Review of Lufthansa flight Timişoara → Munich in Economy

Intro

After being away from home more than two weeks and spending a solid two weeks in Romania for work, it was finally time for me to return to home. A few days prior to the flight, our operation department who is responsible for booking tickets contacted me whether I had any suggestions as tickets were extremely expensive to Amsterdam with the cheapest one stop (no direct possible) was charging a solid amount of 680 EUR for a one-way ticket via Bucharest. They came up with a suggestion to book me two separate tickets with Wizzair to London Luton or Barcelona and continue with a different ticket from London Luton with EasyJet or Barcelona with Vueling resulting in a trip time over 12 hours as they found 680 EUR way too expensive compared to the 450 EUR w/ luggage for the other two options.

As I was checking myself, I kindly asked them to book me on a flight with Lufthansa via Munich to Brussels as that flight would cost around 20 EUR more than the other suggestions they gave and would cut my travel time tremendously and also included some mileage with Star Alliance…. This raised a few eyebrows in the office as they were so fixated on Amsterdam, while Brussels (not to be confused with Charleroi) is basically just thirty minutes longer to travel from my hometown, so I didn't really mind.

A few minutes later I received my itinerary on my mail and this is as followed;

Timisoara Traian Vuia International Airport

As my flight was departing in the early hours of saturday, I kindly asked the hotel where I was staying the previous day to arrange me a shuttle service to the airport for about 4 AM as the ride itself would take approximately 30 minutes or so. 

The friendly chap from the Hotel's shuttle dropped me off in front of Timisoara's new terminal (which opened in March 2024), which is being used for Schengen departures. The old terminal is more to the left and is still being used for non-schengen departures.

Upon entering the terminal, you are welcomed by a rather boring, yet spacious terminal with a very simplistic design with seating on the right side and about 10 to 15 check-in counters, however to me it felt that the terminal was set up in such a way that if demand required it, they would be able to swiftly construct more check-in counters to accomodate more flights.

Given that I was not familiar with the airport, I did decide to come a bit earlier than usual and this resulted in the check-in counter not being open yet.

Though about ten minutes the line went open with already a significant number of people in line with only two counters being in operation. 

Like on my previous experience in Helsinki about two weeks ago, check-in went also quite slow as it seems that the majority of Romanians who were travelling with Lufthansa were continuing to a destination in a non-schengen destination which required several documentation checks by staff.

While check-in took about thirty minutes to clear with only like 10 to 15 passengers ahead of me, security was luckily not that much of a hassle and was cleared in a few minutes. Timisoara did install those new security scanners which do not require you to take out any of the electronics and does definitely speed up the entire process.

After security, you will need to pass a small duty free shop which only takes five steps to clear, however I decided to buy some local Romanian wine with me back to home. Wasn't the cheapest to be fair, but was definitely the most comfortable option and not risking it breaking in my luggage.

After the security check, you will end up directly into a waiting area with very limited seating and tend to become crowded as most people were not aware that more seating was available on the floor above.

Given the size of the airport, I was surprised to see Priority pass having an option in Timisoara and made my way up to the top floor where you can enter the Business Lounge. The lounge itself is located next to a smoking area and was quite tiny with uncomfortable seats and tend to become a bit loud when there were multiple people at once.

The food and drink selection was very abysmal though with food options ranging only from a very few snacks, cookies and pastries as the photo below portrays. You had a bit more options in the drinking department with a choice of coffee/tea, water, softdrinks and wine or beer. 

Next to that the lounge didn't offer anything more to be frank other than a printing service for who knows what?

Decided to leave the lounge a bit earlier and find myself a bit of a separate seating on the first floor as it became a bit crowded and quite noisy with a few passengers being quite loud in the lounge. Apparently they expected everyone to join their conversation in the lounge.

The first floor shows that the terminal tends to become crowded as the photo below depicts with only two flights departing in a timespan of thirty minutes as most passengers would stay in the vicinity of the gate. While the design they wanted to use is nice, it isn't really practical though as passengers who are not familiar want to stick close to their gate.

Flight LH1661

Boarding was called a few minutes past the scheduled boarding time and did not go according to procedure with most passengers just cramming into a space. Ground attendants didn't really care about it either and it was basically a free for all to get to your seat.

As all gates require you to walk to your aircraft by foot, I had a great chance to spot our bird that was going to bring us over to Munich. D-AIUI, a 9.8 year old Airbus A320 would do the honours of bringing us to Munich. This particular aircraft was brought over to Lufthansa as brand new in September 2014 and has solely been in service for her ever since.

Upon embarking the aircraft, I was not greeted by the flight attendant in the forward cabin as like he didn't with the majority of the passengers. However given the slow boarding process and my seat row being unoccupied as of now, I decided to take a photo of the iron board I'm suppose to sit on for an hour or so.

Because the seat's padding is missing any comfort or whatever, it is a bit more generous on the legroom department. While I'm not a massive fan of the seat on the padding level, the design is quite practical with literature in the top and storage to your own use in the bottom part.

The table folds out and contains two cupholder positions and is moveable in terms of forward and aft movement.

Literature in the seat pocket contained of a WiFi card with some advertisement in the back, a safety card for our aircraft, a disposal or sickbag, an onboard magazine and a duty free magazine.

The seat was also properly aligned to the window which gave me an excellent view over the engine and wing. Our neighbouring Wizzair was also boarding for it's flight to Memmingen, Germany.

The aircraft's seat is also equipped with an individual air vent, a reading light and a call-a-flight attendant button. So far the cabin was looking spotlessly clean for an almost 10 year old bird.

Three rows of J for today's flight. The load was pretty much 100% in all cabins.

Pushback was eventually performed about six minutes past our scheduled departure time and it gave me a wonderful view of this Fairchild Swearingen Metro III a.k.a. also the aircraft I'm flying on for work ;).

With a very short ride of approx. five minutes, we were already rolling down runway 11 for our departure in easterly direction while the Wizzair was also being pushed back and would follow us soon.

While the aircraft needed quite a long run to become airborne due to load and temperature, the climb was quite steep in order to make a quick left turn possible into a westerly direction to Munich.

The flight attendants jumped into action about 15 minutes past our departure to provide us with a complimentary bottle of water. Upon finishing that, they came by without any trolley to ask whether someone was willing to buy any duty free or buy on board before returning again to provide us with the chocolate. The chocolate however came into a different package to what I'm used to.

While sipping my water, I noticed that there was still some weather the aircraft was circumnavigating around.

Definitely an uncomfortable ride if you were in it.

Now it was time to solve the biggest mystery of today's flight. Was the new design of the chocolate packaging also meant to be a redesign of the chocolate? In short, no….. Same chocolate, same design…

Given the aircraft was equipped with WiFi, let's check it out and see what kind of package and/or entertainment they offer.

As the WiFi was quite responsive and Lufthansa offering several magazines to be read and several podcasts to listen to, the packages were not that bad either with allowing free messaging (though very slow). Three or Six Euro for better internet was not overly expensive too.

The app also offers you a route map with more information if you extended the infobox.

By now we were already descending into Munich Airport and I was quite surprised that the flight attendants did not pass once through the cabin for a clean up service of the complimentary bottle of waters we received. They however did appear shortly before landing to check if everyone was belted and seated in the correct position for landing.

A smooth touchdown on Runway 26L right on our scheduled arrival time.

With another five minutes needed to taxi, we were now docking into our parking stand G26, which meant that we only needed a short walk for my next flight in about two hours to Brussels.

Munich Franz Josef Strauß Airport

Disembarkation followed soon after and upon exiting we were told our goodbyes and the next flight report will continue from here.

Have a wonderful day!