Flight Review: Lufthansa A380 Economy, Beijing to Frankfurt

Another one of JT’s flight reviews has been published by The Points Guy!

Read the review here: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/08/lufthansas-a380-economy-review/

Keep following here and The Points Guy’s blog for more 🙂

Here is some bonus material that had to be cut from the published article:

Booking
My return itinerary ended up being:

  • 8/4: Beijing-Frankfurt on Lufthansa Airbus A380-800
  • 8/4: Frankfurt-Zurich on Helvetic Airways Embraer ERJ-190
  • 15-hour overnight layover in TPG-featured city Zurich
  • 8/5: Zurich-Toronto on Air Canada Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner
  • 8/5: Toronto-Austin on Air Canada Express Bombardier CRJ-705
This itinerary utilizes the maximum four legs allowed for a United award flight booking. The itinerary cannot be booked as a one-way flight from Beijing to Austin but has to be searched for as a “Multiple Destinations” itinerary: Beijing-Zurich and Zurich-Austin. I was able to book online â€” without having to involve an agent â€” for 35,000 plus $89.50 of taxes and fees. Due to how illogical mileage charts can be, it would be 45,000 miles to book just the PEK-FRA leg.

In-Flight Entertainment
The music options included the “clubsounds” genre, and I was pleased to find a one-hour mix by German DJs Cosmic Gate, including many of my current trance favorites from various record labels
(Anjunabeats, Enhanced, and Armada).

The in-flight entertainment system also provides an avi-nerd’s dream: showing wide-ranging flight information (including a virtual altimeter during the ascent) – including animated views from the plane’s cockpit, an animation of the plane as viewed from the outside, 3D images of the terrain below, and various other flight simulator-esk displays.

Passengers
Most of the passengers sitting in the upstairs economy did not realize that there was a separate boarding line for our section, so the section was quiet when I first boarded. With the time, I had a pleasant discussion with our section’s lone flight attendant – but mayhem soon followed. As they boarded, passengers seemed to take their assigned seats as mere suggestions and took seats at will.

A truly heroic effort was made by the FA to arrange seat swaps to join families and group travelers, and she was able to please most of the passengers. However, my seatmate remained unsatisfied and was quite vocal about it. The FA had arranged a couple of possibilities for her and her friend to sit together, but my seatmate passed on all of them as they were “worse” seats. Perhaps next time they should book seats together in the first place!

When the fasten seat belt sign was illuminated for landing, this prompted much of the cabin to do the opposite: rush to line-up for the bathroom, repack their carry-on bags, and randomly stand around. A business class FA came back to help restore order

Drinks
As I learned from the drink napkin it was served with, the Warsteiner beer is celebrating 60 years of being served on Lufthansa.

Seats
No amenity kit was provided, so I relied on my own toothbrush, earplugs, and eyemask to start transitioning the 11 hours back to the Central time zone.

Although not mentioned in the SeatGuru seat map, there is an equipment box reducing under-seat storage/legroom in seats C, E, F, and H for rows 96-99.

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