Transfer from Munich city to MUC experiences
 

Unusal post coming here, I would like to share a city->MUC experience.

I _love_ MUC terminal 2, I tell to all my friends that its one of the nicest places that we call airports on this earth. Its fast, efficient, clean, hassle-free, and quite loveable. The fact that its a bit far out of the city is a bit annoying, 40 mins with the Sbahn, but its allright. However.

I had an OS flight reservations this friday, depart at 18:40, boarding starts 18:10, and since its a regional flight they usually use bus gates and start boarding early so I estimate I have time for a quick bite at the lounge if I get to the airport at around 17:55. For that I have to catch an S8 from ostbahnhof at ~17:20, perfect. Things go as planned (as always) and I am on that S8. Arrives 2 mins late to ostbahnhof, so far so good.

Then trouble started at Ismaning when we stopped for an unusal ~5 mins and I looked up from my laptop that with "w*f?" expression on my face. After a bit more waiting when other pax started makeing nervous looks comes an announcement that this train is not going to the airport and we should get off and board the next S8 that will be here in 10 mins. At this point everybody was uneasy but we still hoped for the best. There was even a train coming from the direction of the airport so we assumed that the problem is really with that specific train the took us at Ismaning. I also made a quick assessment with a taxi its already quite impossible to reach the airport in time, for the pure reason that after Ismaning the train goes with almost full speed for the rest of the journey (~20km). And a taxi cant possible beat the train if you factor in the time-cost of actually finding one in a small village halfway between the airport and the city.

So the next S8 arrived and I knew that it should arrive at MUC at 18:15, if I run I can be at my gate around 18:20. We boarded it, its still okay.

Then came the unexpected announcement that no frickin S8 is going to the airport because of some track trouble, and we should get off and go up and wait for replacement buses. As you would expect the situation quickly deteriorated to a nasty wedlock of a bloodbath and a clusterf*ck The people from 2 busy-friday-afternoon-packed Sbahns (~300-500 I would guess) started calling for taxis, spreading out from the station and hunting for anything with the usual yellowish colour of a taxi. Like zombies hunting for brains. I saw people pushing others aside and making a run for open places in taxis called by other people, or right away snatching taxis from others. Others bribed random passer-by cars with big money for a ride to the airport. The thing looked nothing like a western european country, more like some zombie virus outbreak simulation of some particularly bored german public health agency.

Just for the record: the first replacement bus arrived around 19:00, LH let me at least keep the return leg of my reservation and I ended up on the night train finally. Any idea if the DB is refunding train tickets in this case?

I have to say I find your plan to arrive to the airport at 17:55 when boarding is to start at 18:10 unnecessarily risky. I'd never chance it like that with public transport.

The S8 is horribly unreliable, I always budget 40 min extra to account for missing two trains.

LH MUC SV/ST keeps track of S8 operations and A9/A92 traffic and allows free rebookings, I've benefitted a few time from that ;)

MVG refunds if you are more than 20 min late, the S8 cluster this weekend was in the news: http://www.mvg-mobil.de/service/mvg-garantie.html

The MUC T2 Sat is on track, there are some images floating around on MUC-forum.de that show half finished interiors ^

Well: as far as I can see the S8 is not covered by the service guarantee you provide the link for:


In solchen Fällen, wenn eines unserer Fahrzeuge mehr als 20 Minuten Verspätung hat, erstatten wir je Betriebsstörung den Wert einer Single-Tageskarte für den Innenraum auf Ihr Konto. Wenn Sie wegen einer von uns verursachten Verspätung Ihren letzten Anschluss verpassen, erstatten wir sogar Taxikosten bis 25 Euro! Dies gilt für die U-Bahn-, Trambahn- und Buslinien der MVG.

The S8 is neither a U-bahn, a tram nor a bus. And the refund is a joke, if one has to rebook a flight. They refund a single Tageskarte (i.e. 11,70 Euro) or taxi costs up to 25 Euro. Doesn't really cover the costs of a rebooking!

I accept the rebuke. But I am not sure if +40 mins would have helped me in this case. And one could view from the other side that I saved ~30 * 40mins of uselessly sitting at airports (which are bad even when a lounge is around) with this risky behaviour so far, in exchange for this one night spent on a train.

Not sure how familiar you are with MUC but here its quite a manageable risk as I have found out. My low quality statistics are 1 / 30, where 30 is the rough number of my recent intraEU, no-thrill trip with MUC departure, where I took this risk.

Since I'm about 30min away from MUC and know 2-3 ways to get to the airport if one is clogged, I've given up trying to use the S8 and mainly use drive now cars ;) The train route is only 39 mins from door to door for me (bus 188 plus S8), but with the added buffer its often not my first choice.

So environmentally unfriendly! I bet they are S, RS, or M class or even AMG as well! Our children will pay for this!

Seriously though- I too use cars to get to MUC unfortunately- I prefer public transport in cities where it is reliable- for example in Hong Kong I almost always take the train into town as it is just so convenient and much faster than driving. It is strange that Munich of all places seems to have so many problems with public transport- they cannot even expand their airport (runways) which is very surprising.

The main problem is that the last big overhaul and rethink of the network was for the ill-fated '72 olympics. And there were only patches and minor upgrades since then. Now they do the stammstrecke reconstruction but its also nothing great.

As far as I know, a court has ruled that you may not claim compensation for missed flights (or anything resulting from that) due to railway delays. LG Frankfurt, 2-1 S 131/03

This happened again last Friday?:rolleyes: Apr. 1 in the late afternoon the S8 was stopping at Ismaning as well due to no power at Besucherpark and Flughafen. Having been on those replacement buses before I backtracked from Ostbahnhof and caught the Lufthansa bus at Hauptbahnhof. Cost me an extra €10.50 but well worth it and despite it being the rush hour the bus got there just as fast and I actually had the luxury of a seat.^ Seriously thinking of taking the bus again in future.