FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Trying out 8 different brands of champagne! To, from and within Asia on *A in First
Old Feb 15, 2011, 3:17 pm
  #95  
jacob_m
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
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MUC-ARN on Lufthansa in C

Boarding

The flight to Stockholm was to depart from gate G40 and the gate was reasonably crowded when I arrived there around half an hour before departure.



Boarding started at 7.10 pm, 25 minutes before departure.
Passengers holding boarding passes with barcodes (which most passengers do nowadays) can make use of the automated speed boarding gates which usually make the boarding process a bit quicker (assuming the people in front really know what to do, which is not always the case).

Swedish, English and German newspapers were available for self-service inside the passenger bridge before boarding the aircraft.



The aircraft used for the evening flight to Stockholm was an Airbus A320.
As on most Lufthansa intra-Europe flights the partition between economy class and business class varies depending on demand.
On this flight there were three rows of business class in a 2-2 configuration. The middle seats in business class are kept empty and have been replaced by a small drinks table.

There were five passengers in business class in total.
I had initially pre-booked seat 02F for the flight (same seat as always) but eventually switched to seat 03A the day before departure to get an empty row and more space.

Economy class on the other hand seemed very full.



Munich-Stockholm/Arlanda, flight LH 2420 operated by Lufthansa
Departure: 19:35
Arrival: 21:45
Aircraft: Airbus A320
Class: Business Class
Seat: 03A

Pushback slightly ahead of timetable at 7.30 pm.

After a quick safety demonstration in English and German, followed by a quick pre-recorded message in Swedish (which sounds just stupid in my opinion), the captain also welcomed us onboard and announced a flight time of 1 hour and 55 minutes.



Quite a nice evening in Munich and I managed to get some nice shots of terminal 2 before departure.

We finally took off at 7.45 pm from runway 08L.


Haven’t I seen this aircraft before?


Nice evening view of terminal 2 with lots of Lufty aircrafts

The meal service

The evening flight to Stockholm included another good example of the very improved inflight service in business class on intra-Europe flights (especially longer ones).

Nowadays a proper meal is served with an appetiser, a hot dish and a dessert.
Rather small portions, but a million times better than the cold plates they used to serve until the end of last year, the new service concept was introduced in November 2010 I believe.

On the tray there is also a small menu describing the contents of the meal and here is the menu for the dinner service.

Menu Munich-Stockholm

Cajun breast of Guinea fowl, sweet potato salad with macadamia oil and mango/ginger chutney

Tilapia with shell fish tarragon sauce

Mascarpone crème with two fruit sauces and macadamia cookie


The meal was actually really tasty and although the portions were on the smaller side I found the whole meal to be quite filling.
But then admittedly I was not very hungry after all the food onboard ANA First and in the lounges in Munich.



I had a glass of red wine to drink with the meal and finished off with a last whisky.



The service onboard was OK but unremarkable, the crew did what they were supposed to do, no more no less. A far cry from the wonderful first class flight on Lufthansa to Tokyo in the beginning of the trip.
During the last hour of the flight no one passed through the cabin to offer any more drinks and the two young female FAs spent most of their time in the galley chatting.

Arrival in Stockholm

I was starting to feel seriously tired after the meal service realising it was well after midnight in eastern Asia, the time zone my body was adjusted to.
I rather involuntarily dozed off for the remainder of the flight and woke up again just as we were starting the descent.



The descent provided some very nice views through the window of the Swedish capital, not a single cloud this evening.
On the photo above you can see the western part of Stockholm and right in the middle of it Bromma airport, the city airport of Stockholm with over two million passengers per year.
However this was a Saturday evening when aircrafts are not allowed to take-off and land due to noise restrictions, so the runway is just a black spot on the photo.
The terminal and apron area are easily identifiable though, extremely well-lit, right in the middle of the photo.



After a rather bumpy final approach we landed on runway 26 at Arlanda airport at 9.40 pm, as scheduled.



I was one of the first persons to get off and the very first person to arrive at the dead quiet baggage reclaim. This place is usually packed with people in the evenings around 9 pm.

And believe it or not, the priority tag actually worked! My suitcase was the third to appear on the belt, after two other priority-tagged bags. Amazing! ^
Considering the ground staff at ARN are absolutely worthless when it comes to priority baggage handling this was a major surprise! However I think most of the credit should be given to the baggage handlers in Munich who loaded the aircraft properly.
Technically my first class tagged bag should probably have come out first, as it would have done in Asia, but that would probably be too high of a standard at ARN.

Very happy to be met at the airport with a car waiting outside to take me home.
Over 23 hours had passed since I got up at the Mercure hotel in Narita and I was seriously feeling the effects of the long day and could not wait to see a proper bed again.

Verdict

A rather unremarkable flight in Lufthansa business class.
I like the new service concept onboard, it is vastly better than what they had in the past, in some cases just a simple Caesar salad which was completely inadequate for a business class flight of two hours in length.
The service onboard was not up to par though. I have taken a fair number of intra-Europe flights in Lufthansa business during the past months and they can do so much better than this.

And finally, to finish off the report, my purchase from the Lufthansa shop in Munich.

A very suitable purchase after this trip, I presume it’s Lufthansa’s latest A380 “Tokyo” pictured...


I am part of it!

Last edited by jacob_m; Feb 23, 2011 at 1:07 pm
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