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After months and months of planning Mrs. Gail Lund's students were finally ready to start their
15 day European Carousel tour. Leaving from Pocono Mountain East High School, two chartered buses transported the 54 students
and 18 adults to Kennedy Airport in New York.
Despite our bus driver's incessant whining about the New York traffic,
senior citizens, loading our luggage, lousy tippers and life in
general, we arrived at JFK ahead of schedule.
Having
flown in by herself from Charleston, SC, Gail's mother, Phoebe, joined us in the Lufthansa check-in line. It seems she nearly
spent her vacation in Georgia rather than with us in Europe when Delta's ticket agents directed her to the wrong departure
gate in Charleston. Fortunately passengers on the Atlanta bound flight directed her to the correct plane.
After working
in the airline industry for ten years and having the opportunity to fly all the American flag trans-Atlantic carriers, I always
hoped to one day fly on the highly vaunted Lufthansa.
I wasn't missing much. There was nothing awful about our experience
with LH but it certainly doesn't compare to Virgin Atlantic or United.
Bored flight attendents, narrow seats, bland meals
and limited bathrooms did not endear them to me. What's more, we couldn't even keep the headphones since they were a dual-plugged
rather than a standard jacked affair. Probably my discontent had more to do with the equipment LH was using (Airbus 340) than
with the airline itself. I'll always have a preference for Boeing's 747 (lots of toilets and leg room) and 777 (seatback monitors).
I
was not thrilled with the fact that we left the gate half an hour late. For some reason Lufthansa didn't board by rows like
most airlines do. It was a free-for-all getting on the plane. Thus people were crawling all over each other to get to their
seats. And don't get me going on the issue of carry-on baggage... All the airlines talk a tough game but allow people carry-on
bags bigger than my checked luggage.
Despite an additional 45 minutes of waiting in line for take-off, we arrived in
Frankfurt only 50 minutes late. We had a heck of a time getting to our connecting flight to Amsterdam because the gate number
on our boarding pass indicated Gate 10. When we got there we learned the flight was now leaving from Gate 20. Luckily Lufthansa
held the flight for all 72 of us.
Strangely enough our Airbus from Frankfurt to Amsterdam was more comfortable and
spacious than our trans-Atlantic flight. The flight was so quick that the flight attendants weren't able to pass out all the
breakfasts on the flight.
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