Trip Report: Athens and a Mediterranean Cruise
Lounge Reviews: The Club CLT and Centurion Lounge Charlotte Airport
Flight Review: Lufthansa A340-600 Charlotte-Munich
Lodging Review: Academias Hotel, Autograph Collection, Athens
Our Time in Athens, Part I (Acropolis and Museum)
Our Time in Athens, Part II (Roman Agora, Hadrian’s Library, Ancient Agora)
Our Time in Athens, Part III (Kerameikos, Temple of Zeus, Panathenaic Stadium)
Our Time in Athens, Part IV (Restaurants and Observations)
Ship Review: Viking Neptune
Our Time in Ancient Olympia (Katakalon, Greece)
Our Time in Corfu, Greece
Our Time in Kotor, Montenegro
Our Time in Dubrovnik, Croatia
Our Time in Zadar, Croatia
Our Time in Venice, Italy
Flight Review: Iberia A330-300 Madrid-Chicago
Booking the flight
I had originally booked my flight to Athens as a 1-stop from Memphis to Newark and on to Athens in United Airlines economy for just 33,000 United miles. It was a deal that was hard to beat! But I really wanted to fly business class and United never made any saver award space available on the longhaul leg. I kept searching, utilizing award search tools like PointsYeah!, Roame.travel and Seats.aero and eventually found space out of Charlotte via Munich for 70,000 Air Canada Aeroplan miles. I was going to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards Points (UR) to my Aeroplan account as there was a transfer bonus going on and it would have only cost me about 58,000 UR points but I hit a snag.
For years my Chase cards had all been in my “called by” first name rather than my legal first name. Years ago I was able to successfully connect my UR and United accounts but now I was unable to connect my new Aeroplan account. I’d had a similar issue with Amex Membership Rewards awhile back and ended up getting all my Amex cards changed just by uploading a photo of my ID and filling out an online form. No such luck with Chase. They had to snail mail me a form. About a week later I saw in my daily USPS Informed Delivery email that the mail piece was to be delivered soon but a week later I still had not received it, so I contacted Chase to send yet another form. That one I did receive but it was at least two weeks after that before the name was changed on my account. So, word of caution, make sure the name on your credit card matches the name on your frequent flyer account!
A few days before my flight, Lufthansa made first class award space available to partners. I have never flown Lufthansa First and seriously considered doing the upgrade for an additional 30,000 Aeroplan miles but I decided to conserve my points and stick with business class.
Now that I had a longhaul flight, I needed to get to Charlotte. As CLT is not a Star Alliance hub, if I could have found award space on United to include with my longhaul flight, I’d have had to connect via Chicago, Houston or Denver. I decided the easier path was to take the American Airlines non-stop. Unlike when I try to get to Chicago or DFW on American, there always seems to be plenty of award space on flights to Charlotte. So I spent just 15,000 British Airways Avios on the non-stop flight in domestic first class. Did I really need to fly in first? Of course not but this is my big international vacation of the year and I like to make it special. I won’t review this flight except to say it was on time and my luggage made it, which were the important parts. There were three flights that would have gotten me to Charlotte in time to make my flight though the first one was extremely early. I decided to take the middle flight which would put me in Charlotte six hours ahead of my Lufthansa flight. Even though that was a long layover for a domestic flight, it left plenty of time in case of irregular operations or lost luggage as there was another flight after that. What didn’t occur to me until about a week before the flight was that the Lufthansa counter would not be open when I landed. Fortunately there was one pre-security restaurant open amidst all the construction in the lobby and baggage claim areas of the Charlotte airport and I was able to have a leisurely lunch until the Lufthansa counter opened at 2:30 PM, 4 hours before the flight.
Lufthansa 429 CLT-MUC A340-600
October 17, 2023
Boarding – due: 1755 actual: 1805
Departure – due: 1830 actual: 1851 – takeoff 1952
Arrival – due: 0915+1 actual: 0856+1
Seat: 6G (Business Class)
Pre-Flight
I left the Amex Centurion Lounge about 5:30 PM to head to gate D12 where boarding for my Lufthansa flight was due to begin at 5:55 PM. The walk took less than 5 minutes and soon I had joined the throng of folks standing around. There was an American Airlines international flight leaving about the same time at the next gate and there was nowhere left to sit in the immediate gate area. It felt like the crew was late arriving and, sure enough, we did not begin boarding on time though it finally started about 15 minutes behind schedule.
