway, with a couple of hours left until boarding, lets do some planespotting!

Some of the last departures to the US with a Lufthansa A340-300 in the Star Alliance livery (D-AIGP) heading to Boston (BOS) and another Lufthansa A340-300 (D-AIGS) pushing back for Chicago (ORD) in the background.

United Boeing 777-200ER (N78002) heading to Washington (IAD).

Some more photos taken at the end of the terminal, which includes:

- Asiana A350-900 (HL8359) to Seoul (ICN)
- Air Astana Boeing 767-300ER (EI-KEB) to Astana (NQZ)
- SkyUp Boeing 737-800 (UR-SQB) to Hurghada (HRG)
- Air Premia Boeing 787-9 (HL8517) to Seoul (ICN)
- Lufthansa Boeing 747-8 (D-ABYS) arriving from Tokyo (HND)

the flight

Flight time today will be just under 12 hours and here's our route:

And here's our plane:

Some info about our plane:

Type: Airbus A340-600
Registration: D-AIHX
First flight: 27 January 2009
Age: ~15 years

One of only 10 A346s left with Lufthansa (as of the making of this FR), she was stored for 3 years during the pandemic and was reintroduced in May 2023.

Photo of the IFE (which we'll look at later) and the tray table taken during the flight.

The legroom - actually not bad for a long haul flight.

Before we continue, I will have to mention that these seats are one of the most uncomfortable seats I've had to endure on a long haul flight. The seats have so little padding on them I could feel the metal structure digging into my spine, which is as comfortable as you can imagine. 

But anyway, on each seat is a pillow…

… And a blanket.

Shortly before takeoff, the crew came around with headphones but most people just chose to use their own.

View out of the window.

Pushback started around 30 minutes late. 

Yeah, night departures aren't the prettiest but you can see Frankfurt airport (or at least its lights) in the distance.  

Shortly after takeoff, the crew came around with drinks and snacks.

Pretty soon, it was tine for dinner. Surprisingly, Lufthansa actually gives out menu cards for passengers in economy, which is something they've borrowed from sister airline Swiss (although I'm not sure if Swiss does it anymore). 

However, the pasta and cheese option ran out by row 40 and as I don't eat prawns, the crew very kindly gave me the meal from premium economy. So here's the meal: chicken with couscous and raisins along with a salad, blueberry cake, a bun and some butter and cheese all served with metal cutlery, another thing borrowed from Swiss. Everything was delicious although I'm not sure what the normal economy meal was like.

Also, what is it about cup wedges that airlines hate? I'm finding more and more tray tables that doesn't have them (including this one) and I really miss it. What's more baffling is that there's a wedge on the other side for when the table is half-opened so why is it so hard to put another one on this side? It's just weird to me.

But yeah, this is probably the most confusing thing about Lufthansa, the menu card and metal cutlery adds a 'premium' feel to an otherwise not-so-premium product. It's like the airline realizes how terrible their economy product is and is trying their best to dress it up without improving the actual experience, as you'll see later in this FR and the (absolutely terrible) return trip (no spoilers haha). For me it's like trying to put lipstick on a pig (no offence to pigs though, I love them). 
 
Anyway, let's have a look at the IFE system.

It's very telling when the 'movie highlights' section only have 6 options, with one being a 3 minute preview… In all seriousness though, the IFE is actually fairly nice. There's a good selection of movies and shows for a 12 hour flight (with enough for the kids). The touchscreen is nice and responsive and there's also a nice variety of music/audiobooks too. My only slight criticism is the lack of a 'classics' section for movies but all in all, a nice IFE system that comfortably beats sister airline Austrian which I reviewed earlier this year.

However, like on Austrian, there is no interactive map, which is quite annoying but honestly not the end of the world.

It's probably because I was half-asleep but it took me a good while to decipher what I was looking at here haha.

It's also worth mentioning that Wi-Fi is also available onboard however it didn't work for me. Connecting onto it is fine however the website for it would never load - it would aways come up with an error after a minute or two of loading. I tried multiple times throughout the flight before just giving up eventually.

Right before bed, the crew once again came around with a bottle of water and some chocolate.

After that, I went to sleep… for a full 4 hours before the safety video for the 747 and A350 started to play on the screens, which was definitely one of the more interesting ways to be woken up. This was only stopped after a reset of the entire system.

Since I'm now awake, I may as well make a quick visit to the toilet. One of the most unique thing about the A346 is that the toilets are all located in the cargo hold downstairs. While interesting, it'll definitely pose an accessibility issue for some passengers however there are toilets available in the business class section that is accessible without stairs.

Notice the huge mirror to the right of the staircase? That's actually a door to the galley and trolleys are sent up to the main cabin through a mini-elevator. It's so cool! 

The inside is also fairly clean, especially considering that this was taken around 8 hours into the flight.

About 2 hours before landing, breakfast is served:

Yeah, this is absolutely pathetic for a 12 hour flight. It was a cheese sandwich with yoghurt and a nut bar. I really, really miss the 2nd hot meal that is usually standard on flights this length. At least we're flying to a city with amazing food because I'm definitely gonna be starving by the end of this flight… thanks Lufthansa. 

View outside during breakfast.

Pretty soon after, we're already starting our descent into Hong Kong.

View of Dongguan (东莞) with Shenzhen (深圳) on the right.  

Shenzhen Bao'an Airport can be seen on the coast, along with the yet to be opened Shenzhen-Zhongshan bridge.

Pretty soon we're starting our descent into Hong Kong.  

Amazing views of Hong Kong island below with Kowloon to the right (separated by Victoria harbour).   

Wow! This is probably one of the best approaches I've had (probably on par with the approach into London Heathrow). 

Port of Hong Kong can be seen (the red cranes on both side of the water) with Tsing Yi to the right and Kowloon to the left (Hong Kong island can also be seen in the distance). 

Finally, welcome to Hong Kong! We landed on time.  

Parked next to a Cathay Pacific Boeing 777 (that's clearly going nowhere).  

Also notice that the aircraft parked with a notch of flaps down? I noticed the same thing when she arrived in FRA from BOG. Not too sure why this was done though. 

Hong Kong international airport (HKG)

Disembarking the plane.

Passport control was fairly efficient and in under 20 minutes I was through to baggage reclaim.

It took another 30 minutes for my luggage to show up so it took me around an hour to go from the plane to the arrivals lobby. 

 
That concludes this FR, I'll take the MTR (metro) to my hotel and get some food after this. I'll spend a few days here in Hong Kong before walking across the border to Shenzhen. I've added some photos of my time in Hong Kong in the bonus below so feel free to check that out. My next few FRs in the series will cover some (very special) domestic flights within mainland China, see you there!