For my flight to Berlin, I booked an Avios award with 4.5k points. For the short hop, an hour in coach was far better than spending ten hours on a train.
Niki also seems to have a confusingly expensive set of food options to purchase on board. I’m not sure why I would ever spend 39 Euros to have a cake in flight rather than simply buy one on the ground.
For my stay in Vienna, I booked two award nights at the Radisson Blu Palais hotel. As a Club Carlson Visa cardholder, my second night was free, so this award only cost 44k points.
As I was researching this stay, I noticed that all of the room rates advertised a complimentary minibar.
After arriving off of my flight from Los Angeles, I made my way to the Lufthansa First Class lounge prior to my flight to Vienna.
I checked in with the front desk attendant, who then directed me to the window across from her. Rather than have First Class passengers enter Schengen elsewhere in the airport, Lufthansa has arranged for a member of the German Border Police to be available.
As I my flight to Vienna was going to be departing from a remote stand, I was told to come back when it was time for my flight to get a ride to my plane.
I then went to the back of the lounge to take a shower following my redeye flight. Lately, Lufthansa has been issuing collectible blue rubber ducks, but this location was apparently “out.”
There were only a few other passengers in the lounge on a Monday afternoon.
I then went out in search of lunch at the buffet.
All of the outlets were European style.
When I entered the lounge, the attendant at the front desk had instructed me to return to the front at 3PM for my ride to the remote stand for my flight to Vienna. As I didn’t want to hold up an entire plane with my tardiness, I returned at 3 sharp and went downstairs to the limousine desk. Boarding had not commenced, so the agent advised me to take a seat.
She investigated and found out that the flight was still waiting on one last crewmember. As there was going to be a brief delay, she suggested I leave my bags downstairs and return to the lounge to relax. A few minutes later, the front desk clerk stopped by to apologize for the delay and let me know that I my flight (and car) were ready.
As we approached the plane, my driver asked whether I wanted to board the plane first. Rather than hold up a bus full of people, I said I didn’t mind waiting or boarding simultaneously. After we pulled up to the plane, he verified that the crew was ready for boarding, let me out of the car, and then carried my bag to the plane.
Meanwhile, a bus full of people were waiting, despite my best intentions.
My gate was a quick walk from the lounge, so I took a moment to admire the planes preparing to depart to Europe that evening.
The flight was already starting to board economy, so whatever line there might have been for the premium lane had already cleared out.
Lufthansa 453
Los Angeles (LAX) – Munich (MUC)
Sunday, December 22nd, 2013
Depart: 5:16PM
Arrive: 1:04PM
Duration: 10 hours, 48 minutes
Aircraft: Airbus A340-642 (D-AIHP)
Seat: 2K (First Class)
As I settled in, a flight attendant came by with an amenity kit, pajamas, and a menu for dinner. After introducing himself (in English), he asked whether I preferred English or Deutsch. I answered “either,” leading the flight attendants to interpret that as “English” for the rest of the flight. Answering this in German might lead to better results.
The flight attendants then came by offering water and champagne as predeparture drinks. My macadamia nuts and rose were somehow overlooked, however. The purser eventually stopped by with a rose after takeoff.
The menu read as follows:
Obviously, it’s not possible to realize that you’re flying in Lufthansa’s First Class without it being prominently written at the front of the cabin.
The dinner service began with bread and olive oil.
Lufthansa provides small salt and pepper grinders for its meal service.
I had ordered a vegetarian meal in advance, so in lieu of caviar, I was served a small vegetable plate.
The vegetable plate seemed a bit redundant with the salad appetizer.
I had ravioli for my entree.
A bit after dinner, I asked for a turndown. Lufthansa’s in-flight entertainment left a bit to be desired, so I decided that getting a full night’s rest, even if at an awkwardly time in the evening, was a better choice.
Several hours later, I woke up to a well-lit cabin and one of the flight attendants asking me for my breakfast selection. When I mentioned that I had ordered a vegetarian meal, she quickly recalled that and returned with breakfast. Two dishes of fruit, rather than the one on-menu dish of fruit, is an important part of any vegetarian breakfast.
As the breakfast service was wrapping up, our captain came on to announce our imminent arrival to Munich airport.
After reaching our gate, I disembarked and began walking to the center of the main terminal, in search of the Lufthansa First Class Lounge prior to my flight to Vienna.
With my flight to Munich departing at 5:15PM, I dropped off my rental car just before 3PM and made my way to LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal. The Lufthansa First Class check-in line actually had two other passengers waiting when I arrived.
During check-in, the agent asked me if I needed to be escorted to the lounge or the plane.
Me: “What exactly does that entail?”
Agent: “Well, we’ll walk you through security and drop you off in the lounge. In the case of the plane, we’ll pick you up from the lounge when the flight is ready to board.”
As TBIT is serviced by non-US flagged carriers, TSA Precheck hasn’t been setup yet, so I decided that being walked past security could save a bit of time. It worked out well in that I was able to enter the north checkpoint after they had stopped accepting new passengers for screening. It worked out poorly, as the agent didn’t want to steer us to a checkpoint with just a metal detector, so I ended up having to opt-out and enjoy a Freedom Grope.
