Air France / KLM
Business Lounge
Munich Terminal 1 – D Gates
Munich Franz Joseph Strauß Airport.

We booked a taxi for our trip to the airport. After a 4 AM wake up, we met our driver downstairs in a Mercedes E Class Wagon. No Uber’s (Uber X or Black) were available at this hour, and I had found very patchy availability from Araballa Park at most times during our stay. The S Train was not an option on this Sunday morning as the first train did not start in time for us to get to the terminal by the time that our flight closed. A quick 30 minutes and 63€ later and we were at Munich Terminal 1 filled with Transvia and all other SkyTeam members.

There was a long line at the Air France Sky Priority check in today, with only 3 agents working all flights and two scheduled Air France / KLM departures to Paris CDG and Amsterdam Schipohol. This wasn't exactly a happy place at this time of the morning (4:45 AM). . .







We used the Business check in line to get through security which was quite busy and had almost 100 people in line. The Germans appear to do the one – on – one approach to security screening with a discussion to occur with each traveler prior to them giving you a bin for your articles, which seems to slow down matters quite considerably.

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Once we were through on the other side, we went searching for the lounge since the one coffee shop line up was about 20 persons deep. The Air France / KLM Lounge was located up one level through stairs or a thin elevator.







Of course, being all things European, the actual lounge was up another 3 steps from the main upper concourse. Access to the lounge was provided complimentary due to class of service with our AF business class ticket.



The lounge was a small, dark place during our visit. It had about 50 seats, which were fairly evenly spread out. There were contemporary chairs but the overall feeling of the place was that of a small windowless nicely appointed space with little to show in the way of personality. It reminded me of those unfortunate windowless conference rooms that grace office buildings.











There was a table section as well. I’m not usually one for sitting at tables in lounges so we found some chairs with side tables instead.



At this early hour, there were cheeses and other meats available, in addition to toast and other croissants. Strangely, there was no butter, instead a butter and Camembert mixture for the toast and the croissant. I had a cappuccino crème, which came out black.



I picked up the Wall Street Journal, which was the only English newspaper available in the lounge this morning.

We headed down to the gate and boarded without much delay.

The Air France / KLM departure experience at Munich T1 was a pretty busy and crowded adventure. Between the lines at check in, security and the seeming over capacity of travelers compared to actual staff able to help, it seemed to be a challenging experience. The lounge had reasonable food offerings, was comfortable to sit in, and had clean fit and fixtures but it’s not a reason to get to the airport early by any means.