Trip Report, Lufthansa flight LH687, Boeing 747-400, registration D-AIRT, Tel Aviv Ben Gurion to Frankfurt airport, TLV-FRA, business class, with pictures and video.

Flying from Tel Aviv is a very interesting experience, as the security arrangements in Israel are quite different from that of the rest of the world. Unlike the Western world, where security is more often than not a question of technology, Israeli security is first of all a matter of what in intelligence circles is called humint, or human intelligence.

For a foreigner, flying from Israel means that you need to show up at the airport with plenty of time to spare before departure. That’s what I did on this occasion, and I actually came to the airport around three hours before departure.

In Tel Aviv, you need to go through security before you can check in. And security means that you first of all meet an intelligent person (not a machine) asking you questions about who you are, what you’ve done in Israel, and what the contents of your baggage is. If your story is somewhat suspicious, you can count on being searched thoroughly. You also need to take the baggage through X-ray before being allowed to approach the check-in desks.

When I had passed the security check, I checked in at the Star Alliance Gold check-in counter and got my boarding pass for the flight, with a nice “1K” printed under “Seat.” Next, I went through the cabin baggage security control and the passport control, and I had officially left Israel.

Ben Gurion airport’s terminal three was inaugurated only six years ago, and it is a very airy and pleasant building to fly from. The picture below shows the Rotunda, which is the central hall in the transit area. Around the Rotunda you can find a range of duty-free stores and several restaurants and cafeterias. From the Rotunda, three concourses stretch out in different directions, and this is where you can find the gates.

I did some shopping in the toy store (I got some great trucks from the Disney-Pixar Cars Movie series with a 50 percent discount), and found my way to the Dan Lounge, which is the contract lounge for a lot of airlines flying to Tel Aviv. The lounge was fully packed, as this was during the peak afternoon hours, so finding a place to sit was not very easy.

The lounge had a selection of coffee and tea, some cookies, fruit, plenty of soft drinks on glass bottles, a cake, and a choice of a vegetable salad, several creamy salads like hummus and similar stuff, and some warm soup. They probably had alcoholic drinks also, although I didn’t pay much attention as I don’t drink alcohol.

The lounge was so crowded that I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures of the lounge itself, but the following picture is of the view I had from my seat in the lounge, with an Austrian A321, a Swiss A330-200, and a US Airways A330-200.

With 45 minutes remaining to departure, I made my way to the gate, but boarding only started some 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Here’s a video of the boarding and finding my seat number 1K.

And here’s my seat on the first row. The Lufthansa business class seats are of the so-called “lie flat” type, meaning that they turn into a flat bed, but not horizontally flat. The bed is angled, or sloped. So if you try to sleep on this bed, you may end up sliding down towards the ground. However, on this daytime flight of less than four hours, having a sloped seat was no problem at all, as I didn’t really need to sleep during the flight.

I was one of the first to board, so I got this shot of the front of the cabin immediately after taking my seat. When boarding was completed, every seat in sight was taken.

In the seat, I found a travel kit containing a pair of socks, lip balm, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a pair of ear plugs, a nail file, and eye shades.

After all passengers were seated, the cabin crew came with a tray of drinks offering us a choice of lime juice, sparkling wine, or plain water. I chose the lime juice, which was excellent.

During pushback, I got this shot of an El Al Boeing 747-400 taxiing by.

And the following was an El Al Boeing 777-200ER joining the former ‘47.

And here’s a movie of the take-off, incluing a bird’s eye-view of greater Tel Aviv.

When we reached our initial cruising altitude of 34,000 feet, I turned on the massage function of the seat while I started watching a movie. Soon afterwards, the crew brought us hot towels and served drinks, and now the time had come to pick up the menu from the seat pocket.

The menu was written in German, English and Hebrew, and the drinks page told me that the following liquids were available:

Champagne Jacquart Brut Mosaique
2009 Deidesheimer Hofstück
2009 Nord-Sud Languedoc Viognier
2007 Château Reysson
2007 “347 Vineyards” Cabernet-Sauvignon
Warsteiner Premium Verum
Warsteiner Premium Alkoholfrei
Bacardi, Campari, Bombay Sapphire Gin, Wodka Gorbatschow, Jack Daniel’s, Johnnie Walker Black Label, Cognac Rémy Martin VSOP, Schladerer Himbeergeist, Fernet Branca, Baileys Irish Cream, Graham’s Portwein
Fruit juices, natural mineral water and sparkling mineral water, Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola light, Sprite, Kinley Tonic Water, Bitter Lemon, Ginger Ale
Royal Diplomat 100% Arabica Coffee from the Highlands, black tea

I had plenty of orange juice to drink, and some nuts to eat.

