Lufthansa

Back from a hectic week at 3GSM which I'll talk about in the next few entries. This one is dedicated to my experiences with Lufthansa.

The flight deserves a special post, since for the longest time I've heard people taking Lufthansa to go to India because there's a smaller layover in Frankfurt. I've always been contesting that notion for two main reasons:
1) Is there any airline in the world better than SIA?
2) Have heard lots of negatives about flying with Lufthansa.

POSITIVES
- Operating since 1926, Lufthansa is one of the oldest airlines in the world. Its the second largest airline in Europe (only behind Air France - KLM and ahead of BA). It was Lufthansa that gave Boeing the idea to launch the 747-8, competing neck to neck with the Airbus A380-800 for being the biggest jetliner. Plus, its a part of Star Alliance the largest airline alliance in the world (read: I can use my krisflyer card!)
- Excellent Hindi music collection in the radio program - Rhythms of India (in flight entertainment -> flights to germany from NA -> Listen & Relax -> Channel 21). This was the best part of the flight. Lots of good songs with classics (Julie, Saath Saath), new songs (Kailasa, Corporate, Tere Bin) and Bhangra mixes. Better radio programs than many other flights. There's also a special channel for Tamil songs (channel 22).

NEGATIVES
- Service sucks! - kinda. There was a sense of "I'm doing my job" in the service. There were some air hostesses that tried to show the genuineness, but most were very cold.
- No individual TV screens. You get the common 17" TV screen that you share with about 75 other passengers.
- In flight entertainment sucks (other than the radio)! . They showed Marie Antionette on both routes (SFO - FRA and back). Who in their right minds would show a stupid movie which was booed during its launch in France, and for good reason. The MOVIE is s....l.....o.....w.... and you have the 18th century French kings and queens talking american english. I'm choosing not to go on and on about how bad the movie is - will need a special blog entry.
- Lufthansa has one of the smallest seats and leg room in the world. Only the United Economy seats (not the Economy Plus) come close. Infact, what surprised me was that their domestic airlines (I flew Frankfurt - Stuttgart, Stuttgart - Barcelona, Barcelona - Frankfurt) had more space than the international ones.
- Food sucks! The choice was between 'Salmon and Pasta' or 'Beef and Pasta'. My neighbour had ordered Indian Vegetarian and she was served the Pasta!
- They gave me a German I-94 card, and said they don't have English ones!!

WTF!!
Now for the part that really makes me wonder why people choose to fly through Europe on Lufthansa while going to India.

Frankfurt is one of the main hubs in Europe. Most flights to India will go through Frankfurt. Lufthansa obviously has dedicated space at the airport. However, there are some critical flaws in the check in system at the airport.

1) All US bound flights go through one check in counter. Now most airports have it this way, but when you have flights to Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Denver flying within 2 hours of each other the system is bound to crash. I've seen many a long lines, but the Economy checkin lines at the Lufthansa counter - are the longest I've seen ever! The story is the same with First/Business Class lines. This is the only place where I saw about 50 people queued up in the Business Class line. On top of all this, I saw a couple of check in counters closing since it was 'lunch time' for people behind the counters and now you had 2 (instead of 4) counters serving these huge lines. People were directed to go to another counter!!!

2) 4 security checks!! Expect huge lines here as well.. Once again, you have people for 11AM flights as well as 9:30AM in the lines at 9AM. I was seeing the plight of people with 9:30AM flights, begging others to let them go first. Should've checked in earlier you say - they were at the airport at 7:00AM! During the first checkin line, I was lucky to get into the business class check in line - even though I had an economy ticket. I quickly realized my mistake, but the economy line was way too long.. I said yes to "Business Class ticket?" and no-one bothered to check after this. I saw people being asked to get back into the Economy class line. Lucky eh? This was only the first check though. After immigartion (second checking - passport only) I thought I could take a small breather in the lounge - glad I decided against it. I walk into a next baggage security check with even bigger line, and this one was a mumbo jumbo of flying classes. One attendent took us upstairs saying lines there were shorter, but the guy in front of me swore they looked the same. No tricks here, I waited till 9:45AM for my 9:55AM departure when I heard "Passengers to SFO, this way please".. We were branched into the 'Business Class' checking irritating the passengers already there. After all this, there was the last checking (passports again) where the lady kept looking at my H1-B for some reason and with a lot of reluctance told me to go to the gate. There were 12 other passengers behind me stuck in security. The flight left 30 minutes late.

Now I agree that you'd only have 2 of these checks in a transit flight, but there are crucial flaws in the system if you don't time the flights/gates such that passengers of 10 flights don't get in at the same time through the same gates. Hence, I'm convinced that the best way to fly to India is through the Pacific. Take SIA if you can. If you have "long" layover at Singapore, refresh yourselves with a quick shower, catch a movie, catch a nap, do emails - there are so many things to do at Chengi.

For a FRA-SFO I don't think there are a lot of options but to put up with this mess. Give yourselves 3.5 hours to board the flight if you're boarding from FRA.