Boarding was through door 2L and I crossed through the galley and turned left to find my seat, 6G, an aisle seat in the center section in the middle of the forward business class cabin. Lufthansa still has the old 2-2-2 layout on many planes and that was true on this A340-600. There were about 3 empty seats in this cabin and I believe there was just one empty seat in First Class. While seated, these seats have loads of legroom though when in bed mode the footwell is extremely tight, even for me. (Slippers are not provided. The ones in the photo were mine from last year’s hotel in Florence!)
Lots of legroom when seated but the narrow footwell can be uncomfortable when sleeping on your side.
Waiting for me at my seat was a pillow (I do love the blue & baize stripes) and a duvet secured with a paper band.
Lufthansa Business Class Seat with Bedding
In the pop-out drawer near my feet was the amenity kit and a bottle of water.
Bottled Water
The amenity kit was in a simple zipped bag from Porsche Designs and contained a fairly usual set of items: lotion and lip balm by L’Occitane, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a mint and a pair of compression socks. Eye shades and ear plugs were available in the lavatory.
Lufthansa Amenity Kit
The electrical outlets were along the front side of the seat near my legs.
Lufthansa A340 Charging Outlets
The seat controls were on the armrest and were intuitive although the buttons to adjust seat firmness did not seem to work.
Lufthansa A340-600 seat controls
The back portion of the armrest opened up to reveal the tray table which popped up from the side while folded in half and then opened up to be quite large. The entertainment remote and headphones were also in this area.
Under the armrest
Boarding took a bit longer than expected and a tug pushed us back about 20 minutes late. And then we sat. And we sat. Finally the captain announced that we had been pushed to a taxiway that was too small for our plane and we were going to have to wait until another tug could take us to the correct position. It was about an hour from the time we pushed back until the time we actually took off. I don’t know if the captain had any idea of how long we’d be sitting there but I later wished the crew could have used this time to take our meal orders since we already knew we’d be late getting them.
In-flight
By the time we were finally airborne and able to move around there was a line for the lavatory. During this time the crew passed out the hot towels. They offered them to those of us standing in line but we refused since it seemed kind of odd to use the hot towel *before* using the facilities. I assumed they’d wait and give them to us once we’d returned to our seats but nope, we’d missed it and were out of luck on that front.
We’d been given the menu/wine list before take-off and it was as follows:
The meal service began with a ramekin of nuts and a beverage. I stuck to water.
Lufthansa Mixed Nuts
Dinner was served all on one tray. I had the beef carpaccio appetizer and the chicken entree. It was served with a side salad and I selected the pretzel bread once the bread basket was brought around.
Lufthansa Dinner
For dessert I had the flourless chocolate cake and it was quite good. I’m always glad to see chocolate desserts!
Lufthansa Flourless Chocolate Cake -yum!
The meal service on my side of the plane was odd. The one flight attendant who had been so attentive during boarding and at the beginning of the meal seemed to suddenly disappear after dealing with the front half of the cabin on my aisle. I later saw her taking the duty-free items to First class and my service was completed by an FA who I believe was working mostly in the rear business class cabin. Service was much slower on our aisle, for whatever reason.
I watched a film before and during dinner (Cyrano with Peter Dinklage, in case you’re interested) and once my meal tray had been taken I tried to get comfortable for the evening. My seat felt like a coffin and I finally realized it was because the aisle-side arm rest would not stay down. After struggling with it I asked a flight attendant and the issue seemed to be that we couldn’t get the button to push in which would allow the armrest to lower. She recruited a male flight attendant to see what he could do. He did manage, with great effort, to get the armrest to lower but we were all concerned it would not stay. And about a minute after he walked away, sure enough, the armrest popped back up. I tried sleeping on my side, as is my preference, but the pressure point of my hip was right at a crease in the seat and it was just not comfortable. In addition, any time that people walked down the aisles or even across the galley behind our cabin, the seat would wiggle a bit. This may have been the worst night of sleep I’ve ever had in business class. Was it better than in economy? For sure. Will I look to book away from this type of plane on my next Lufthansa flight? For sure.
Breakfast came about an hour and a half before we were due to land. I had the sweet Faro porridge with orange juice and breakfast tea.
Lufthansa Breakfast
We ended up landing in Munich a few minutes early and I was able to clear passport control fairly quickly and breeze into the somewhat crowded lounge near my gate. I won’t review it as I didn’t take photos and was only there a short time.
In the end
It’s been said that Business class is “all about the seat”. If that were true then I would not have had a pleasant flight. Fortunately the seat isn’t the only thing important and it won’t put me off Lufthansa A340s, just maybe the ones in this old configuration.
2B Traveling 
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