Welcome to the second part of my European adventure! After getting off the Lufthansa A330 from Raleigh, I now have to catch a Lufthansa A321-200 to Athens.
Flight routing
- 1
- 2LH1278 - Economy - Frankfurt > Athens - Airbus A321
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
FRA Airport
I didn't take a lot of photos in the terminal, but let's catch LH1278 to Athens!
Boarding
We're at a bus gate! After getting off the bus, here's a good look at the plane taking me to Athens today: D-AIDJ, a 2011-built Airbus A321-200, named "Remscheid". Let's board!
A look at the cockpit:
Onboard
Lufthansa's A321ceos feature the Recaro BL3520 "NEK" seats in a standard 3-3 layout. The first few rows are sold as European business class, with the middle seat blocked. I will be seated in seat 22A today.
My seat has a small hole in the leatherette. It was also somewhat dirty.
The seatback contents were a bit battered, but they were the standard safety card, buy-on-board menu, shopping magazine, and airsickness bag. The shopping magazine was slightly vandalized, and someone left these weird blue Lufthansa-branded card in the pocket. For some odd reason, I saw a seat neighbor's pocket with an A321neo safety card. If you don't know, the LH A21Ns have a different exit configuration compared to the A321ceos.
Departure
No such thing as a pushback here! The plane taxiied off the stand towards the runway.
Off to Athens I go!
In-flight
Considering how dirty and beaten-up the cabin was, I wasn't expecting the lavatory to be any better, but I was surprised by how clean the lavatory was!
A water bottle was given to everyone.
I decided to buy from the menu: a German big pretzel and an instant-mix latte.
It wasn't too bad!
The BYOD IFE provided by Lufthansa is limited. No video content, just podcasts and reading material.
WiFi is available for 8 euros. Not a bad price!
I ended up downloading shows to Netflix and watching it on my Galaxy Tab S6 Lite. I saw someone do this with their tablet before, and I decided to replicate it. It works very well! An in-flight map is also provided in the limited IFE.
Before arrival, Lufthansa-branded Lindt chocolates were provided.
Arrival
Welcome to Athens!
One last cabin photo of the A321.
And, that wraps up this trip report!
As you mention, flying LH on short-haul (and many other European carriers), is almost indistinguishable from flying an LCC anymore. The NEK ironing boards just look like torture...they were already super thin when they were new, but now after over a decade of flying around, what little cushioning was actually there has probably been crushed into inexistence over the years haha. Luckily the A320 family cabins are in the process of getting refreshed with new Geven seats, but who knows how long it will take...it's already been 2 or 3 years and there are only a handful with the new cabins...and even less with Power/USB installed. LH are really behind other major EU carriers like BA, AF, KL, IB, TP, etc in the cabin refurb and in-seat power availability department.
I will say that the pretzel actually looks good. If the price was right I would probably get one haha
That's too bad, I guess it's better than nothing though and the Wi-Fi is at least not too badly priced at 8EUR. European carriers are definitely behind US carriers when it comes to IFE. Flying any major carrier in the US (non-LCC...and even some LCCs) on short-haul, you are pretty much guaranteed to have at least streaming IFE, if not seatback. In Europe it seems that more Holiday carriers and LCCs offer streaming IFE than the major national carriers.
Thanks for sharing!
I can't wait for the new seats to be installed. There was even a survey in the BYOD IFE, and one was that if you'd like to see LH add video content. I obviously said yes.