- Lufthansa LH1232
- Frankfurt Main to Vienna
- Airbus A340-600 D-AIHY
- Tuesday 13th August 2019
After not enough hours of sleep – I got to bed about 2345 – my alarm was soon going off at 0450 as it was time to wake up again to go to Vienna. That gave me half an hour to get ready, pack the final bits in my case and head off to the Holiday Inn Hotel next door for the shuttle bus at 0520 back to Frankfurt’s Terminal 1.
After a ten minute ride into the Airport it was time to head upstairs, drop my bag once again and head through security. Today was the turn of a brand new destination and country for me, Vienna in Austria. Another bonus of this trip was a brand new aircraft type too, the massive and really long Airbus A340-600, which Lufthansa uses twice a week to Vienna this summer.
After grabbing a quick bite to eat it was time to board my flight to Vienna. I had selected seat 27K at check in, and thought nothing of it. As we boarded it became clear that I had chosen a seat in Lufthansa’s premium economy cabin. It was a rather nice surprise given I didn’t expect these to be available and I hadn’t paid close attention to the seat layout on the app when choosing my seat.
The service was very professional and typically German – as I had come to expect. Snacks (a chocolate biscuit) and drinks were served not long after departure. Given this was a very short flight of little over an hour there was very little time for anything else. We were soon landing in Vienna.
I managed to watch some Bundesliga highlights on the seat back TV I had in front of me. It looks an awesome league and one fact picked up that it was the best attended league in the world, with average attendance across all games over 43000 people!
We arrived into a bright Vienna and parked on a remote stand. Once we disembarked by the stairs, I was amused to find that everyone fit on just one bus sent for us, and you could have got more people on! There must have been maybe 100 people on the 281 seat A340-600.
It’s amazing that Lufthansa are using these large aircraft on such short flights not only to Vienna but also Lisbon and Dublin. There appears to be at least some suggestion that these are being used for crew training requirements.
It was certainly a nice way to travel with a larger premium economy seat – even on such a short route – and I couldn’t believe Lufthansa let you select these at check in for free! It was a short trip to Vienna so I didn’t really get chance to try it properly, so I hoped I could secure one on the leg back to Dublin the next day.
Scott’s views... 