Observations from Frankfurt non-Schengen Lufthansa lounge on July 18
Yesterday I spent about 5 hours in the LH lounge in the Z gates area in Frankfurt. I had been there a few times last year and this year when food and beverage offerings in lounge were completely suspended.
There was a long line to check in, as expected. Having read about the 24-hour covid test rule for unvaccinated passengers 6 and older, I specifically had my 9-year-old take her test as late as possible to
be able to enter. The check-in lady did check our negative tests, but when I mentioned the 24-hour rule she said they no longer followed it as it was
too difficult to manage. She gave me a simple contact tracing form to fill out (I had tried to download and enter my info into the Luca app prior while already in Europe, but it would not work on my U.S. iPhone).
In the lounge it was very hard to find 2 seats together. The social distancing signs have taken at least half of the capacity offline. After wandering around for a while we finally found some seats,
and later upgraded to comfier seats as they were
vacated. During our stay we observed many visitors
move social distancing signs around. It would have been helpful to have a lounge host assist parties
of 2 and more in finding seats during the busy morning hours.
I was grateful to be able to have some food and drinks in the lounge again. Unfortunately there was
very little available on self-service basis. Long lines formed as people lined up for a simple request for
a glass of water from the bar. Bottles of
water were no longer available. Hydration is a basic need of weary travelers.
At around 1:30 pm they made an announcement that the lounge would close at 2pm! That is very early. We still had 3 hours left, so we wanted to wait as close to 2pm as possible. The cleaning people arrived early and started shutting things down, including the restrooms. I tried to take my daughter to the restroom at 1:50pm only to be yelled at by the cleaning ladies. 😮
It was an interesting visit.