Lufthansa has confirmed what has been widely expected. Beginning on March 30, 2014 Lufthansa will begin DAILY service to Tokyo-Haneda from Frankfurt AND Munich. With the change, Lufthansa will no longer fly from Munich to Narita (effective March 30, 2014), however service between Frankfurt and Narita will continue.
This is a major step forward for Lufthansa in Asia since Haneda is ANA’s hub which in turn will make it very easy for passengers to connect to and from ANA for travel to a wide variety of Asian destination. Additionally, Haneda is far more convenient to Tokyo which is only a short 15-20 minute train ride away.
This is has been made possible thanks to the Japanese government loosening restrictions on Haneda that involve the amount of international traffic that is allowed to use Haneda.
The new flight details:
Frankfurt – Tokyo Haneda: LH 716 departing FRA at 6:20pm arriving in Haneda at 12:15p the next day. Route will be served by a 747-400.
Tokyo Haneda – Frankfurt: LH 717 departing HND at 2:05p arriving in Frankfurt at 6:45p. Obviously the 747 will make the return flight! 🙂
Munich – Tokyo Haneda: LH 714 departing MUC at 3:45p arriving in Haneda at 10:05a the next day. Route will be served by an A340-600.
Tokyo Haneda – Munich: LH715 will depart Haneda at 11:50a arriving in Munich at 4:55p.
In late November I had the opportunity to visit AUSTRIAN Technik and take a behind-the-scenes look of their facility in Vienna. I was expecting a high level tour highlighting a few key pieces of the operation, but what took place was quite the opposite. The head of the facility was kind of enough to spend over 2 hours personally escorting me throughout the hangars showing me every aspect of their operation.
As part of the tour I had the ability to board an A320 during a comprehensive C-Check (Interior cabin and panels removed for thorough inspection), tour the various departments (Metal Fabricating, Upholstery, Paint, Tires/Brakes, Engine, Graphic Design and the main Engineering offices) and had free reign to poke, prod or handle anything that I came across. I’ll cover these parts of the tour in upcoming posts since there is simply too much to cover in a single writing. This was truly a fantastic experience for this recovering Avgeek!
As my luck would have it during my visit, one of OS’ Boeing 777s was being brought into the hangar to have its Air Conditioning System serviced before its flight later that day. So obviously we took time out of the tour to watch this take place. It’s not everyday that an airline arranges this kind of an event for a visitor 😉 !
The timing was perfect and I had the ability to climb up a 4 story A320 scaffolding to capture the 777 being towed into position:
As usual for these kind of posts, I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story:
Looking down from the A320 Scaffold
The A320 Scaffold is approximately 5 stories tall
Not a bad vantage point!
A quick look at AUSTRIAN’s new Business Class Cabin
LUFTHANSA has opened a new Senator and Business Class Lounge near the airline’s gates in Terminal B at Newark (EWR), across from the SAS lounge. The lounges provide approximately 5000 square feet of space for passengers traveling on one of the many flights operated by Lufthansa and Swiss from Newark. Lufthansa now operates 62 lounges world-wide with a combined space of 387,500 square feet for passengers.
According to the LH press release, passengers traveling in First Class and Business Class will have the ability to utilize EWR’s Fast Lane screening option as well.
To have access to the Senator Lounge, passengers need to be flying in First Class, be a Lufthansa HON or Senator, or have Star Alliance Gold membership with an alliance airline. The Business Class Lounge is available to anyone traveling in Business Class who does not have any other Star Alliance or Miles & More credentials. Be mindful that the lounge attendant will typically require you to show your Star Alliance Gold card if you are not seated in First Class or are not an LH Senator or HON. Your boarding pass is typically not enough to gain entry, but your mileage may vary. In the past I’ve been told by lounge attendants that they need to swipe your card to log your entry.
