Austrian Airlines Business Class A320 Frankfurt to Vienna
Austrian Airlines 132
Frankfurt (FRA) – Vienna (VIE)
Airbus A320
21 July 2014
As previously expressed, I might have not had the best first impression of Austrian. I’m sure they are a great airline, it’s just that they do things differently than Lufthansa and they don’t do things that I would’ve expected them to do.
After my five and a half hour connection in Frankfurt, it was finally time to go to the gate and I arrived just as they were about to begin boarding.
Boarding was called right on schedule beginning first with Business Class, HON Circle, Senators, and Star Alliance Gold members. The flight was operated by one of Austrian’s A320 aircraft, the A320 is my favourite short-medium haul aircraft mainly because of its space and design.
Upon entering the aircraft, I turned right and quickly found my seat, 2A. As with all intra Europe business class, it is simply an Economy seat with better food and service. At least my red shoes were matching Austrian’s red|everything design.
Shortly after boarding was completed, the captain came on the PA to inform us we had to sit at the gate for another twenty minutes because of the thunder over Europe. At that point the lead FA brought water to everyone in Business class, which was a very nice touch since it was actually quite hot in the airplane.
Once airborne the captain once again informed us about the time to Vienna and that we would still be arriving more or less on time.
Austrian has monitors on some of their short-haul aircraft, so there was no manual safety demonstration and we also had a map (which was literally interrupted with ads every two seconds).
Suddenly, out of nowhere, all of the FAs gathered in the forward galley and began preparations with some of them walking back and forth between the rear galley. About ten minutes after we reached our cruising altitude, the purser handed out trays with dinner to everyone. I should note Business class was full with all ten seats taken, when I was checking in, only five seats were taken.
Austrian’s catering is done by DO&CO which explains why their food is so much better than Lufthansa’s. DO&CO probably has the best catering out there for airlines, the food is always edible and fresh.
There was no menu, however we were served hot meat with potatoes with some tomatoes thrown in and the dessert was some sort of pudding pie which was delicious. The whole meal was very well prepared and heated, more airlines should seriously switch to DO&CO catering.
About halfway into the flight we hit some serious turbulence, and I mean this was probably the worst turbulence that I’ve ever experienced on an airplane. During the course of the entire meal, the whole airplane was shaking and drinks were constantly being spilled, nothing was visible outside and it seemed like we were literally in the middle of the thunderstorm. It was pretty much impossible to drink anything or get up since even the FAs had a very hard time walking. Definitely the most turbulent flight ever, not only that, the captain didn’t make a single announcement regarding the turbulence which lasted for about twenty minutes. We made it out of the storm just in time for landing.
I wish I was a HON 🙂
We pulled into a remote stand right on schedule.
All middle seats were blocked for our comfort, however all 10 Business class seats were taken.
My first flight with Austrian… well… it really didn’t go how I planned it out but hey… From literally zero crew interaction with the passengers until after take-off, to the violent turbulence without a single announcement…. At least the food was spectacular. Austrian just didn’t shine in my eyes like an airline should, they wanted to get everything done fast and not done right. The crew for the most part was very friendly, it’s just that they wanted to get everything done as fast as possible and didn’t leave time for the passengers.
