Hi all and welcome back to Amsterdam where I am off to Timisoara, Romania for my last rotation with my current employer as I handed them my resignation last month. This unfortunately also means that the amount of flying I will have to do is drastically reduced to just flying for leisure and perhaps occassionally for business.
In order to reach Timisoara from the Netherlands, options are very limited and the only viable options are either with Lufthansa via Munich to Timisoara or with KLM/TAROM to Timisoara via Bucharest. Both options are never cheap, but the Lufthansa one tends to be the shorter and cheaper variant 95% of the times.
Once notified by operations, they decided to pay me a return ticket (with the return in two weeks knowing that I would be returning home from there) for a total of 656 EUR as they decided to buy me the ticket like three days in advance. As a comparison, both KLM and TAROM were asking 865 EUR for their flights to Timisoara with the same days of travel.
So on the day of travel, I arrived to Amsterdam about two hours in advance of my flight by train and decided to head upstairs to the departure hall in terminal 1 as Lufthansa has their check-in counters over there.
In my past experience with Lufthansa just a little over a year ago, they were still using the first row in Terminal 1 to check-in for your flights, however since now they have replaced their check-in counter to the fourth row and only two counters were open. Only a single person was waiting in line which I managed to bypass as Lufthansa was a Privium partner and therefore you are elligible to use their business class lane to check in.
If you do not fancy any personal contact with any member of staff, you are still able to drop your luggage via one of the self drop-off counters in row 2-3.
After a short, but friendly interaction with the ground attendant my luggage was dropped and I decided to immediately head to security, which I managed to clear within five minutes via the fast lane, though I was surprised to see the airport being so quiet given that it is a holiday season.
Once clear of security, I decided to head to the Privium lounge which is right in the beginning of the d-pier and this lounge does have access to an outside terrace which for some reason was closed in August.
Privium's ExpressLounge for Schengen flights is rather small, but nicely decorated and is never overcrowded as the lounge requires you to have a membership to enter or pay a fee of 40 EUR to enter. While I thoroughly enjoy the lounge, the lounge is definitely not worth that steep price.
While I have done many reports about this specific lounge, I kept the photos at a bare minimum, so on the kitchen isle on the photo below, one can find a choice of pastries, sandwiches, snacks and often some sort of hot soup. Liquor and wine is also available and fizzy drinks are found in the fridges below. Coffee/Tea are available on the right side where the staff is standing.
The lounge isn't overly crowded, but the seat in the photo below is definitely the most prefered seat available in the lounge as it gives you a great view over the apron between the D and E pier. Also while the lounge doesn't have so many power sockets available, they do have portable powerbanks available (found among the lounge on several spots on their charging stations) which you are allowed to grab and take to your seat in case you need something to be charged. So in case you ever decide to use them, please return them to their charging dock, so it will be charged for the next person that may require it.
Given that the flight was departing from one of the last gates in the B-Pier, I decided to leave the lounge about ten minutes prior to our scheduled boarding time.
I absolutely hate the way they renovated this part of the terminal with this awfully designed wall that is housing a standard duty free shop.
You can also find a souvernir shop ''house of tullips'' further down the line that is selling similar goods to the one in the non-schengen part and is fully exploiting tourists to buy more tulips. Also the restaurant ''eataly'' is now opened and this specific restaurant was highly promoted on Dutch news for being the first franchise restaurant in the Netherlands of the Italian chain.
As I was walking through the temporary hallway from the C to B pier, I decided to sit down with one of the large windows as I noticed that our aircraft didn't arrive yet and I didn't want to be stuck in a seating area that tends to be overcrowded.
Spotting a Boeing 737-MAX 8 of Corendon.
While this Airbus A320 (EC-MNZ) of Vueling with a special livery of the city of Barcelona was taxiing out for it's departure to Valencia as VY8656.
An A319 of Lufthansa. Turned out that it was not our aircraft as that specific aircraft was preparing for it's flight to Frankfurt.
