Enjoying Coach, Business And First Class Without Leaving The Airport
Coach is nice – the seats recline, the overhead bins are the size of some closets at apartments in Manhattan Beach and you get free drinks for the entire flight – Business is really nice with lay-down seats and some spots in an elevated section, and First Class is like taking your bedroom over the Atlantic.
I’ve been in all three sections. But I never left the ground.
Lufthansa Airlines introduced its new Boeing 747-8 service from LAX to Frankfurt to the Los Angeles media on Dec. 10 with a press event at the LA airport when the inaugural flight arrived from Frankfurt. They had a jazz band entertain us until the flight arrived, gave us plenty to eat with a buffet spread and even a couple glasses of wine.
Then they let us tour the plane.
We were treated like first-class passengers from arrival to departure. But it’s the only time I’ve actually been on a plane and never gone anywhere.
Many of us media members were tempted to maybe hide out somewhere and take the return flight to Frankfurt, even though the plane’s inaugural flight to Southern California was delayed more than an hour because of snow in Frankfurt and it was sunny and 70 in L.A. (Flights depart daily at 14:50 with arrival in Frankfurt is 10:45 the next morning. The Frankfurt-to-LAX flight departs at 10:00 and arrives 12:40).
The way this plane looks, it appears the trip may be almost as much about the journey it is as the destination.
Especially with free drinks in coach!
The most amazing thing about the event were the flight attendants. There were 16 of them. Sixteen! I texted my buddy who works for Hawaiian Airlines and asked him what they carry on their biggest planes. He responded by informing me they have nine to 10 on an Airbus 330A. That alone demonstrates how the 747-8 sizes up to other jumbo jets.
But that’s not all that impressed me about the flight attendants. During the press conference – a lengthy but entirely necessary part of any media-driven event in which executives and politicians say great things about each other and then pose for endless “grip and grins” – they lined up and stood in place for the duration of it.
That lasted close to half an hour, yet the Flight Attendants smiled the entire time. And they just got off an 11-hour flight, the one from Frankfurt to L.A. They had to be exhausted but looked as if they had just stepped out of the shower. I don’t look that fresh when I do step out the shower. If anyone deserved a glass of wine – or champagne – it was them as well as the rest of the flight crew, which also framed the press conference photo ops.
And knowing a lot of flight attendants and pilots, I’m sure they took care of that once they got to their hotel!
Wonder what I would look like after taking this flight? Hard to say, but I sure would like to find out, and I’m guessing I would be so energized that I would throw the bags down in the hotel and immediately go out to explore the town in my final destination.
Related Article: PubClub.com’s Review Of the 747-8.
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