Review of Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Lyon in Business

Background

This series covers a recent TATL trip. This leg will cover the final segment on the outbound journey taking me to Lyon. LH/EN are the only direct options and since I was limited by the timings of my previous flights, LH1082 was the only option. This flight was originally supposed to be operated by an A319, but was swapped a couple of times eventually ending up with an A320. Each time the plane swapped, they would auto-assign me a new seat since I always pick the last row of J and the J cabin kept shrinking in size so I had to keep going back in to re-select a new seat.

Routing

We'll continue this series with the short 1h hop from Frankfurt to Lyon. The tourist bonus will be the Moxy Lyon Airport.

Pre-flight

After a brief stop in the lounge, which was extremely crowded so will not be reviewed, I started the trek to the gate once it showed it was departing from A36.

It will be a long walk ahead into the far reaches of Concourse A.

Still going…

Almost there…

Reaching Gate A36. It is very quiet so I head next door to try and get a picture of our plane.

There she is, it will be an A320 today after 2-3 aircraft swaps in the preceding week. Tonight we will have D-AIQU, a 2000-built A320-200 that has been with LH its whole 24-year life despite 2 years in storage. It will be named Backnang after the town in Baden-Württemberg. While photographing, I noticed people already heading down the jet bridge so walked back to the gate.

Group 3 was already boarding so I joined the queue and headed down. The greeting from the 2 crew in the galley was warm and I headed to my seat.

On this >20 year old plane, no surprise that it will be NEK seats.

My seat in Row 3 ahead of the curtain.

Pitch is decent for Euro-J standards at 31".

The basic seat back.

Literature contents: duty free catalog, BOB menu, and safety card.

The mesh pocket that struggles to hold weight after years of use.

Original PSU.

Bulkhead design elements and the smiling crew.

The load will only be 2/12 with only 2C being the other occupied seat. Y was considerably more crowded based on the large number of people that passed by.

The view from the window as we wait for the final passengers. The captain came on to announce a flight time of 1h and that we would be on-time if not early.

Eventually the final 2 passengers showed up, all the overhead bins were full so the purser asked them to use the empty J seats. They started to sit down and the purser quickly said, "only the luggage, not you" and escorted them to back.

The door closed at 21:38 and the crew did the manual safety demonstration as we pushed back at 21:47 on a very foggy night in Frankfurt.

DE A339 hiding in the fog.

CL CRJ-900.

We reached the runway and wanted for a long time, maybe 10-15 minutes. With the dense fog, I can only assume it was ATC delay to space out planes given the low visibility before we finally took off at 22:13.

Since the passenger in 2C slept gate to gate, I had the crew to myself and they handed me my tray instantly along with a couple of pieces of bread.

The chicken dish is cold, but well seasoned and fresh.

A small cake.

Refreshing wipe and cutlery.

I was asked what I want to drink and asked if they had Champagne. She apologized and said they have a sparkling wine instead, which was promptly brought out.

The Wi-Fi was active and easily accessed take-off to landing. The free messaging package is free with a LH account and is sufficient for a 1h flight since it still enables enough bandwidth for any messaging app or low-data e-mails.

After my tray was cleared, she asked if I wanted another sparkling wine, but I asked for tea instead. She showed me the selection and brought me a fruit tea to sip during the decent.

She then returned with a box of chocolates. She insisted I take more than one, but I already had enough from the previous flights in my backpack.

We were quickly making our u-turn south of Lyon to approach LYS from the southwest. The city is visible in the distance.

We touched down on a wet tarmac at 23:12, 7 minutes late due to the delay in taking off at FRA.

We had a long taxi all the way back to the last gate of Terminal 1 Hall B.

The jet bridge engaged quickly and out we go.

The airport is deserted so it is a beeline to the exit.

Arriving late, I just booked a room at the Moxy (review in the bonus below) before picking up my rental car the next morning.

I'll leave off this series here as I start my stay in Lyon, thanks for stopping by.

Flight Information

Lufthansa, LH1082
Equipment: Airbus A320 [D-AIQU “Backnang”, delivered December 2000]
Departure: 21:50 (ATD: 22:13)
Arrival: 23:05 (ATA: 23:12)
Flight time: 0:59