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ameya

The name is thus only because I flew the A346, and it no more continues to be the longest aircraft if I am not wrong.

This TR will cover our short stay in DEL and our flight onboard A346 of LH.
So we landed from Pune, went and stayed at Hotel Ibis in Gurgaon, because we got it at a good deal and people had recommended against staying at any of the mahipalpur hotels since I was not travelling alone and so on. The easycabs ride from T1C to Gurgaon was quick.

A quick dinner at the restaurant and we saw all around was the IndiGo cabin crew at Ibis. Ibis is owned in India by Interglobe and this is a nice assurance of rooms !

Before moving forward, I forgot to tell, I had a bad cold and cough with slight fever since the last two days, it started because of the allergy I have to insecticides and they had sprayed a lot of them around the building on 13th evening. I was struggling to cope up with all this travel and on medication, so every meal was a lot of hot water, soup and some small portion of whatever is available for the last few days.

Dinner in Ibis was no different, after which we quickly went to sleep in the small, almost windowless room on the 5th floor at one end of the hotel. The next morning, the easycabs guy had reached before time as expected unlike the Pune experience and we set out after check out at 0600hrs.
Ibis has a nice concept of early riser breakfast for people who leave early. This early riser is from 4:30 to 6:30, when their regular breakfast starts. All good to see and speak, there was nothing except corn flakes in this early riser thing !

We quickly made our may to T3 in the morning breeze at DEL and got down at 0625hrs on one of the later gates. As we were around, TK a/c bound for IST took off. A quick entry into the terminal and we located the LH counter and its baggage drop area.

The checkin agent took our passports, looked at the Schengen visa, Russian visa, gave our boarding cards and tagged our baggage all the way to DME, all done pretty quickly.

The morning rush on the international side was of honeymooners with a typical delhi style contingent who had come to see them off and a lot less of business crowd.

We proceeded to immigration check, security and entered the duty free zone, waiting in the area around the common part of domestic and international pier I suppose. I wasn’t feeling very well, neither of us were hungry and both of us were sleepy so we quickly headed to the gate to wait and hope that boarding is done soon.

FR24 on phone said that the aircraft had more or less arrived on time. The FIDS said it is docked on gate 3.

As we proceeded to the area, saw SQ T7 taxing out, VT-ALA standing, BA bird and A343 of MK bound for mauritus.

Boarding was announced at 0815 for the 0850 departure and over 10 people, all able bodied, were taken inside on wheel chair. That is something typical which I have observed before, where these people just to avoid the hassle to finding their seat, request wheel chairs ! Something I frown upon…
We settled in our seat in the rear section of the A346. I quickly saw the loos on the lower level, something which I have always wanted to see on the A340s.

As boarding quickly finished, for a decently full flight, we pushed back 5 mins early and had a long taxi to rwy 28. We were number 7 in line with a lot of IndiGo and SpiceJets landing and taking off all around and soon made a powerful westwards take off, leveling off in aout 25 minutes.
The crew was old, which prompted my wife to ask if this is Germany Air India and slow, which I did not like at all. Breakfast service started at 1015. I was expecting the crew to split and start service from the first row of both the Y class section. However, they started from the first line of the front section and took a lot to come till our row. Also, the non veg option was over by the time they reached us. A big frown for Lufthansa !
The crew, typical to my previous flights before on the India leg, ignored most of the crew call buttons. Over the next 7 hours, saw a lot of crew reading books in the back galley and not responding to passengers.
Many pax including myself went to the galley and got juice and water for us. As usual a lot of drinkers, or even first timers who started drinking because it was free. Thankfully no ruckus on the flight. I again resorted to Hot water multiple times across the flight duration and the cold continued.
Made a trip to the lav on the cargo hold floor just to experience this feature of the A340s. Pretty interesting stuff !

Our routing was heading westwards straight in line from Delhi for close to 300 kms then turn North West and pass between Kabul and Kandahar, closer to Mashad on the iran border and over flying AShgabad - which was clearly visible. The ashgabad airport and the military base nearby was very clearly visible. There onwards we over flew Caspian Sea, Baku, Romania and into the western EU.

Breakfast consisted of Nestle Yogurt, Brittania Cheese, Amul Butter,not so good coffee ..
In my not so good health thing, I completely forgot to keep the camera with me and slept off for most of the time.

The IFE offering was boring and limited. I tried listening to some songs and watch movie but switched back to the air map soon. This does not have the live cam or the gaming functionality.
Over 1hr 30 mins prior to landing the lunch service started and again only veg option was available.

Looking and experiencing the attitude of the crew, I can understand why the middle eastern airlines are doing way better than their European counter parts. Its always the human touch that makes the difference.
We were slow and low with Munich on our left and we got a nice view of the city, stadium, TV tower, autobahn, before we banked right, another right and aligned and landed on rwy 08R and taxied to our gate along side a couple of other A330s / A340s and other star alliance carriers. The first thing I noticed was the EK B777 !

We had to make a long walk for transit security at Munich. The gates D/E take you back to EU zone flights and gate H to non EU zone. Our next flight was at 2135 and we had plenty of time to kill.

Since we had double entry Schengen visa, we checked with the Lufthansa help desk, if we can go to the city and come back. They looked around asked somebody from passport control and said it is too risky, it’s a very short time visa and they are not sure if it’s a airport / transit or a business visa.

Totally confused we decided to spend the day at the airport. The airport infrastructure is not good. No Wi-fi, only 4 restaurants but a lot of shops. All those shops had some nice aircraft models, which I did not take since there was not much place in our hand baggage.

There were only 12 reclining chairs in the entire airport. There were those nap-pods at 30 EUR per hour.

We saw the LH planes all around for a while, ate twice, requested hot water for me at couple of places and tried catching up with some sleep. Nothing of it helped kill time and were tired, bored at the end of the day, when we had the third of our four flights. More on that in the next TR.

A/C : D-AIHW
A340-600
MSN: 972
Delivery to LH : Dec/2008
Config : F08 C60 Y238

The route

DEL-MUC by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

The Plane

2013-05-16-802 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

ameya · Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 10:13 am Post subject:

20130516_070210 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130516_070213 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130516_070218 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130516_082843 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

20130516_082849 by ameyajoshi, on Flickr

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

...and here, I knew only about your bad cold and temperature.
The early riser breakfast issue was in the usual Ameya style: interesting anti-climax! Corn flakes alone!
Able-bodied people on wheelchairs - this is bad...
The air-side pictures were nice! The AI 332 looks iike the morning DEL-MAA-BLR flight, pushing back from the domestic gates.
The 346 experience - do you have some more pictures, Sir, perhaps taken by Mrs. Joshi, as you were unwell? Pictures of the interior would be absolutely welcome. I will post pictures of the Air India A332 unique mid-section lower-floor lavatory section in a future trip report, scans of those taken on my Analog SLR. This was a Jan'13 trip with The Wife and Junior.
Lufthansa's inefficient service - I wonder if this is on the DEL legs, or was it simply a bad day for the airline. Their Y food isn't too high either on the quality, or the quantity, since the last decade or so, so say a few colleagues who have flown LH a few times in this period.
Sorry to hear about the Munich transit experience- both being bound to the airport, and lack of proper rest options.
Thank you for taking the time to write this for us, in spite of a killing schedule (I remember you mentioning that the weekend was a realistic deadline), and looking forward to more!
Cheers, Sumantra.

ameya · Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 11:56 am Post subject:

Thanks !
Yep the AI 332 was off to MAA/BLR

Unfortunately no pics of the trip till Moscow. A lot of them in the later TRs !

The view across was nice though, over afganistan, Pakistan border and also till ashgabad. After that it was cloudy thru out, till we flew over MUC giving a very nice and clear view of the city

sumantra · Member Joined: 28 Oct 2007 Posts: 4685 Location: New Delhi

I wish your cold and fever had gone much like the cloud cover, disappearing over MUC. We look forward to more pictures, since much of the more exciting parts lay ahead!
Cheers, Sumantra.