Because of having decided to visit the 813th anniversary of Hamburg´s harbour (a great annual event which I can only recommend to everyone who likes many-sided public festivals), my brother and me spent some Miles&More miles on two flights from Frankfurt to Hamburg and back.

We arrived at Frankfurt Rhein Main International Airport at about 3.45 pm which was over two and a half hours before our departure.

My brother had already checked in for our flights in the morning and he said that the women behind the counter was quite unfriendly and impatient, although there weren´t any large crowds of people which can be regularly spotted at the Star Alliance Check In counters in Terminal 1. But nevertheless, we had been given the two seats side by side at the window that we were aiming for.

Given the great amount of time that we still had to kill until our flight, we decided to have a Hefeweizen (a bavarian, top-fermented sort of beer) at the Kaefer´s bistro, from where we had a nice view on the planes being parked at Terminal 1 areas B and C.
I was able to spot two Varig MD-11´s (don´t they bring one MD-11 and one 767 anymore?), a UA 777 and several LH stuff.

After that we still had some time and since the weather was nice, we went to the viewing terrace (I cannot count the times I´ve been up to that place) and did some spotting from there. There were several LH 744´s parked at Terminal B, mainly waiting for flights to Asia and also an Air Mauritius A340 (what a boring livery) standing beside an ANA B744 and an Asiana B744.

Finally we took the Sky Line train to the A gates where we found out that the airplane for our flight was D-AIAY, one of the A300-600´s that LH recently received from Emirates.

**********************************

Friday, 05/10/02
Flight No. LH 036
FRA-HAM
Departure: 6.30pm
Arrival: 7.30pm
Aircraft: Airbus A300B4-605R D-AIAY del. 06/14/91
Seat 25A

View Large View Medium

Photo © Florian Kondziela

**********************************

We soon boarded the aircraft noticing that there were only quite few people doing the same like us: the plane wasn´t even half full after the boarding procedure had been completed.
I was surprised by the emptyness of the cabin because flights to and from Hamburg used to be fully loaded during the harbour´s anniversary in the past years.
Not being delayed by the usual Frankfurt traffic, we reached our take off position at runway 25R very quickly and started our takeoff-roll.
As this was my first flight ever on an A300, I was amazed by the powerful takeoff as well as by the low cabin noise.

After a couple of minutes the flight attendants started to serve drinks. My brother and me ordered another beer each which we were served by one very good looking and friendly FA , who was, like all the others, wearing the new LH uniforms.

The cabin of the A300 was fitted with the usual yellow-grey LH interior and we sat on those quite comfortable leather seats. Personally, I don´t like the colours in LH´s short-haul cabins very much but the seats are OK.

Unfortunately and as always on domestic LH flights, there was no inflight entertainment (like Air Show or music) at all. I think it´s time for LH to improve this lack of service.

After 45 minutes in the air we reached a cloudy Hamburg and the plane headed for the gate at Terminal 4 after having touched down very softly.
We left the airplane and said "Auf Wiedersehen" to the very friendly FAs.

Following to that, we had a great weekend at Hamburg and drank way too many beers...but though we somehow managed to get back to the airport on Sunday afternoon to reach our flight to Frankfurt.

At the Check-In we were given our boarding passes for LH177 after having waited for approximately 30 minutes because of the increased security measures.

Because of being a bit early again, we proceeded to a self service restaurant with a little viewing terrace, which is located at the upper level at the airport.
There is also a public viewing terrace at the other end of Terminal 4 but we didin´t go check it out this time.

Among some other airplanes there was a Pulkovo Tu-154 waiting for its flight to St.Petersburg. We also spotted the parked LH A310-300 which is painted in all white, standing bored at the Lufthansa Technik facilities.

Soon after that, we went to our gate to board our flight to Frankfurt.

*************************************

Sunday, 05/12/02
Flight No. LH 177
HAM-FRA
Departure 7.00pm
Arrival 8.00 pm
Aircraft: A320-211 D-AIPR del. 08/30/90
Seat 20F


View Large View Medium

Photo © Philipp Brumann


*************************************

Boarding was a little bit delayed because the plane had arrived 15 minutes late.
This time the flight was absolutely packed, most of the passengers seemed to be business travellers probably flying back to Frankfurt to return to work after the weekend.
We took off behind a Finnair A319 that was heading for Helsinki.

After a relatively short climb the service began and the cabin crew started to serve drinks. We opted for a beer again (we got accustomed to it over the weekend) and talked about the wonderful and very entertaining weekend that we had had.
The crew was very friendly again and every move done by the FAs seemed to be very professional.

After only about 40 minutes of flight time, we were on approach to Runway 25L at Frankfurt. Sitting on the right side of the A320, we were able to enjoy the extraoridinary view on the Frankfurt skyline, including the skyscrapers Messeturm and Fernsehturm.

After having touched down, the plane proceeded to gate C2 at Terminal 1, where we left the airplane and were looking forward to fall into our beds to relax from this wonderful, but very strenuous weekend.

----------------------------------

I hope that you enjoyed reading my first trip report here at airliners.net. Comments are welcome!

Cheers,
Daniel

Very nice trip report. I enjoyed reading it. I personally always love to read about LH shorthaul trip reports.

Which of the two airplanes did you enjoy more ? The A300 or the A320 ?


A side-question to people familiar with HAM airport. Is there any interesting stuff to do there or is the oberservation deck any good (like is there traffic, etc.) ?

May I ask how much you had to pay for the taxes on these award flights ? They seem to be extremely high these days.
Thank you.

Hi B737-700,

thank you for reading my trip report.
I personally liked the A300 a little more and I had the impression that it was a bit more spacy, but I may be wrong about that.
Hamburg Airport has a nice and interesting architecture, the inside of the terminals is very bright and convenient.
A new terminal is being in construction at the moment.
The spotting platform isn´t comparable to the one in Frankfurt and of course there is much less traffic at Hamburg but I would recommend you to visit it nevertheless because you are very near to the palnes and to one of the runways.

And yes, you may ask me for the taxes that I paid: DM 89 for each ticket.

Thanks for this info !