Frankfurt Hahn, Without The Frankfurt (Frankfurt International Airport (FRA))

Member Name: zoe_page_1

Product:	Frankfurt International Airport (FRA)
Date:	27/11/02 (2828 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ..

Disadvantages: ..

To include the name „Frankfurt“ in the airport „Frankfurt Hahn“ is a bit misleading. It’s takes almost as long to get to Luxembourg as it does to Frankfurt. But I knew this when I booked my flights, and I still chose to fly from there. Why? Because it’s one of the destinations Ryanair flies from. With Ryanair being, as we all know, one of the newish wave of budget airlines, I could count on cheap seats. Free in fact, but that’s another story.

____Getting There ____

Hahn is easily reached from various cities in Germany, France and Luxembourg. Bus services run to and from the airport, timetabled to coincide with departures – as a rough guide, it takes up to 2.5 hours and costs €16 to get to Heidelberg, the furthest destination into Germany that you can get to directly. There are 2300 free parking spaces if you’re driving. When these are full, fees start at €1 for 2 hours, up to €72 for 4 weeks. Shuttle busses operate from car parks to the terminal building, costing €1 per person, although if you’re not all that loaded up, you can walk. If there’s a few of you, I’d recommend one person walk or ride over and pick up the car, rather than you all paying for the shuttle. For detailed information have a peek at

www.hahn-airport.de/english/01/anfahrt/f_anfah rt.htm

____Checking In ____

For once a relatively quick and pain free procedure, helped by the fact that the airport’s tiny, with Ryanair being the only carrier visibly operating while I was there (although many others occasionally fly from there – see the website). There were less than a dozen check in desks, but several were open for each flight. I wasn’t asked if anyone had tampered with my luggage or if I happened to have drugs, bombs or pressurized containers in my luggage. Luckily, I didn’t.


____Shopping ‘n Stuff____

One look
at the range of shopping facilities shows you how just small Hahn is. On the ground level, to the left of the check in desks, there’s a newsagents / bookshop. It had yesterday’s newspapers when I was there, a range of foreign (English, Spanish and French) publications and lots of maps. They do have some good deals though if you’re there at the right time – I got a CD I was after for €5, but I only noticed it on my 2nd trip into the shop.

Then comes a grocery style shop – really small, but selling a weird range of cheese, meat, chocolate, crisps and drinks, again at hiked-up prices. Finally there’s a Tourist Info office with free leaflets and buyable maps if you’re arriving in Hahn and have no idea where you are / where you want to be.

Upstairs there’s a mezzanine level, offering a clothes shop, a hairdressers, a Tea shop and a souvenir / traditional German handicrafts shop.

____Munching____

Next door to the newsagents there’s a bakery café style place, with drinks and sandwiches and yummy looking cakes. The prices are higher than in the city, but lower than you’d expect for an airport. Upstairs there’s a larger restaurant / café place, and a pub. Both were open when I was there, and full but not packed. Details for these at

www.hahn-airport.de/english/01/service/f_hotel s.htm


____Past Passport Control____

I always call the bit in between landside and airside passport control, but in this case it isn’t really. No passports are controlled here or at any point after check in. Instead, this is where your hand luggage is x-rayed and you walk through the metal detectors. Which don’t really work – I forgot to hand over my keys, but they didn’t set the beeper off, even though I have a large chain with a front door key, a flat key, a bike shed key, a letter box key, a gym locker key….you get the picture. <
br>
Once you’ve done the x-ray thing though, you end up in the departure lounge. There are 9 gates, split up into 3 sections of 3, separated by glass screens. As well as these, there’s a duty free shop (very small – about as big as my office here, which isn’t very big) and another café bar place. Nothing else, apart from loos (fine and clean with tons of spare toilet rolls, but the scratchy recyclable kind, so not worth stealing. Not that I ever would….)

____Coming Home____

Again, nice and painless. There are only a few baggage carousels, but then there are only a few flights that land here. Luggage was available within 5 mins of disembarking – surely a record, but then we did land, or rather taxi, right next to the door. There are loos in arrivals and a lost luggage desk, but nothing more. Walk through the automatic doors (once they’ve opened, unless you want to look really silly) and you’ll find your self, oh, about 5m from where you checked in. Walk straight ahead, out of the doors and you’re at the bus stops and taxi rank. “Simple” seems a bit of an understatement.

____Layout, Structure, Design & Anything I’ve Forgotten____

If you manage to get lost in this airport, then I applaud you for achieving the impossible. The whole building takes an open plan layout, and is basically 2 big rooms with a few little cubicles off them. Simple as. The landside area is pretty unmemorable: plain, tasteful, not much to it. Airside’s a bit different. I had an hour to kill through there before I boarded, so after finishing the book and magazine that were supposed to last the entire flight, I had a nosy around. The floor is speckled-eggy through there – nice flat tiles (the calm before the cobbled streets of Pisa storm) so great for wheelchairs, but of an indeterminable level of cleanliness due to the design. It’s the sort of pattern I’ll be wanti
ng in my home when I’m older….. The ceiling is worth a mention because it’s just so odd. At one side it looks like a weird mixture between a factory and those pipes you get going in to the see. Not sure whether it came with the building or whether they added it for, ahem, artistic effect. Look up next time you’re there, and you’ll see what I mean.

____Verdict____

There seems to be a pattern emerging here :

nice, expensive airlines = lovely, well equipped airports
tatty, low cost airlines = smaller, less bon airports

There’s nothing wrong with Hahn, but it’s not Amsterdam, or even Frankfurt International. If you have to fly to or from here, don’t despair, but do your shopping and make your sarnies in advance.


Links:

www.hahn-airport.de/english/01/aktuell/f_news. htm
www.ryanair.com



** I know this has been posted under Frankfurt airport, meant to be Frankfurt International and not Frankfurt Hahn. When dooyoo decide / manage to add items outside the books and music fields, and let us suggest again, I'll ask for it to be moved.

Summary: