This trip report is the final installment of RoseFlyer’s and my trip to Europe and back. You can read the other trip reports at the following threads: Star To Europe Part 1 IND-MXP (w/New LH Bus.) Pics (by RoseFlyer Mar 12 2005 in Trip Reports)
Star To Europe Part 2 MXP-FLR-BCN Train Vs Plane (by RoseFlyer Mar 13 2005 in Trip Reports)

The morning began waking up extremely early for our 4:30am ride to the airport. The travel agent originally planned for us to get picked up earlier, but the chauffeur service informed us once we got to BCN, they would be picking us up later. They probably didn’t want to wake up any earlier than we did. Leaving The Hotel Arts, we noticed people were still out wandering the streets after a long night of partying. Once at the airport, check in at the Lufthansa desk was fairly straight forward, and since no one was at the airport, relatively quick. We walked up to the security check in, and had to wait for a while since it was not open yet. At 5:00am they began screening people. I asked for my film to be hand scanned, but they refused, and said, “paparazzi film only.” I only had 400 speed film, but I still don’t like to expose it to unnecessary X-Rays. Once entering the concourse, RoseFlyer and I walked around for a while until he decided to take a nap at the gate. The chairs at BCN are really good for lying down since they don’t have arm rests. I tried to go around and do some early morning spotting, but BCN is not that conducive to spotting since they have two panes of glass about 2 feet apart, making glare inevitable.

March 6, 2005
LH 4459
Boarding: 6:00am
Departing: 6:30am
BCN-FRA
Equipment: A321 Seat 4A/C
Reg: D-AIRF

Boarding this A321 took about 20 minutes and did not start until about 6:15. RoseFlyer and I decided to wait until the 150 person deep queue shrunk a bit. The A321 was a relatively new plane and showed little signs of wear.

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Photo © Gilles Bausch

After flying in the Lufthansa domestic business class on our flight to MXP, I found the seats little improvement from regular coach class other than the lack of the person in the middle seat. Of course you get a much better breakfast. After a DTW style ten minute taxi to 7R we were in the air. The breakfast consisted of a typical Lufthansa business class breakfast, cheese, bread, fruit, and meats. Just enough to hold me over until the upcoming United flight. Once in the air the flight was smooth. There was a tad of a crosswind coming into FRA. After we were down, seeing the planes dealing with this was interesting. We taxied up to the gate and were off the plane with no hitch.

We then headed out of the concourse and to ticketing to get checked in for the two United flights. The first thing we were greeted with in ticketing was a mock up of the A380:




The first time around we missed the United ticket counter because it was in an island ticketing area towards the back. Finding the ticketing counters is slightly difficult in FRA because none have a logo backdrop. They only have a monitor above the post. This probably makes shuffling carriers around relatively easy, though. Before actually checking in, there is an initial security check of your itinerary and passport. The lady doing this was friendly and asked us about our trip. We were then allowed to walk up to the counter and get our tickets. Because we had plenty of time to burn in Frankfurt before our 11:40am boarding time we decided to try and finding the spotting deck without any success, so we moved on through the various security lines for international flights. Afterwards we headed up to the Lufthansa Senators Club to get some drinks and gummy bears while watching planes depart and taxi. RoseFlyer and I commented about the takeoff performance between the MD80, A330, and 747 after watching a couple of these take off. We began to get worried that our gate would change to a stand in the middle of the airport because a Lufthansa flight to LAX was delayed leaving, which was the gate for our departure. I did not want to see a 744 be loaded up by bus. Eventually they moved the gate only two gates away from our original gate. We walked up to the extremely crowded gate at around 11:30pm.


March 6, 2005
UA 917
Boarding: 11:40pm
Departing: 12:25am
FRA-IAD
Equipment: 747-400 Seat 11G/H (Upper Deck)
We tried to get up toward the front of the quasi line that was already forming. Near the front I could tell there were at least three US diplomats that will be on board with us. Two of them were on the upper deck and one was in United First. I could tell by their passport which stated it was a diplomatic passport on the front and was bound in maroon instead of the usual navy, and as we were going to IAD, it isn’t surprising to see the occasional diplomat. They began boarding about five minutes late and RoseFlyer and I were first on board right after the diplomats. We then made our way to the front row of the upper deck. On the upper deck the overhead compartment space is extremely limited. I had to take a few things out of my backpack for it to fit. You do have the side storage compartment, though. As we settled in RoseFlyer and I took a couple of pictures of the flight deck and a Lufthansa A340 parked at the gate next to us:


Then the flight attendant came around to take our pre-flight drink orders. We ordered non-alcoholic drinks, but she was like, "Am I going to have to check your ID later because you guys look young? But that's a complement!" We knew she was going to be a funny one. The pilot then came on announcing that someone has failed to show up and they would have to find and remove his bag. This was not going to be an on time departure. During the safety demonstration the purser mispronounced tubes, and she exclaimed, “TUBES, get it right.” We waited in line for a couple of minutes to take off from 7L—this and the previous delays made us late by about 30 minutes, but because of the cushiness of the schedules we would still arrive on time. Once in the air our flight attendant came around to pass out the nuts. RoseFlyer left a plastic bag from his headphones on the cup holder between the seats. Noticing this, the flight attendant jokingly said in an intentional accent, “Would you please remove the trash?” She grabbed it quickly, discarded it in the lavatory, and placed our nuts down on the cup holder. The IFE started at a more reasonable time in flight when compared to the Lufthansa flight from ORD. Unfortunately, they were having some technical difficulties with two of the movies, Finding Neverland and Ladder 49, so I decided to watch Insomnia. The sound would keep on cutting out. We were then presented with the meal list:

To Begin—

• Smoked salmon and smoked duck wrapped in cucumber. Saffron mayonnaise
  
• Fresh seasonal greens. Caesar or sun-dried tomato dressing
  

Main Course—

• Filet mignon with roasted garlic demi-glace. Potato dumplings with spring onion and yellow squash and carrots.
  
• Roast pork loin with dark beer sauce. Potato wedges, maple glazed nectarine wedges and savory cabbage.
  
• Vegetable stuffed zucchini with creamy corn risotto. Tomato coulis, creamy pine nut pesto sauce and Parmesan cheese.
  

Dessert—

• International cheese selection. Gruyere and Brie cheese
  
• Hagan-Dazs ice cream.
  

The smoked salmon and duck were incredible. Because RoseFlyer usually doesn’t eat meat he gave me his. For the main course I had the filet mignon. It was tender but it could have been seasoned a little bit better. The dumplings were not that good. I enjoyed the squash and carrots. For desert I had the ice cream which consisted of chocolate and vanilla. I think I might have to change my usual ice cream purchase from Starbucks Mocha Chocolate Chip to the Hagan-Dazs chocolate because it was real good.


Insomnia was a pretty good movie so afterwards I watched Finding Neverland and dealt with the lack of sound at the beginning of the movie. It was also pretty good. Because I really was not tired enough to sleep and one person across from us left his window shade open (the only person in the cabin), which illuminated the entire cabin, I watched Ladder 49. Unlike the previous two movies, it was not good especially when you compare it to Backdraft. I’ll sum it up for you—everyone dies at various points in the movie. I just saved you 90 minutes of your time. For the rest of the flight I tried to take naps. While the flight attendant was “guarding” the cockpit door at the time since the pilots were using the lavatories. At one point though the captain came out and stood their waiting for the first lavatory to be vacant. The flight attendant kindly reminded him though that there were two. Once he was inside she snickered “babies”. It was kind of odd that they didn’t know where the lavatories were on their own 744. As we were getting closer to landing, RoseFlyer and I wanted to get our flight attendant’s name so he tried to covertly look at her name tag and write it down on a napkin. Anja Maria Rund noticed and said, "I hope that is going to be a good complement sent to customer service via email." She looked young and must have been fairly new to the job because she tried to get us to sign up for Mileage Plus since our tickets didn’t have a MP numbers, but we tried to explain to her that they were reward tickets. She didn’t understand what a reward ticket was. Still, Anja Maria was probably the best flight attendant I have ever come across. She made this long haul flight enjoyable. For lunch United offered the following two options:

• Eggplant and turkey bruschetta with red bell pepper coulis. Lyonnaise potatoes.
  
