LH C FRA-CAI on A330-200 (ex-Sabena)
Jan 31, 2004, 10:58 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: FRA
Posts: 2,175
LH C FRA-CAI on A330-200 (ex-Sabena)
LH C FRA-CAI on A330-200 (ex-Sabena)
LH 584
FRA-CAI
A330-200
Being the snob that I am, I have not travelled internationally in business class since some time as I concentrated all my flying to first class. Today, after an extensive Chinese New Year party, I choose the second out of the daily LH Frankfurt to Cairo flights. On the party, there was a big outside Schnapps-bar in the garden built out of ice, and when I saw this it was clear I could not make the earlier flight. This flight does not have any first class. The plane is an ex-Sabena Airbus 330-200 which LH leased for a few years because LH did not have enough long-haul aircraft. As LH is now receiving the own Airbus 330´s, the ex-Sabena planes will be retuned shortly.
As reported before, the cabin interior is in Sabena colours with some LH logos here and there. The seats are a little nicer than the “old” LH C seats, and feature bigger movie screens. Although, the entertainment system is the same sub-standard LH standard movie programme. Nothing on-demand, same movies for at least two months and a small selection. Surely an improvement over the standard LH product are the in-seat telephones.
Boarding was on time and without chaos. C class was 75% full. My seat was 8C (bulkhead) with an empty windows seat next to me. LH keeps the seat next to you empty if you are a Senator and they have enough space on the flight.
Right after boarding the purser came to visit me, greeted me by name and let me know that I am the only Senator on this flight. Maybe all the SENs take the earlier flight which features F Class for better upgrade chances
He also informed me that my vegetarian meal was on board. I ordered a vegetarian meal because I neither eat fish nor chicken, and so I want to create one more option. I feared the food offers in C would be as limited as on KLM (one starter choice only) which was my last C flight.
Being the only Senator on this flight, I was treated like royalty throughout the flight. Very nice! After before-take-off drink offers and the distribution of amenity kits we took off from Frankfurt´s west runway. Service started about 25 minutes after take-off while we were able to see the snow-covered Alps in bright sunlight from 30.000 feet. A perfect panorama for lunch.
Here is the menu, presented by LH star chefs, inspired by the Louis C. Jacob restaurant in Hamburg:
Hors d`oeuvre
-- shrimp galantine served with potato salad and cucumber cream
-- roast beef flavoured with porcini mushrooms accompanied by bean salad
Salad
-- lollo rosso, frisée, radicchio and bell pepper julienne presented with herbed yoghurt dressing
-- bread, rolls and butter
Entrees
-- medallions of lamb enhanced by gremolata with sautéed bell peppers and polenta
-- red mullet in lime ginger jus
-- basil tagliatelle with leaf spinach and wild rice
Cheese and Dessert
-- bavaria blue, camembert and allgäu cheese with pumpkin cracker and grapes
-- blood orange tartlet on nougat sauce
-- fresh fruit salad
The wine list, selected by Markus Del Monego, who now is a “Master of Wine”, started with the Duval Leroy fleur de champagne brut.
The whites were 2002 “Sonnenwind” Riesling Spätlese trocken (late harvest) from Motzenbäcker in the Pfalz region in Germany and the 2002 “Trumpeter” Tupungato Chardonnay from Argentina.
In the red selection, LH offered 2000 Chateau Reysson, a Cru Bourgeois from Bordeaux and
a 2000 “Prima Reserva Carmenère” from Chile.
Different from LH F class, the wine list does not seem to feature any regional wines depending on the flight route. Overall, even for somebody like me who commercially deals with wine and enjoys wine quite frequently, I find the wine list quite interesting. Also, LH knows how to handle the wine and serves them with the perfect temperature and in nice glasses which were especially developed for LH by Markus Del Monego. Enjoying wine in airplanes does not have to do with spending a lot of money only, one also has to keep up the right logistics for it.
While I was typing the menu list, the purser came buy again, made sure I was comfortable and said that “it is necessary for him to take the best care of his Senator customers”. It adds a nice touch to the service if you can feel you are not treated like yet another number. On last night´s Chinese New Year party I chatted a while with another LH purser and she says LH would put much more emphasis lately on how to treat their status customers.
The entrainment system shows a one hour report about the Burj Al Arab, the place in which I will move in permanently as soon as my bank account allows : )
My last drink was at about 4 a.m. today, this is about 10 hours ago now and it becomes time to start checking out the wines on today´s flight. The wines perform as promised in their extensive descriptions. Only drawback is that there is no sweet wine option or port with the cheese. The food is really good, especially the lamb is excellent.
LH´s food service is really efficient. But it seems efficiency is on top of all in LH´s priority list and so it becomes complicated if you require any service that is outside of their normal schemes. If you ask for more wine while the food is served, you will hear that some other F/A will take care of drink orders later. So the person you are speaking with is not “planned” for delivering drinks at this moment so your order will be ignored. Also the presentation lacks a bit. Salt and pepper comes in small paper packages, butter and salad dressing are pre-packaged and fork and knife come plastic wrapped.
Without contradicting the strict planned flow of the service I have to stress out the friendliness of the F/As is really up to upper standards. After the lunch service if finished, customer is king again and can ask for about everything that is possible.
The flight time passed by quite quickly, preparation for arrival and landing was uneventful. After all, for this short distance LH C class is just fine. If you take into consideration that LH uses a kind of “domestic” C class for flights of the same distance i.e. to Cyprus then the service to Cairo is pretty good.
Cairo airport is the usual mess. Service from the Sheraton Helioplis Cairo was same like every time, this means pick up people come or do not come depending on their mood and upgrade for Starwood Platinums only happen occasionally.
LH 584
FRA-CAI
A330-200
Being the snob that I am, I have not travelled internationally in business class since some time as I concentrated all my flying to first class. Today, after an extensive Chinese New Year party, I choose the second out of the daily LH Frankfurt to Cairo flights. On the party, there was a big outside Schnapps-bar in the garden built out of ice, and when I saw this it was clear I could not make the earlier flight. This flight does not have any first class. The plane is an ex-Sabena Airbus 330-200 which LH leased for a few years because LH did not have enough long-haul aircraft. As LH is now receiving the own Airbus 330´s, the ex-Sabena planes will be retuned shortly.
As reported before, the cabin interior is in Sabena colours with some LH logos here and there. The seats are a little nicer than the “old” LH C seats, and feature bigger movie screens. Although, the entertainment system is the same sub-standard LH standard movie programme. Nothing on-demand, same movies for at least two months and a small selection. Surely an improvement over the standard LH product are the in-seat telephones.
Boarding was on time and without chaos. C class was 75% full. My seat was 8C (bulkhead) with an empty windows seat next to me. LH keeps the seat next to you empty if you are a Senator and they have enough space on the flight.
Right after boarding the purser came to visit me, greeted me by name and let me know that I am the only Senator on this flight. Maybe all the SENs take the earlier flight which features F Class for better upgrade chances
He also informed me that my vegetarian meal was on board. I ordered a vegetarian meal because I neither eat fish nor chicken, and so I want to create one more option. I feared the food offers in C would be as limited as on KLM (one starter choice only) which was my last C flight. Being the only Senator on this flight, I was treated like royalty throughout the flight. Very nice! After before-take-off drink offers and the distribution of amenity kits we took off from Frankfurt´s west runway. Service started about 25 minutes after take-off while we were able to see the snow-covered Alps in bright sunlight from 30.000 feet. A perfect panorama for lunch.
Here is the menu, presented by LH star chefs, inspired by the Louis C. Jacob restaurant in Hamburg:
Hors d`oeuvre
-- shrimp galantine served with potato salad and cucumber cream
-- roast beef flavoured with porcini mushrooms accompanied by bean salad
Salad
-- lollo rosso, frisée, radicchio and bell pepper julienne presented with herbed yoghurt dressing
-- bread, rolls and butter
Entrees
-- medallions of lamb enhanced by gremolata with sautéed bell peppers and polenta
-- red mullet in lime ginger jus
-- basil tagliatelle with leaf spinach and wild rice
Cheese and Dessert
-- bavaria blue, camembert and allgäu cheese with pumpkin cracker and grapes
-- blood orange tartlet on nougat sauce
-- fresh fruit salad
The wine list, selected by Markus Del Monego, who now is a “Master of Wine”, started with the Duval Leroy fleur de champagne brut.
