Düsseldorf International

I took public transportation to the airport and since the morning traffic could be worse I took an earlier bus and train than necessary. Therefore I arrived quite early at the airport. I had printed the boarding pass at home and therefore went straight to the security check point. At the same time a Japanese tour group arrived there. They were flying to Zurich and so the waiting time was a bit longer as some of them also used the First Class / Business Class / Star Gold lines. The communication which security staff was difficult as they did not speak English very well and the security staff no Japanese. They all had to be manually body searched as the metal detector beeped while they passed it. They did not understand the staff and so it took some time but security staff was friendly and handled this quite good. From my last experiences at Düsseldorf airport, staff did not always handle a situation like this in such a professional manner. I was trough security quite fast and I did not cause any beep.

I stored my laptop and went to the Senator lounge to have breakfast which I skipped at home and put some work in the trip report of the LH Italia Inaugural DO.

At boarding time I headed for customs and towards the gate.

04 February 2009
DUS – LHR
[Düsseldorf – London Heathrow]
LH 4772 (Lufthansa); Boeing 737-300 (D-ABEF / 'Weiden i.d. Oberpfalz')
Gate A 77
11:05 – 11:35 [effective 10:58– 11:17]
Economy Class
Seat 11 A

I boarded the plane and found someone else on my seat. The lady sitting there had mixed up with row 11 and moved to the previous row. My row is the one with the most legroom since there is not seat in front of the window seat.

The plane filled with passengers, but the middle seats remained empty in the most rows. I think the load was around 80% in Economy, but Business seemed to be full. We pushed back at 10:58 and taxied to our runway.

I converted the seat into a business class seat but did not lower the table out of the middle seat (only during the service, since I had the tray table stored in the armrest). We had to queue behind another LH jet and turboprop from a Romania airline before it was finally our turn and we airborne at 11:11. We climbed into the somehow cloudy sky and it was little bit bumpier while we were in the clouds. The Seat belt signs were turned off after app. five minutes in flight and the cabin crew began to prepare the service. As usual there was a light meal offered in Business Class, while Economy Class got the usual sandwich along with a bar of chocolate (this time a Twix) soon followed by the beverage service. I opted for a coffee and a sparkling water. I read the papers I brought along from the lounge. Soon after the service was done we saw the British Coast. The weather was not bad and there were no cloud in the sky and therefore we got some nice views of London during our approach to London’s Heathrow airport. There was still some snow, but it seems the huge masses of snow from Monday have melted.

We touched down at 11:09 and had a longer way to our gate where we arrived around 11:17. I disembarked and headed for customs. The lines filled quite quickly, but I was in the UK after a waiting time of around 5 minutes and headed for the departures to check in for my flight back in a couple of hours.

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