Review of Lufthansa flight from Dublin to Frankfurt in Economy

Check In and Security

With a 5:15 a.m. departure time, I arrived at Dublin Airport at about 3:50 a.m. I’d suggest arriving about 2 hours prior to your flight time if your flight is later in the day. But, given this was a very early morning departure, I didn’t think that the airport would be too busy.

Lufthansa operates out of Terminal 1 at Dublin. Dublin airport has two completely separate terminals, so you want to be sure you’re going to the right one. Check the airport’s website to be sure.

Lufthansa uses counters 801-810 for check in. There were a few different lines. One for economy, one for first class, HON circle members, business class, senators, and Star alliance gold members.

I joined the priority line to get my boarding passes printed.

The agent took my passport and had my boarding passes printed within seconds. He had zero personality, despite being the only first and business class agent.

I made my way to fast track security, only to find that it was closed. Turns out fast track security doesn’t open until 5:00. I then made my way to the regular security, and as regular readers of my reports know- you guessed it! I got stopped for additional screening- like I always do when departing a European airport. Even though I follow all the rules! Turns out, they were looking for my comb. Which they thought was a razor.

The Lounge Dublin Airport

Star Alliance Gold members flying in any cabin of service, have access to the Lounge at Dublin Airport. This lounge is a bit difficult to find. Don’t follow the instructions on the Lufthansa website, you’ll get confused. I spent probably 10 minutes walking around following different signs to try and find it. I finally decided to look on the Dublin airport website to locate it, and boy, I was surprised when that told me where it was.

The lounge is located IN BETWEEN two lanes of security. Trust me it’s weird but you have to kind of look for it. You then take an elevator or stairs upstairs and there it is.

I walked up to the reception desk and the agent looked confused. She just stared at me. It was weird. No greeting. It was almost as if she was looking at me like “what are you doing here?” I handed her my boarding pass and she scanned me in.

The lounge is small. There’s a few seating areas. There was a decent buffet selection of hot and cold food items.

Also there was coffee and canned sodas. I grabbed a coffee and took a seat.

The lounge also has free WiFi, which worked reasonably well.

Because security and just looking for this lounge had taken me so long, I only spent about 10 minutes in the lounge before I had to head to the gate.

Boarding

Boarding began right on time at 4:45 am. The boarding process was a bit chaotic. They had a bunch of people who were “gate licing” and standing in the hallway of the concourse waiting to form lines. There was a separate group 1 and 2 line for business class, first class, and Star alliance gold members. I joined that line.

They then called group 1 and 2 together with preboarding. And I boarded.

I was greeted by a friendly female flight attendant in the front of the aircraft and made my way to my seat, 14A, a window seat on the left side of the aircraft.

The economy class cabin on Lufthansa is arranged in a 3-3 configuration.

Let’s start with the positives about the seat, it offered a good amount of pitch and legroom. I was impressed. It had two windows which offered great views of the engine and leading edge of the wing, and it had nice bright LED lights and individual air vents.

Now let’s get to the bad, and I mean pretty bad. The seats are slim, and I mean slim. United provides more padding in economy.

The seat has two windows which offered a great view of the wing.

The seat also has coat hooks where you can hang your jackets.

The Flight

At 5:07, boarding was announced as completed.

There was a baby sitting behind me who kept hitting the seat behind me and playing, for the time being, it was better than her screaming and crying. Though, due to the slimness of the seat, I could feel every time she hit my seats.

At 5:09, the captain came on to welcome us aboard. He made the announcement in both English and German. He informed us of our flight time of 1 hour 40 minutes.

At 5:12, the safety demonstration began in both English and German.

We pushed back 2 minutes ahead of schedule at 5:13.

After a very quick taxi, we were rolling down runway 28L for takeoff at 5:20.

At 5:23, we reached 10,000 feet and were well on our way to Frankfurt.

I was waiting for it- and at last- the baby behind me was having a rough time and started screaming and crying. This is something that people get upset about- I don’t. Of course, I’d prefer it if a baby stayed as quiet as possible, but it’s just life. Babies cry. I don’t blame the parents or worse- the airline for that. It’s uncontrollable.

Was it annoying that I could get an hour’s worth of sleep? Sure. But it is what it is.

At this point, I decided to switch my phone into Frankfurt time, one hour ahead of Dublin, making it 6:34 am local time in Frankfurt.

At 6:37 am local time in Frankfurt. Bottles of water were served. Lufthansa only offers water as complimentary in economy. If you want anything else to drink or eat, you will have to pay for it.

This is at least a step up from Aer Lingus, who, on my flight inbound into Dublin, didn’t even give us water for free. But, Lufthansa is a Skytrax 5 star airline and the service is just not 5 stars…

A note on WiFi and Entertainment

As regular readers of mine will know, I don’t like the fact that Lufthansa doesn’t offer WiFi or any in flight entertainment on its short haul flights.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. This is an aircraft that’s less than 5 years old… and the fact that Lufthansa chose not to equip the aircraft with any sort of WiFi is crazy, especially for an airline that prides itself on being a Skytrax 5 star airline.

Descent and Arrival

At 7:07, I felt the aircraft start to descend and heard a cabin chime- most likely from the flight deck- indicating to the flight attendants that we’d begun the initial descent.

At 7:37, the captain came on to announce that we’d be touching down in Frankfurt in 25 minutes and told us about the weather.

At 7:47, the flight attendants came on to announce that we were on approach into Frankfurt and asked us to stow things away, tray tables, seat backs, and open the window shades for landing.

We touched down on runway 07L at 8:01 am.