The whites were 2002 “Sonnenwind” Riesling Spätlese trocken (late harvest) from Motzenbäcker in the Pfalz region in Germany and the 2002 “Trumpeter” Tupungato Chardonnay from Argentina.
In the red selection, LH offered 2000 Chateau Reysson, a Cru Bourgeois from Bordeaux and
a 2000 “Prima Reserva Carmenère” from Chile.
Different from LH F class, the wine list does not seem to feature any regional wines depending on the flight route. Overall, even for somebody like me who commercially deals with wine and enjoys wine quite frequently, I find the wine list quite interesting. Also, LH knows how to handle the wine and serves them with the perfect temperature and in nice glasses which were especially developed for LH by Markus Del Monego. Enjoying wine in airplanes does not have to do with spending a lot of money only, one also has to keep up the right logistics for it.
While I was typing the menu list, the purser came buy again, made sure I was comfortable and said that “it is necessary for him to take the best care of his Senator customers”. It adds a nice touch to the service if you can feel you are not treated like yet another number. On last night´s Chinese New Year party I chatted a while with another LH purser and she says LH would put much more emphasis lately on how to treat their status customers.
The entrainment system shows a one hour report about the Burj Al Arab, the place in which I will move in permanently as soon as my bank account allows : )
My last drink was at about 4 a.m. today, this is about 10 hours ago now and it becomes time to start checking out the wines on today´s flight. The wines perform as promised in their extensive descriptions. Only drawback is that there is no sweet wine option or port with the cheese. The food is really good, especially the lamb is excellent.
LH´s food service is really efficient. But it seems efficiency is on top of all in LH´s priority list and so it becomes complicated if you require any service that is outside of their normal schemes. If you ask for more wine while the food is served, you will hear that some other F/A will take care of drink orders later. So the person you are speaking with is not “planned” for delivering drinks at this moment so your order will be ignored. Also the presentation lacks a bit. Salt and pepper comes in small paper packages, butter and salad dressing are pre-packaged and fork and knife come plastic wrapped.
Without contradicting the strict planned flow of the service I have to stress out the friendliness of the F/As is really up to upper standards. After the lunch service if finished, customer is king again and can ask for about everything that is possible.
The flight time passed by quite quickly, preparation for arrival and landing was uneventful. After all, for this short distance LH C class is just fine. If you take into consideration that LH uses a kind of “domestic” C class for flights of the same distance i.e. to Cyprus then the service to Cairo is pretty good.
Cairo airport is the usual mess. Service from the Sheraton Helioplis Cairo was same like every time, this means pick up people come or do not come depending on their mood and upgrade for Starwood Platinums only happen occasionally.
Feb 6, 2004, 1:07 am
#5
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: FRA
Posts: 2,175
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by InterflugIL62:
Do you have a report of the return flight?
Also, what lounge do they use at CAI?
What is the Cairo Airport Sheraton like?
tchuss</font>
Do you have a report of the return flight?
Also, what lounge do they use at CAI?
What is the Cairo Airport Sheraton like?
tchuss</font>
Ok here is some more info. In the meantime, I returned from CAI in F and flew there again in C, but this LH orginal C, not the Sabena seat. I received the same food & wines & entertainment, so besides the seats, no difference.
Return flight was in LH F. Lots of reports here about LH F and nothing special on those flights because I have slept all the time. Planes were 100% full.