• Ham duo and salami with Appenzeller cheese. Parma and Farmhouse ham with fresh cucumber and tomato.
  

I took the latter, and enjoyed it. Anja agreed with me saying the Eggplant was greasy and she would have problems with it. I could tell we were close to landing once Three Mile Island was outside our window:

Shortly after, we were on the ground and deplaning. As we were leaving, Anja commented on the “fashion statement” of the duck tape on RoseFlyer’s attaché since the seam was breaking and he tried to repair it. We were then off the plane and on to customs.

After getting my passport stamped March 5, 2005, even though it was the 6th we headed over to baggage claim. After about ten minutes of waiting, my bag, which was marked priority, came out. We were trying to make some time so we could see if we could get on an earlier flight to IND instead of waiting around in IAD for about 4 hours. After another ten minutes there were no signs of RoseFlyer’s bag. He thought it would be best for me to go on through questioning and security while he waited for his bag. Once I answered my three questions, I handed off my bag to the TSA. Then I realized I have no boarding card for my next flight, so I couldn’t move through the next security line. RoseFlyer stupidly forgot to give it to me. I was stuck in the middle of two security points. I could tell the TSA didn’t like me just standing around for no reason. I stood for about 15 minutes trying to not look threatening or anything. Then some guy came over and I told him the situation and he told me to talk to the United desk around the corner to see if they could issue me another ticket. Yeah right. The woman at the United desk said she would try to look for RoseFlyer after I gave her a description of him. She found him and gave me the boarding pass. After about an hour and me waiting outside of customs, RoseFlyer’s bag finally showed up. IAD has a horrible setup for international arrivals. They split all the passengers between transit and termination. So therefore the bags have to be split up as well. There were about 15 people of the 744 in the transit lounge that didn’t have their bags since they went to the other section. The tracking label fell off, so it was the last bag off. We missed the earlier flight to IND so we had to take the 7:00pm flight. It left out of concourse G. We headed over to the bus boarding point so we could head over to G.

Once in G I tended to some voice mail messages and RoseFlyer took a nap. I had to put my cell phone on speakerphone to hear because the announcements in the concourse are extremely loud.

March 6, 2005
UA 7815 (Operated by Chautauqua)
Boarding: 6:40pm
Departing: 7:00pm
IAD-IND
Equipment: ERJ-145 18B/C
Gate: G17
Boarding occurred on time.

Because RoseFlyer had enough with baggage claim for the day, he decided not to check his rollerboard bag which can now pass the US domestic carry on size limit. Unfortunately they did not have anyone handing out carry on tags, so we had to wait a while for a person to come by and reveal that they were stored on the card. I’m not a big fan of the Chautauqua seats because they are extremely hard. I experienced them previously on a US Airways flight between BOS-IND. After about 22 complete hours of being awake we completely had it. The flight attendant was trying to be funny during the safety demonstration, but I was so tired I really couldn’t appreciate anything at this point. The flight was pretty much free of any turbulence. Heading into IND there were some decent winds which made landing a little bumpy.

Summary: Flying Star in business class to Europe is extremely enjoyable. Their service is second to none. Although this comes at the price of having more connections. SkyTeam does Europe with fewer connections. On long haul flights this does make a difference. I really enjoyed the United service, though. Although Lufthansa had “flat” business class seats, I really did not nap better in these seats. They were a little bit harder than the United Business seats. Further, because I sleep on my side the firmness made sleep a little uncomfortable until I found a good position. I actually believe the 9 degree angle of the Lufthansa seats are a little more disconcerting than the United Business seats which just recline. On the food side, I felt Lufthansa’s entrée’s were better than United’s. United had a better first course, desert, and lunch.