It’s time for the return snapshot from Frankfurt to Birmingham, focusing on how Lufthansa and friends get on on flight 954.
For those who have forgotten, I have two major travel writing styles:
- Trip Reports – These are full deep-dive reports taking you into the experience and the small things… as well as the big things!
- Snapshots – These are bite-sized reviews that show you the basic product in some nice gentle headlines (and normally, only images shot on the phone
Pre-flight
As per UK government requirements, a locator form was completed online. The equivalent of a 3rd grade website project that’s a hot mess, had minimal testing and bad wording.
Check-in
Check-in was carried out online 3 hours before departure. Aircraft was listed for an A319 at that point. I swapped seats to row 19a as someone thought it would be fun sitting next to me for the short hop to Birmingham. Rather than have that, I chose to create a little physical distancing. Well, as much as you can have in an aircraft.
At the airport
Arriving into the airport, I headed to the fast baggage drop – to be rejected as I dared to check in a rucksack. I therefore headed to the bag drop queue for a 20 minute wait.
Once through that, security was completed, with the agents taking their own sweet time clearing items. They really don’t like *any* electronics in a bag….
From there it was through to the B gates and to the Non-Schengen Zone. Passport control was quick (even if the chip failed). A short walk to gate 48 ensured.
Boarding
Boarding was from Gate 48. Document check and boarding pass check was carried out as wall through process.
The aircraft
It’s an Airbus A320neo – upscaled from the booked Airbus A319.
The Seat
The Seat once again is the Neu Europe Kabine Seat by Recaro Aircraft seating. There are varients out there with Gevan seating too.
Connectivity and IFE
Even though this is one of the newer aircraft in the Lufthansa fleet, no In-flight entertainment server was installed, nor was there Wi-fi available.
Onboard service
As we are still in uncertain times, the onboard service was curtailed. All passengers were offered bottles of water, with an offering of tea or coffee. A cleansing wipe was given to passengers on boarding the aircraft.
No further offers of soft drinks or half sandwiches were offered.
Landing
The aircraft landed on time at Birmingham airport, and taxied to a gate.
U.K. Immigration
Passengers were split into two segments – UK, EU and authorised biometric entry, and rest of the world. The rest o f the world queue didn’t seem to have much social distancing.
Passport was manually checked, along with the U.K. border entry form.
Baggage was picked up at the belt. No further checks were made on entry into the the public zone of the airport.
Images from the flight
The full review soon.
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