Hello and welcome to this flight report of LH970!
In the beginning of september I went to Scotland for a few days. On my last trip top Scotland I went to Edinburgh (this was before discovering flight-report.com unfortunately), this time I chose Aberdeen instead.
When I booked the flight in March I was quite a bit surprised that Business Class for the outbound flight didn't even cost 30€ more than Eco - that made the descision pretty easy ;)
Arrival at FRA
As usual when I travel to or from Frankfurt Airport I decided to take the ICE-train. That worked pretty good on the way to FRA (but turned into a nightmare a few days later on my way back home… ;) )
We arrived in FRA about three hours ahed of boarding time.
Quite a famous view in FRA's T1
After dropping my bag I went over to the security check
This took surprisingly few time as there was hardly a queue today. Absolutely no need to take the fast lane this time. You get a pretty good view to the apron from the security check area:
Lufthansa Business Lounge
I had still plenty of time to visit one of the Business Lounges in Terminal 1B.
The LH Business Lounge at FRA offers quite much room and looked spotlessly clean. Pretty good standard in my opinion.
A standard breakfast choice was offered, nothing special at all - and because of the fact I already had breakfast in the morning I only took a banana for my coffee ;)
Boarding
I went over to my gate a few minutes before boarding time where a pretty long queue already had formed - isn't this a bit useless if we have to take the bus to our E-190? ;)
Because of that I didn't take a photo of the crowded gate area. But the view out of the bus was pretty cool on this beautiful day!
Air Canada Boeing 777
Terminal 2 in the background
Our E-190 stood far away, somewhere behind of Terminal 2…of course this is a CRJ900 though…
There she is…D-AECF, named after the village Kronberg/Taunus
One of the General Electric CF34 Engines
I snatched a photo of the cockpit just before entering the plane…the pilots looked quite a bit busy.
The cabin looked tidy and I was warmly welcomed by the two flight attendants. Load factor was at 100%
You get lots of space on an LH E-190 - for regional jet standards. Seat pitch was really good (I am 1,82m tall).
The seatback…all in all the business class cabin of the LH E-190 is the usual thing when you travel within europe - the same seats as in Economy class with the seat next to you being blocked.
Departure
Pushback was absolutely on time and we went over to runway 25C
Here we go… :)
Crossing the river Rhine shortly after departure
Cruise flight and catering
The cabin showed only some few signs of age as you can see on this small tray table…
Drinks were offered after a few minutes…Warsteiner beer for me (I pretty like it)
About 15 minutes later the meal was handed out:
Salad with carrots, cream cheese, cauliflower, lentils, bread roll and butter.
For dessert vanilla yoghurt with orange and two chocolate cookies (yummy…)
The meal was really good for the length of the flight…a big step from Eco of course!
The salad was fresh and a pretty good composition.
In-flight-magazine and Safety Card
Arrival at ABZ
Time spun away and we soon began the descent from 36000 feet.
Despite of some clouds the weather was pretty good in Aberdeen…
One BA A319 to LHR is also here (and a BAe ATP freighter on the right?).
I passed through border control in very few minutes but we all had to wait really long for our baggage considering that ABZ Airport isn't that big at all and we were the only flight arriving at the moment. The terminal is quite small - I think it can get pretty crowded sometimes.
Bus 727 departs quite often towards Central Aberdeen and the ticket is quite cheap - thumbs up!
Last but not least a couple of photos from Aberdeen and Dunnottar Castle (very recommendable!)
Nice report! 30 Euros extra is definitely a great deal to upgrade to Business. Airline Revenue Management can sometimes be mysterious--it's always a nice surprise to see situations like this when a premium cabin is barely more expensive than Economy. I've seen it several times, where Business class was actually cheaper than Economy.
I like that LH block the seat next to you on E-jets. It makes it more consistent with the rest of the fleet, even though they do end up losing 50% of the capacity in E-jet Business unlike just 1/3 of the capacity in A32X or 737s with middle seat of 3 blocked. Some carriers, like KLM don't block a seat in Business on E-jets, which is really a shame because then there is no difference between J and Y, except the meal and maybe a tiny bit more legroom.
Thanks for the comprehensive report!
Thank You for your comment!
The fact that they cut the capacity in the first four rows by 50% for Business Class also surprised me in a positive way. And according to the mint condition of those blocked seats I suppose that no one ever sat down there :D