The sheraton CAI (heliopolis airport sheraton) is basically a nice hotel with a casino, gym and nice pool area. Rooms look a little old fasioned. Yesterday they upgrade me to the executive floor. The lounge there is quite nice with nice food offers. Only drawback is the room service: I have stayed three times in this hotel and from six orders they did not deliver even one order correctly at the first time. Food differs from how it is described in the menu and also they are not able to deliver the correct wine. Anyway, everybody there is always friendly and they will fix every error but you need to calculate one hour for each order because they have to come twice
airport shuttle and airport pickup work very well.
no broadband internet in the rooms, you can only use a dial up connection. but this is the same for the moevenpick airport hotel so I did not find any alternative for this if you want to stay at the airport.
Feb 6, 2004, 2:29 am
#7
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: FRA
Posts: 2,175
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by InterflugIL62:
Danke for the infos. I stayed at Le Meridien which is a great hotel, but yeah, the service was off and on. The shuttle was terrible.
Welcome home.
</font>
Danke for the infos. I stayed at Le Meridien which is a great hotel, but yeah, the service was off and on. The shuttle was terrible.
Welcome home.
</font>
Feb 6, 2004, 2:59 am
#8
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: LHR BA Terraces 'Warden'
Posts: 1,060
The Le Meridien is further down from the airport in Heliopolis. We drove past the Sheraton enroute to Cairo Airport.
It has a nice pool, with an outdoor Lebanese dinner served by the pool in the evenings. The rooms were great and very comfy. Service was good but they were, kind of like your room service, slow and had to redo things. They tried and I give credit for that. I kept trying to get American credit for the stay and it never worked. Oh well.
It must cater to Italians as there were several Italian cable tv stations which I found interesting.
We were able to take the shuttle out, could never get it going back to the hotel, so we just took a taxi.
I would only do the hotel the night before an early flight out of Cairo, otherwise, I would prefer to stay in the city, where we enjoyed the Intercontinental. Schon!
------------------
YAS+
It has a nice pool, with an outdoor Lebanese dinner served by the pool in the evenings. The rooms were great and very comfy. Service was good but they were, kind of like your room service, slow and had to redo things. They tried and I give credit for that. I kept trying to get American credit for the stay and it never worked. Oh well.
It must cater to Italians as there were several Italian cable tv stations which I found interesting.
We were able to take the shuttle out, could never get it going back to the hotel, so we just took a taxi.
I would only do the hotel the night before an early flight out of Cairo, otherwise, I would prefer to stay in the city, where we enjoyed the Intercontinental. Schon!
------------------
YAS+
Feb 25, 2004, 4:48 pm
#9
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: TXL
Posts: 827
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Uli:
... and in nice glasses which were especially developed for LH by Markus Del Monego...</font>
... and in nice glasses which were especially developed for LH by Markus Del Monego...</font>
Uli, aehm ... does LH have new glasses or do we have a very different understanding of what is a nice wine glass? On my last FRA-EZE they still had the most ugly round-flat "stapelbar" ones which look more like an bloody failed atempt for a cheap candle holder than a wine glass.
Please tell me you dont speak of these ?
Feb 25, 2004, 11:51 pm
#10
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: FRA
Posts: 2,175
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by paulusst:
Uli, aehm ... does LH have new glasses or do we have a very different understanding of what is a nice wine glass? On my last FRA-EZE they still had the most ugly round-flat "stapelbar" ones which look more like an bloody failed atempt for a cheap candle holder than a wine glass.
Please tell me you dont speak of these ?</font>
Uli, aehm ... does LH have new glasses or do we have a very different understanding of what is a nice wine glass? On my last FRA-EZE they still had the most ugly round-flat "stapelbar" ones which look more like an bloody failed atempt for a cheap candle holder than a wine glass.
Please tell me you dont speak of these ?</font>
on some flights they seem to be testing new glasses which are a little bigger. Of course they can still be in the standard containers, but they are a lot nicer.
Feb 26, 2004, 10:13 am
#11
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: TXL
Posts: 827
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Uli:
on some flights they seem to be testing new glasses which are a little bigger. Of course they can still be in the standard containers, but they are a lot nicer.</font>
on some flights they seem to be testing new glasses which are a little bigger. Of course they can still be in the standard containers, but they are a lot nicer.</font>