Lufthansa Travel Experience

This story is about the experience of travelling with Lufthansa with a connection flight in Frankfurt. If you're planning a trip somewhere with this company I hope this will prepare you for some of the unexpected turn of events that I encountered when traveling with them and how to deal with them.

I booked a flight with Lufthansa for my trip to Ireland with a 1:10 hr connection in Frankfurt before my final flight to Dublin. It is a tight timeline but both flights are from the same company and it was a recommended option on their website. On the day of my flight I recieved an email from them stating that the boarding will be posponed by 1 hr without stating the departure time, which turned out to be an additional 40 minutes later from the already late boarding time. Me and many other people on the plane, politely requested some information about the connecting flights and further instructions, to which the staff responded with "do not worry, we will update you close to out arrival in Frankfurt." Well, this update never came, they recommended we look for the information on their app or website and in the worst case "embark on a shopping trip in Frankfurt". The information on the app about our flights stated the gate number and the dreaded flight status: on-time.

The moment the airplane opened it's doors, nervous and frantic passangers with connecting flights flooded the terminal and there was not a staff person of the airport to be seen. I followed the signs together with other passengers to gate B and after a series of stairs, escalators and completely empty passages arrived to a dead end. Some stayed but some including me retraced our steps to check that we followed the signs correctly, and a few precious minutes later came to the conclusion that indeed we did. So we came back and the other people weren't there anymore. Which leads me to the first piece of useful information about this travel experience: There is a tram going between the gates, after a few more agonizing minutes of waiting the tram arrived and what appeared to be just a closed off passage turned out to be doors that slide open when the tram arrives.

Before entering the gate follow the instructions carefully because it's extremely easy to accidentaly pass through border control which is not necessary in connecting flights. If that happens to you, like it did to me, you'll have to double back through the long maze or awkwardly scurry under the separators. After some more escalators you get to a security check, they also have some additional requirements that I didn't encounter until flying through Frankfurt which brings me to my second piece of good to know information: They require you to take out of the bag electronic tablet, and any tubes of cream even if they are within the allowed amount for carry-on. Also at the entrance to the security area there is a screen with flight status summary, and here also the status is on-time. At this point I don't know why I still had any hope left because the time was 21:10, the departure set to 21:15 and boarding closed at 20:55 as was written on the flight company's app.

After finally arriving to the gate, all sweaty and big eyed, there was a staff member asking you to calm down and telling you for the first time that the flight's departure is delayed by a whole hour. And this brings me to the last and most important tip, and it's to use the website Flightradar24 because after settling down to wait for the thankfully delayed flight, it was the only source that provided the information that this flight was indeed delayed.

Summary:

The flight was comfortable, the seats are spaced out nicely and it's a real rarity these days. The plane feels clean and it's a comfortable experience overall. But, everything positive was tainted by the described series of events. Here are the tips for Lufthansa and Frankfurt airport:

1. Be prepared that there is no staff to help you navigate the airport and there is a tram going between the gates.

2. Take out an electronic tablet out of your bag if you're flying with one, not just the laptop as it's in other airports. Also take out any tubes containing cream/liquid even if it's within the allowed volume.

3. Even if every source says that you're flight is on-time (including the airport information boards) it could still be delayed. Use the flight radar website to track flight status, it's the only source that showed real information.

Naive Fascination: As a biomedical engineer I've had some experience with testing a medical device to prove it's safety and performance are up to par with requirements and regulation guidelines. To prove consistent quality we rely on statistical models that assume that a certain parameter is normally distributed once the sample size is over 30, or, to work with a smaller sample size we test that the parameter of interest passes the normality test. The planning process is crucial as mistakes in the test will bump up the sample size, confuse the results and will cost a lot of money. This is for a medium sized medical device where all its components can be easily handled in both hands, for a machine like an airplane this process must be on a whole different scale.