The previous A319 of Lufthansa was now being replaced by our A319 that was pulling into stand while the A319 to Frankfurt was taxiing out.
D-AILW is the A319 that is going to bring us over to Munich. This specific aircraft is carrying the full livery of Lufthansa, while it technically is operated by Lufthansa CityLine. This specific bird has quite a lengthy service with 27.1 years of active service (at time of flying) and is named after the German city Donaueschingen, which is located in the Black Forest. It was newly delivered to Lufthansa in August 1998 before being transfered to Lufthansa CityLine in July 2020 for what I reckon ''cheaper staff' is the main reason.
Boarding was eventually called about twenty minutes past our scheduled and were coldly greeted by the purser who seemed to be more focused on different tasks rather than greeting their passengers and no smile to be seen. Now I don't want to be judgemental about the first appearance as some other tasks may require her attention that needed some focus, however the treatment was given throughout the entire flight to passengers by all flight attendants.
Seat 09F would be my seat for today's flight to Munich and these high-quality iron boards are a delight to sit on (sarcastic) where the bum checks of the thousands of passengers before me is clearly visible.
The benefit of these iron boards though is that legroom will be of no issue and one can find a small luggage where you can store small items throughout your flight.
Literature can be found in another compartment above your table and apparently the aircraft is equiped with WiFi. I was unable to find any power socket or USB plug.
The literature you can find in the seat pocket above the table contained of a safety card, duty free magazine and a buy-on-board magazine, though I guess the flight attendants did not have any luck or did not expect any sales as they didn't even bother to bring out the trolley by the time service started and simply walked through the cabin with a buy on board menu in their hand.
An impression of the buy on board menu can be found below and prices are quite steep I must admit. Also not a huge fan of the menu itself as it contains too much text and papers to make a reasonable choice. In my opinion it should have been made more compact and better usage of the gaps.
The view from my seat is not too shabby though and that specific Boeing 737-Max 8 of Corendon is still parked next to us without any on-ground movement. Kind of a weird time to see an aircraft idling for so long at this time of the day.
The old styled individual air vents are still present and those remain the best air vents available.
Boarding was completed and we finally pushed back 24 minutes past our schedued departure time.
An KLM Airbus A330 departing to a warmer and more exotic destination called ''Riyadh'' as KL 423.
Behind the A330 we were first in line to depart to Munich when we had a Boeing 737-800 skipping the line while not in queue by lining up from one of the intersections. I can only assume that the aircraft was close to missing his slot and therefore received priority.
37 minutes past our scheduled departure time the engines were finally spooling up for our departure to Munich.
Upon reaching a safe altititude, the flight attendants jumped into their unfriendly and cold service and provided us with our complimentary water and was depending on my neighbour for providing me with the bottle of water as the flight attendant barely wanted to move her hands over to hand me the bottle of water.
A bit of a hazy day, though not much to report on as there wasn't much of service to report on.
Eventually received a chocolate which my neighbour had to grab for me again.
Decided to connect to the WiFi of Lufthansa with three packages. Free messaging, Messaging and Premium. Rates were reasonable with Premium being 6 euro, however why the hell would someone choose ''messaging'' for three euros, while it gives you the exact same rate and things to do with free messaging??
View of the cabin.
After 50 minutes into the flight itself, we were now already in descent to Munich where the weather wasn't as calm as it was in Amsterdam. We eventually touched down at Runway 26R about eight minutes past our scheduled arrival time.
Spotting an A350 of Lufthansa.
During the approach it was announced that we were going to be parked at a remote stand, though a majority of the satelite gates are currently also not being used as they are doing renovation work of the platform itself.
Parking next to another A319.
One last view of the aircraft that brought us over before being shipped off by bus.
While our remote stand was right in front of the satelite terminal, yet the bus brought us over to the main terminal which was like a 10-minute busride to get us there.
Dropped right in the main central terminal only to find my way to the shuttle-train to get to the satelite terminal for my ongoing flight.
See you on the next flight to Timisoara!