Star Alliance runs a shared lounge at TBIT with a separate first class section.
When I arrived, the first class section was empty.
Shortly after I arrived, an attendant stopped by with a dining menu. As I was going to eat on my flight, I turned it down and began to look around.
The first class section has a small dedicated selection of food and drinks of its own and passengers can head over to the main Star Alliance Gold lounge next door.
Since Hong Kong, I’ve become fascinated by the power outlets available near the seating areas of lounges.
While the first class is somewhat secluded (and has views of absolutely nothing), the main lounge overlooks the main airside hall.
The lounge has an outside terrace that looks northeast towards the east part of runways 24L/24R and the terminal buildings. The weather of Los Angeles in December was too much for lounge goers, even with several fireplaces and heaters setup. For the hour (near sunset), it was a bit disappointing that the terrace didn’t face west.
The main lounge had its own selection of food, along with a few hot dishes.
As part of the decorations for the lounge, there were a number of quotes prominently displayed on the walls. I kept feeling like they were telling me something about Los Angeles…
Soon though, it was time for my flight to Munich and headed to my gate.
For Christmas and New Years, I decided I would try booking earlier than last year (the Friday before Christmas weekend). This didn’t actually prove to be particularly useful: My final outbound flight wasn’t booked until the night before. To give a glimpse of my trip construction, with an outbound on 12/22 and a return commencing 12/30:
It looks messy, but on a map, the final flights are close to the “I better book something, just so I can get there” flights I chose:
With the then-impending United devaluation in February, I was thrilled to pick up two seats in Lufthansa First.
As I wanted to move between several European cities during my trip, I booked three flights with Avios, eventually finishing the itinerary with:
In early December, I visited Boston and stayed at the Sheraton Commander Cambridge.
As a business class passenger, I had access to the United Arrivals lounge. As only United’s International First Class lounge has showers airside, I would have otherwise not had access to one before catching my connecting flight. While Continental brought showers to the merger, it’s worth noting that there are only a handful available at the premerger President’s Clubs in EWR and IAH.
The United Arrivals lounge is located on the arrivals level of Terminal 3, which is some distance away from the International Terminal where most of passengers with access will be clearing customs.
After showing my boarding pass to the attendant, she began printing out another boarding pass. Thinking this was my boarding pass for my connection, I asked her for it, only to discover that it was a duplicate of my HKG-SFO leg, used by the lounge to keep records of its visitors. Using a computerized system would be too much to expect.
I made my way to the back to use one of the showers.
Afterwards, I grabbed a coffee and prepared to head out.
While I had booked a K fare for my journey across the middle of the Pacific to Hong Kong, I splurged on a W fare for my return, choosing to play systemwide roulette with United.
When I booked this trip, confirmable upgrade space was plentiful on United’s two NRT-SFO flights for the days I wanted to travel. As UA78/UA79 service between Tokyo and Hong Kong was dropped in late October, I was left trying to book a flight with ANA unsuccessfully. Thanks to some quirks in United system’s, it proved impossible to book that segment while staying in a low fare bucket (rather than say full fare coach or business class for HKG-NRT).
Fortunately, my upgrade cleared a few minutes before online check-in opened and I was assigned the last available business class seat on the plane.
I left the lounge when boarding was announced, but nevertheless, group 1 had already become a sea of humanity.
Boarding flights (to the United States, at least) at Hong Kong is somewhat complicated by the thorough bag inspection conducted for every passenger. Making past the final security check, I settled down in my seat.
United 862
Hong Kong (HKG) – San Francisco (SFO)
Monday, December 2nd, 2013
Depart: 12:30PM
Arrive: 8:25AM
Duration: 11 hours, 55 minutes
Aircraft: Boeing 747-222 (N121UA)
Seat: 6B (Business Class, Lower Deck)
After finally passing an entire 747 of passengers through the bag search gantlet, we pushed back, taxied, out, and took off to the South.
The menu read as follows:
Service began with drinks and warm, mixed nuts.
I had ordered a vegetarian meal; and thanks to my upgrade clearing before the 24 hour mark, I managed to actually receive it.
Somehow, American manages to rather consistently offer small glass bottles of olive oil and vinegar as a dressing choice. United, rather consistently, offers prepackaged dressings in far less elegant plastic containers.
At United, “Asian vegetarian” secretly means “Indian” for reasons that have never been made clear to me.
After finishing lunch, we still had about nine hours of flying time left before our scheduled arrival to San Francisco. The majority of flights from (and to) Asia are poorly timed for any reasonable sleep schedule: 3PM is not a great time to go to sleep.
I caught what rest I could before waking up to the beginnings of the breakfast service about an hour before arrival.
Once again, I had a vegetarian meal for breakfast.
While I wanted to catch some good pictures of the San Francisco area from the air during our approach, the fog of the Bay Area was diligently uncooperative.
Seated in 6B, just behind door 1L, I was able to get off the plane quickly and make my way to the United Arrivals lounge.
