TRIP REPORT: Lufthansa, Belgrade – Frankfurt

TRIP REPORT

Flew with Lufthansa recently after a while. The morning flight to Frankfurt departs at 6.10AM meaning you need to be at the airport at an ungodly hour. I arrived at 4.20AM and the airport was very busy with a lot of Air Serbia flights departing in the morning wave.

Since I was flying business, I could use the fast-track lane for passport control and security and passed through quickly, although I have to note that the line for passport control was moving along smoothly with a lot of people using the eGates.

Security was also a breeze. There is now a dedicated lane for business class passengers (where boarding passes are checked), a dedicated lane for incoming transfer passengers (with a huge lime green Air Serbia cardboard gate), and another 7 security lanes were working at the time. So, there were no queues at the security check.

I walked around the airport a bit and looked out onto the apron and saw the new cargo flight from Urumqi incoming. Around an hour before departure I received an email from Lufthansa with the assigned boarding gate. As I was walking around the terminal, I saw a board with a before and after photo, and despite all of the airport’s flaws, it is an upgrade.

Lufthansa passengers can use the “Business Club” lounge. While the Air Serbia lounge was already working full swing, the Business Club lounge opens only at 5AM, but in reality, it usually opens late as the staff does not show up on time. I remember flying out once when the staff member opened the lounge at 5.45, explaining that the staff bus was late… On this occasion, the lounge opened at 5.15 and there was a whole queue of people waiting.

The lounge has been heavily degraded in the last few years. It has been halved in size, so the entrance has been moved to the other side and now the entry is next to the toilet (the doors are the same so you might enter the toilet instead). The lounge also no longer has a toilet. There is still a selection of some food, sandwiches, coffee, and non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks but the whole lounge is a far cry from what it used to be. The airport lounge will move to the Air Serbia lounge, once the Air Serbia lounge moves to its new premises.

Lounge enterence (it’s the glass door)

Operating today’s flight to Frankfurt was an A319. Boarding started at 5.35. We were greeted at the entrance by a senior cabin crew member who was holding a basket with wrapped Lufthansa-branded chocolate bars, which is what, I believe, constitutes the airline’s economy class service on this flight. By 5.50 boarding was completed. The doors were closed 5 minutes later, and the pilot came on the PA to tell us that thankfully we would be able to depart on time because we were given our actual landing slot in Frankfurt, for which he voiced surprise.

There were 10 of us in business class that morning. The seats are usual LH, like an ironing board which has become the norm in Europe.

As we taxied, I noticed that there was no longer a huge “X” sign on the former “inserted” runway and that it was in fact open for traffic as a parallel taxiway to the runway.

We pushed back on time and took off some 10 minutes later. Around 15-20 minutes after departure breakfast was served, accompanied by the crew going around with a breadbasket. It’s interesting that on this very same route Air Serbia offers business class passengers a menu and a selection of three hot food items to choose from. If they only improved the meal presentation, it would be miles ahead of what Lufthansa offers, not that food is important on this 2 hour flight but it leaves an impression.

I connected onto the airline WiFi portal which had a nice moving map and also some eJournals. I connected onto the internet as I spent the rest of the flight working. I must say that internet was working really well and was very quick with opening webpages. I used it on my continuing long-haul flight and the WiFi also worked really well, to the point you could open social media and the pictures loaded fine.

The crew didn’t appear in the cabin anymore after clearing the plates and we landed in Frankfurt on time. We taxied to a remote stand and were all put onto a bus. The bus first made a stop for connecting passengers and then for passengers going to baggage claim. Interestingly, just 5 passengers stayed on the bus after the first stop, meaning pretty much the entire flight was transferring. Unfortunately, they didn’t read out the gate information for connecting passengers onboard, which is something they used to do in the past and I liked it since you could hear where the passengers were transferring to.

All in all, the flight was ok. Most importantly it was on time, which is not so common in Europe anymore, especially in summer. The rat-infested Frankfurt Airport left a lot to be desired.