A German/Italian partnership (Lufthansa)

Member Name: Chelle1969

Product:	Lufthansa
Date:	01/06/09 (68 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reasonably priced, good in-flight service

Disadvantages: None really

Such is the strange nature of air travel I recently flew to Barcelona in Spain from London England, via Milan in Italy on a German airline - go figure!
I booked on-line with Expedia and the cheapest option at the time to be able to fly from Heathrow was with Lufthansa via Milan, but that was okay with me and considerably cheaper than a direct flight would have been. Apparently this route is fairly new and part of a new 'Lufthansa Italia' branding and cost me £140 return, economy class, including taxes. I'd not flown with Lufthansa before and was looking forward to seeing the famous German efficiency in action - I wasn't disappointed.

On arrival at terminal 2 at Heathrow the Lufthansa desks were clearly marked and staff were on hand to direct passengers to the check-in machines. No longer do you check in face-to-face with a real person, now a self service computer scans your passport for you, helps your select seats and prints boarding passes. To be honest I hadn't expected to be confronted with a machine (I don't fly often) and must have looked a bit bewildered because a Lufthansa assistant immediately stepped in and took over the procedure for me, getting the job done in next to no time. Boarding pass in hand I proceeded to the baggage check-in, made sure my suitcase didn't exceed the 20kg limit and within 10 minutes of arriving at the terminal I was on my way to passport control. All very efficient so far...

The plane itself, an Airbus 319 branded 'Lufthansa Italia' throughout, had three seats either side of the aisle and was comfortable, clean and importantly had plenty of leg room. No sooner had I sat down than the stewards were up and down the aisles giving out firstly complimentary Italian newspapers and then refreshment towels. Once the plane eventually took off (half and hour late due to baggage delays) the service continued with food and drinks (including alcoholic) being offered. Food was of the snack variety, a yoghurt, pastry, chocolate bar and then later another cake and I was quite impressed at the level of service, although wouldn't recommend drinking the tea made with half crème instead of milk - it was horrid. Despite the delayed take-off the flight arrived in Milan on time. Still very efficient...

Things then got a little surreal... I had about forty minutes to transfer to the onward flight to Barcelona. A little bus took me to the terminal, where I rushed through passport control and walked/ran what felt like the entire length of the terminal building to the departure gate making it just in time to catch the little bus to take me out to, yep you guessed it, the very same plane I had just gotten off, even the same crew and pilot. So after forty minutes of frantic rushing about I had effectively moved forward eight seats in the plane! I realise that it's the way things have to be done, the plane needed to be cleaned, refuelled etc, but it did feel a little weird :-)

The second leg of the journey was as good as the first with more refreshment towels, food and drinks being brought round. The cabin crew couldn't be faulted all spoke English well (as well as German and Italian) and overall the journey was as pleasant as it could have been for a short economy flight.

On arrival at Barcelona I found that my suitcase had been damaged with one of the handles been broken off, not strictly speaking the fault of Lufthansa as their baggage handling was done by Swissport, and this sort of thing can happen with any airline. However for the sake of completeness I will mention that I filed a report at the airport and then contacted Lufthansa by phone when back home. They took all the details of the suitcase and immediately agreed to send out a new replacement one. I was very happy with this service.

A couple of things to note on the journey home, at Barcelona airport there were no Lufthansa staff on hand to help with the check-in machines, but they were actually very easy to use with multi-language step by step instructions.
The flights home to London (again via Milan) were not even half full so the stewards went up down offering drinks three times (perhaps they were bored), and yes there were some passengers having three bottles of beer on a 9.30am flight!!

Summary: A good efficient service, an airline I would have no qualms about flying with again.