Hello everyone! welcome to the second part of the report. This report will cover the return flight from Madrid back to Munich airport with Lufthansa.
Flight routing
- 1
- 2LH1805 - Madrid MAD -> Munich MUC
30 hours prior to the departure I checked in online and had the boarding pass stored in my phone.
In the early morning, I received an Email from Lufthansa mentioning that our flight was almost fully booked and they were providing free of charge service for checking in the carry-on baggage.
On the day of flight, we took Uber to the airport from the city center and arrived at 14:22pm.
Lufthansa is using Terminal T2 in Madrid.
The check-in process did not take a long time when we got to the counters, but afterwards more and more passengers arrived and a long queue was formed behind us.
I obtained also a paper boarding pass from the counter.
Since we had plenty of time, we sat down in a coffee shop. At the end we spent an hour and 40 minutes there.
At 15:25pm, I received another Email informing us that our flight was delayed.
After leaving the café, passing through the security check was pretty smooth and we were air-sided at 16:38pm. Our gate was still not assigned yet.
The departure hall of terminal T2.
TAP Air Portugal A321neo CS-TJO was flying back to Lisbon as TP1015. Behind the aircraft there was an Aerolineas Argentinas A330-200, LV-GKP arriving from Buenos Aires as AR1132.
Nile Air's A321 arriving from Cairo as NP7313,
Air Europa B737 EC-MVY Pushing back for its flight to Milan as UX1061
KLM's B737-800 PH-BXA was preparing its flight back to Amsterdam as KL1506
Eventually our gate was assigned at E67 which is located in terminal 3.
our gate E67. but our plane still had not arrived.
Lufthansa A320ceo, D-AIZR was waiting for its turn to return to Frankfurt, looked like there was a long delay.
At 18:05pm, our plane finally arrived from Munich.
Lufthansa A321-100, D-AIRR, delivered on January 1996. It carried the name "Wismar". Lufthansa has currently 12 active A321-100, the rest of them are A321-200 and A321neo.
I kept receiving some delay E-mails of my flight and finally at 18:21pm, the announcement for boarding was made. I was in group 3 of the boarding sequence, which had the longest queue.
The boarding process was very slow and finally I embarked the plane 20 minutes later.
Last view of our plane before getting in the cabin.
My seat 33F. Again on the right side of the aircraft. The same NEK cabin. The first 3 rows in this flight were assigned as business class.
View out of my seat. Next to us parked an Air Europa B737-800, EC-LXV preparing for its flight to Tenerife as UX9057. The luggages were getting loaded into the aircraft belly.
Cabin during boarding.
Helvetic Airways E190 HB-JVO just arrived from Zurich as LX2032
At 19:04pm boarding was completed but our captain informed us that we had to wait for another 30 minutes due to the capacity issue over France's airspace. Eventually pushback was commenced at 19:39pm, with more than an hour delay.
Entering the runway for departure.
At 19:55pm, we took off from runway 14L.
Seconds after takeoff.
14 minutes later, Flynet became available. All the flight information could be found there, including a flightmap.
At the same time, a bottle of water was served. Soon I fell asleep for the next 20 minutes.
It was pretty cloudy over Europe and I could not see the landscape below.
When I woke up, I took the chance to visit the lavatory at the back at 20:35pm.
The aft galley
Cabin during inflight. We had a full loading tonight.
Seat pocket items included the safety instruction card, Onboard Delights, and the duty free catalog, Worldshop.
At 21:00pm, the Lufthansa chocolate was given to us. A few minutes late, the seatbelt sign was turned on as we were having some turbulence.
By that moment we were flying over Switzerland, somewhere to the east of Genève.
At 21:26pm, announcement from cockpit that we would be arriving in 20 minutes, then the information of the connecting flights was given.
During the descend, we continued to experience turbulence.
Seconds before landing.
At 21:45pm, we landed on runway 08R of Munich Airport. Total flight time was 1 hours and 50 minutes.
Total flight route. Instead of flying over the Mediterranean Sea, we flew over the land of France, Switzerland to Germany.
Thanks for reading!
I always find it a treat to fly on an A321-100. I flew one a few weeks ago from Athens to Frankfurt, and I enjoyed it! As much as I dislike the NEK seats, the refurbishment makes these old birds feel newer than they are!