Lufthansa Business Class A330 Frankfurt to Seattle

Lufthansa 490
Frankfurt (FRA) – Seattle (SEA)
Airbus A330-300
27 August 2014

After two long ‘investigations’ of my personal belongings, I realised that I didn’t even have time to go to the Senator Lounge and relax a little, so instead I headed straight to the gate, Z25. I was super excited the day before when I found out the flight would be operated by Lufthansa’s new Business Class. Generally the not so popular Lufthansa routes do not get the new product often (once or twice a week) so I was quite lucky to have been on the only new Business class flight to Seattle that week.

I boarded through door 1L and turned right into the First Class cabin, it was empty, and then continued all the way to the last row of Business Class to my seat, 16K. My original seat was 4K, however I saw online that I would have a seat mate and decided to switch to another seat so that I could have two seats to myself. Once I sat down, I realised how comfortable the new seats are, you can actually adjust most things about the seat like their firmness, height, etc.

There is less space for your carry on bags to be placed under the seat in front of you than in the old cabin, however the 2 metre flat bed makes up for it!

Most people actually had two seats each since the cabin was more or less half full. Comparing to the old product, the new cabin feels much ‘cleaner’ and much more modern than Lufthansa’s old Business Class.

Sitting right on the wing!

After everyone was settled, the FAs went around and offered everyone either water, orange juice or champagne.

I was conveniently able to hang my coat on the other hook so that I could have enough space for my feet on my side.

There are three pre-set options for the seat: Regular for Take-off and Landing (and perhaps eating), a lounging setting and then of course the fully flat bed setting. Almost every single thing can be controlled about the seat which is a huge plus since some airline restrict what you can control. The firmness control was definitely a plus and I ended up playing with it throughout the flight.

The tray table and the remote for the screen is located under the armrest.

Each seat has a nice LED light for reading.

The screens are huge! Compared to the old business class they are at least twice as big if not more. What I love about the screen is that you can actually slide it around and adjust it the way you’d like.

Since there were so many issues with boarding, the flight left the gate about thirty minutes behind schedule and also landed thirty minutes late.

Lufthansa did a really good job with the new Air Show on these screens, the old one just purely sucked and this one was quite cool since you could actually see almost every move of the aircraft.

Once airborne, the purser handed menus to every passenger.

We reached our cruising altitude about half an hour after take off.

Hot towels were distributed after the menu.

Amenity kits are located under the magazines in the new Business Class.

The Amenity Kit was Samsonite branded and the pouch was actually quite nice for a Business Class amenity kit.

The used hot towels were picked up within minutes and the FAs covered everyone’s tray table with a nice white cloth.

The amenity kit contained socks, eye mask, earplugs, headphone covers, toothpaste and toothbrush, and some lotion.

Since this was my first time being in a new Lufthansa premium cabin, I couldn’t get over how awesome the new Air Show was. The names of the cities on the ground showed up as we flew over them and the screen turned around and showed the simulation of the airplane from different views at different times.

The drink cart was rolled out and I had the usual accompanied with some cashews. I find it kind of lame that packaged nuts are handed out instead of warm ones in a ramekin, I mean if I’m able to get warm nuts on a domestic US flight it should be a given on an international flight.

What I found is that the crew moved very slowly with the dinner on the flight. The ‘intro’ drink and nuts were served and then they were gone for about 45 minutes, came to take meal orders, left for another thirty minutes and finally came with the dinner.

There were three options for the appetiser:

• Medium rare Roast Beef with Potato Salad and Baden Style Chicken Pie accompanied by Sauce Cumberland and Waldorf Salad with Walnuts
• Prawn Cocktail with green Asparagus
• Filled Egg, Roquefort Cream with Cassis Fig, marinated Carrot and Apple, Noodle Salad, diced Emmental Cheese and Grapes

Lufthansa has the ability to phrase things on their menus in such weird ways which ultimately make the meal sound somewhat less appetising.

I had the Roast Beef which wasn’t very good and the ‘accessories’ that came along with it weren’t stellar either. The salad and dressing tasted fresh and the bread was warm and crunchy.

Whatever this ‘Waldorf Salad’ is…

Along with my Champagne, I had a sprite and later some tea.

There were three choices for the main course:

• Halibut with Crustacean Sauce, Leaf Spinach and Dill Potatoes
• Small Swabian Dumplings filled with Vegetable
• Beef Stroganoff with Vegetable Julienne and Spatzle

I ordered the Halibut and along with the crustacean sauce, it was delicious; the spinach was OK but nothing special.

After handing out the main course, the crew literally disappeared for an hour and was no where to be seen. No refills. Nada. Then suddenly… dessert!

After two hours of asking for tea, I was finally able to enjoy some warm lemon tea along with Lufthansa’s sponge cake.

There were three choices for dessert:

• Camembert, Bavaria blu and Comte Cheese with Fig Mustard and Chester Stick
• Charlotte Royale, Sponge Cake and Vanilla Cream, with Raspberry Compote
• Fruit Salad

The sponge cake was actually very ‘spongy’ and once I dipped it into the raspberry sauce it tasted quite good.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in a lavatory on an A333 which had a window!!! Maybe I always went to different ones and never into the one with a window! This lavatory was twice as big as all of the others and it felt huge compared to the other ones which I feel like I’m going to develop claustrophobia from. For comparison, I went to the lavatory on the other side of the plane and it didn’t have a window… main reason for that is that there is a FA ‘desk’ next to it which is what takes up the space.

After a nice dinner (which took forever.. we were literally past Iceland when it finished), my eyes were closing so I decided to test out the bed.

I have to say the seat is very comfortable as a bed and even though it didn’t get dark outside, I was able to get a good six or so hours of sleep and woke up just in time for the second dinner.

There is a bottle of water at every seat and it is located behind the armrest.

The Soup & Salad (before landing) was Tomato Soup and Mixed Leaf Salad with Porcini marinated Beef, Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Zucchini, accompanied by Pumpkin Seed Dressing. The tomato soup was just too damn salty, it was almost impossible to eat, it was like someone literally dumped an entire container of salt into it. The salad was fresh and edible. The Beef tasted fine and although cold, it was edible. There was also a Shortbread Cake with Chocolate and Vanilla Sauce along with bread.

We soon made it over US territory and began out initial descent into Seattle.

It was a gorgeous day, 30+ degrees C and hardly any clouds.

Upon landing the crew displayed a nice ‘Thank you’ message and thanked us for flying with Lufthansa and Star Alliance.

Since I flew Lufthansa’s old Business Class back in July, I figured I share some comparing details between the two. First of all, of course the seat is a hundred times better in the new Business Class than the old one, the blankets are identical and the amenity kit contains practically the same content. The IFE in the new cabin is much more extensive and has a new look and design to it and the new Air Show is just downright beautiful. What was funny is that on my outbound flight the crew was literally the best that I’ve had with Lufthansa for a long time and they would come by literally every five minutes to check on me. On this flight the crew disappeared for long periods of time and glasses were constantly empty. Don’t get me wrong, they were nice, it is just that they didn’t go the ‘extra mile’ like my outbound crew. Obviously I slept much better on this flight since I had a flatbed however I think Lufthansa should also update their blankets and pillows since they aren’t that nice.

Overall it was a great flight in terms of the hard product and while the food could’ve been a little bit better and the crew nicer, I still felt right at home flying with Lufthansa 🙂