by Lufthansa Flyer | May 11, 2013 | Airlines |
As part of my trip to Hong Kong, I built in a day in Frankfurt in order to meet with a few of my contacts and friends at Lufthansa as well as to take advantage of plane spotting at the airport. I had arrived from Washington DC at 5:30a and had a full day in FRA before flying to Munich and onward to Hong Kong later that evening.
A good portion of my day was spent with my friend Uli who had arranged “behind the fence” access for us in order to get up close and personal to part of Lufthansa’s fleet. During the course of several hours, I managed to take over 400 photos from a variety locations.
To keep things organized, I will break up my day of plane spotting into 3 parts. Part I captures primarily long-haul aircraft parked around Lufthansa’s Technic hangars. Part II will take you into the A380 hangar for an up-close look at D-AIMD aka ‘Tokio’. Part III will focus on departing Lufthansa Aircraft and Part IV will look at non-Lufthansa traffic at the airport.
On to the pictures (All taken with a Nikon D7100 / Nikon 16-85 3.5:5.6 ED lens):
A330-300 D-AIKI was delivered in September 2005 and is the 4000th aircraft produced by Airbus
Airbus A330-300 D-AIKE joined the fleet in December 2004 and is nicknamed ‘Landshut’
Boeing 747-400 D-ABVN was built in May 1992 and is known as “Dortmund”
This Boeing 737-500 serves as a training aircraft for Lufthansa Technic’s Mechanics.
Airbus A340-300 ‘D-AIGP’ was completed in December 1998 and is nicknamed ‘Paderborn’
Airbus A340-300 ‘D-AIGX’ joined the fleet in September 2009 and is named ‘Duren’
Boeing 747-400 ‘D-ABVU’ joined the fleet in December 1998 and is nicknamed ‘Bayern’
Boeing 747-400 ‘D-ABVP’ joined the fleet in February 1997 and is named ‘Bremen’.
Airbus A340-600 ‘D-AIHE’ joined the fleet in January 2004 and is named ‘Leverkusen’. Here it’s pictured while having one of it’s Rolls Royce engines “Run Up”.
Then as if by divine intervention, I turn the corner around one the Technik hangars, and there sits my favorite Lufthansa aircraft, the Boeing 747-8i. This one happens to be the first one, D-ABYA or ‘Brandenburg’. I had the opportunity to attend the festivities celebrating her inaugural flight in June 2012 and had the pleasure of flying aboard ‘D-ABYA’ from Frankfurt to Washington DC on her 3rd ever departure from Frankfurt a few days later. For those of you wondering why I didn’t fly on the inaugural, I decided to visit family in Slovakia as part of my trip which also gave me the opportunity to photograph the inaugural ‘taxi’ and ‘takeoff’.
The 747-8i……
Boeing 747-8i ‘D-ABYA’ joined the fleet in May 2012 and is named “Brandenburg”. She is seen here being ventilated before flying to Hong Kong later that evening. I would see her the next morning over the Himalayas from my A330 from Munich.
The beauty and art of engineering……
She looks great for being 1 year old!!
by Lufthansa Flyer | May 8, 2013 | Airlines |
Lufthansa has announced a special timetable for travelers planning on flying from Germany to the UK to take part in the Champions League Finale to be contested at Wembley on May 25. Its a fantastic “all German” final that will have Borussia Dortmund take on our beloved Bayern Munchen 🙂 .
On May 25 and May 26, Lufthansa will operate a total of 23 flights between Munich and London including special A321 flights at 8:50a and 10:35a from Munich to London Gatwick on May 25. On May 26, the timetable will be expanded to 7 flights between Munich and London Heathrow, leaving nearly every hour between 7:50a and 2:10p.
Additionally, passengers can use Munich as starting point to connect to London through a variety of connecting flights throughout Europe. In all, fans will have 15 domestic German and 86 European gateway options to figure out a path to London.
All of these updates have been reflected on Lufthansa.com and are available for booking immediately.
by Lufthansa Flyer | May 8, 2013 | Airlines |
Lufthansa is running a short 6 day fare sale for travel from Germany to the USA during the 4th Quarter of 2013. This is a great opportunity to start booking your holiday travel (though it pains me to think about Winter since we’re barely into Spring!!).
The fares cover most departure points from Germany and are valid for travel to Charlotte, New York, Philadelphia, Toronto, Seattle, Montreal, Washington DC and Las Vegas. PLEASE NOTE that there is no direct service to Las Vegas, you’ll need to connect to a United flight from one of Lufthansa’s gateways that is part of this sale.
The lowest cost destination for this fare sale is Philadelphia, with tickets starting as low as €477 for a round-trip ticket between Frankfurt and Philadelphia. Looking through a number of sample bookings, fare availability is plentiful throughout the 4th Quarter.
Please keep in mind that this sale ends May 14 and will probably contain the lowest fares that you’ll see all year for travel during the last 3 months of 2013.
Terms and Conditions apply and are as follows:
Tickets must be purchased by 14 May 2013
You must depart between 1 October and 13 December, 2013
You must return between 6 October and 13 March, 2014.
A Saturday night stay is required.
The fares are not rebookable nor refundable.
by Lufthansa Flyer | May 5, 2013 | Airlines |
A Lufthansa A321 returned safely shortly after departing Helsinki for Frankfurt after suffering an engine fire on Saturday night. 168 passengers were on board when the aircraft experienced what passengers called an “explosion” in it’s starboard engine.
The crew executed normal emergency procedures for an engine failure and returned safely to Helsinki Airport soon after the emergency started.
Please be mindful if you read other accounts of this incident. This one, from the Daily Mail, is perhaps the most absurd of all of them, citing that a blaze spread through the aircraft. That was certainly not the case, but is another example of sensationalist media that sometimes infects the interweb.
by Lufthansa Flyer | May 1, 2013 | Airlines |
Lufthansa has announced that it has reached an agreement with Ver.di, the union representing approximately 33,000 Cabin Crew and Ground Staff. The agreement is valid for 26 months — until March 31, 2015.
The sides agreed to the following terms:
For Lufthansa Airline employees, they will get a 3% raise in 2 steps with the first one effective in August 2013 and the second step in August 2015. Both steps will be in 1.5% increments.
For Lufthansa Cargo and Technik Employees, their deal will award them with a 4.7% increase in pay, also in 2 steps. The first step, a 2.4% bump effective on 1 August 2013 and the second step, a 2.3% bump on 1 August 2014.
