Review of Lufthansa flight from Munich to Timişoara in Economy

Intro

As I was expecting to stay another week in Tampere, Finland for work, I received a surprising notification from operations on the thursday prior to this flight that they will reposition me on saturday to Timisoara to continue with a different aircraft for the remaining two weeks of duty.

About an hour later I received a booking confirmation for my flight from Helsinki to Timisoara via Munich with Lufthansa. The first flight however was going to be the most interesting one as this flight was operated by AirBaltic with one of their Airbus A220-300.

Flight

As I previously arrived from a flight from Helsinki which was parked at the remote terminal in Munich, I found my way to the main terminal as my next flight would depart from the G gates.

Up to now I was still rushing to my gate as I believe I had about fifteen minutes left to the end of boarding, however upon arriving to our gate for today's flight, a delay of approximately 30 minutes was announced. This also made me feel a bit more relaxed knowing that my luggage had some extra time to catch my flight too to Timisoara.

Eventually boarding was called about fourty minutes past our scheduled boarding time. Boarding went very slow as a single ground attendant had to tag luggage of pretty much the majority of passengers which had to be dropped off in front of the aircraft… In a bus that was overloaded with passengers, we finally made it to our aircraft. 

Today's aircraft that would perform our flight to Timisoara was D-ACNH. D-ACNH is a 14.7 year old Canadair CRJ-900 that was newly delivered to Eurowings in november 2009 before making the move to Lufthansa Cityline in March 2016. This particular aircraft was named after the city '' Herzogenaurach''. This city is probably not know by the majority of people, however it is home to both Adidas and Puma.

A neat fuselage shot

Upon embarking the aircraft, we were greeted by a flight attendant who was in a very good mood. Eventually made my way down the aircraft to my seat 21A. Legroom however was limited, but sufficient for an hour flight.

As operations bought me a Economy Light ticket, I was solely depending on Lufthansa's decision as to what seat I was getting and on the second flight I lucked out with a window seat. Definitely a better view than my previous flight from Helsinki.

The overhead panel was however equiped with a reading light and an individual air vent.

The literature in the seat pocket contained a safety card for the Crj-900, a Buy on Board magazine and a Duty Free Magazine.

By now the captain announced himself informing us about another delay of approximately 30 minutes due thunderstorms in the vicinity, however he also noted that the previous delay was due to the aircraft arriving late from it's previous flight, which was an absolute lie as the aircraft arrived in Munich well ahead of time and was on the ground for more than a solid hour prior to our departure. To me it felt more like the new crew was a bit late themselves.

However the flight attendant came around the cabin to provide us already with a chocolate due to the delay. Don't worry, It's Lufthansa…. which meant that the chocolate you usually get in the air was now canceled and handed out to you on ground prior to the actual flight. In my perspective, it was better to start serving the bottle of water rather than the chocolate.

While waiting for our flight to start moving, I spotted this A380 of Lufthansa taxiing to the runway for it's departure.

Eventually the engines started to spool up for our flight and we were finally moving about an hour and 13 minutes past our scheduled departure time to Timisoara.

A short taxi followed to Runway 26L where we were number five for departure, we were eventually rolling for departure about 90 minutes past our scheduled departure time.

About fifteen minutes into the flight we were served the complimentary bottle of water, which to be fair is better than nothing, however for the price they charged kind of abysmal as my one-way ticket with Air India (full service) last month from Amsterdam to Bangkok via Delhi was about 60 EUR cheaper.

Sipping my water with barely any view as we were cruising in the clouds.

View of the cabin during flight.

Upon entering Romanian airspace, we finally found some blue skies as we were descending into Timisoara.

On short approach to Runway 11

With an absolute smacker of a landing and on full brakes to make the exit on C to avoid any backtracking…… Everything was a little bit too excessive making it a very unpleasant experience as everyone was almost headkicking the seat in front of us….. Definitely not a comfy landing that was.

Despite the uncomfortable landing, it did mean a very short ride to our gate in front of the new terminal building which is dedicated to the schengen departures. The old terminal a bit further down the road and is now being used for non-schengen destinations, which are usually flights to the UK and some sunny destinations south of Romania.

Flight attendant told us to wait a few minutes for the handling to off load all cabin luggage, so those could be picked up upon disembarking the aircraft. The entire process went slowly with people taking their time picking up the stuff and I took this chance to take a photo of my seat. Definitely looks like a fancy ironing board.

One last look of our aircraft that brought us over to Timisoara from Munich. For a regional jet, I love the design of this aircraft. Despite loving the design, I find the comfort to be lacking comparing it to an A220 or ERJ.

As the arrival building is a different building, we had a short walk to the arrival hall over the platform where I spotted this Boeing 737 of TAROM preparing for it's flight to Bucharest Otopeni, while our aircraft was already being cleaned for it's rotation back to Munich.

Given that this terminal was already build well in advance of Romania joining the schengen, the border control counters were now deemed unnecessary and are not staffed anymore.

The arrival hall is not massive with only two functional belts, but that is more than sufficient for the amount of flights Timisoara receives. It took about 15 minutes for my luggage to arrive and I was quickly off to my hotel in the city center of Timisoara.

Thanks for stopping by.