The center spread of the menu gave us the meal options. They advertised an express service with the following words: “We additionally offer our cold Express Service in order to give you more time to work or relax: we serve the hors d’oeuvre of your choice, cheese and dessert upon your request.”

I chose to go for the full meal, and for hors d’oeuvres the choices were:

Fish and prawn terrine with avocado guacamole and herb salsa.
Roast beef with asparagus.
Mixed salad leaves presented with dressing.

I went for the first option, which is pictured on my tray below.

The prawns were quite big and really tasty, like the rest of the plate, but with hindsight I think I would have preferred the roast beef instead.

For the entrees, the choices were:

Veal scaloppine, herbed polenta, broccoli florets, sauteed artichoke and zucchini, sage red wine sauce.
Herbed grilled salmon served with wild rice, spinach leaves, Chardonnay sauce.
Goat cheese ravioli with roasted red pepper sauce, artichoke and pumpkin, minted pesto.

I chose the salmon, which was really delicious. I couldn’t have made a better choice.

For dessert, the choices were:

Gouda, blue and goat cheese.
Passion fruit mousse cake with raspberry coulis.
Fruit salad.

I chose the fruit salad, which was just as great as the salmon.

The whole meal service took very long time. In fact, I finished eating two hours and fifteen minutes after take-off. By that time, there were only 1:30 left of the total flying time.

By now, we had reached a higher cruising altitude of 38,000 feet.

The rest of the flight passed uneventfully. When the movie was over, I spent the rest of the flight reading and working. But I got this shot of a Greek mountain in the middle of the flight.

All in all, this was a good flight, and I would not hesitate to fly Lufthansa business class again on this route.

Trip Report, Swiss flight LX254, Airbus A330-200, registration HB-IQQ, Zurich Kloten to Tel Aviv Ben Gurion, ZRH-TLV, business class, with pictures and video, March 2011.

I arrived at Zurich airport’s A-gates and had to make my way over to the E-gates, where the intercontinental flights depart from. In order to get to the E-gates, you first have to go through passport control (leave Schengen), and then you take an underground train to the midfield E-building.

Here’s my airplane, one of the old Airbus A330-200 planes of Swiss, parked at an E-gate.

A view of the plane taken from the jetway, just before entering the airplane itself.

This is a picture I took of the very same airplane, HB-IQQ, a couple of years ago. In the background you can see a Singapore Airlines B777-300ER, a Swiss A340-300, a Swiss A321, and another Swiss A330-200.

My seat was 7K, in the first row of this two-class aircraft. At the time of writing, this airplane has only a few months left in the Swiss fleet before it is retired. A lot of people dislike the business class seats in the Swiss A330-200, but I personally believe that they’re more than okay if you’re on a daytime flight. On a night flight, though, they’re not as good as they don’t go flat.

I was one of the first to board, and the business class cabin is still almost totally empty. Before departure, 14 out of the 24 seats in this cabin were taken. As soon as I reached my seat, the crew offered to take care of my jacket, and after taking my seat, they offered me something to drink. I went for the orange juice.

Here’s the comfort kit that all business class passengers get. It was packed in a travel document holder by NavyBoot, and its contents were: Eye-shades, a toothbrush and toothpaste, ear plugs, socks, a refreshing tissue, and a small piece of paper explaining that you can also get a shaving kit, a nail file, a comb, a shoehorn, or a sewing kit if you ask the cabin crew.

Shortly after take-off, these are the Swiss alps.

The flight time was 3:25, and during this relatively short flight we were well taken care of. We quickly reached our cruising altitude of 41,000 feet, and we got drinks and a small bag of pretzels:

The next serving was an appetizing vegetable salad, with a small bottle of olive oil, and grapes with Swiss cheese. The vegetables were fresh, and the salad was very good.

For some inexplicable reason, they did not have a menu on this flight. Instead, the cabin crew came around and told us what main courses they had. We were basically given three choices: Beef with noodles, fried fish, or curry with vegetables. I asked if it was an Indian or a Thai curry, and got the answer that it was an Indian curry. I preferred the beef, which tasted okay, but I was disappointed that the noodle dish did not have much of an Asian feel to it. The noodles tasted more like Italian spaghetti.

Unfortunately, I ran out of batteries in the camera I had in the seat, and with the tray table filled with food, I didn’t want to get up to get my other camera from the overhead bin, so I don’t have any pictures of the main course.

Afterwards, we were served a dessert, which in this case was a very good, but very small, piece of cake with delicious white cream filling.

I also had a cup of green tea.

As the seat next to mine was empty, I had that PTV running with the airshow during the whole flight. I tried to watch a movie, but no matter what I did, the movies simply did not start. Maybe not so strange considering the age of the aircraft and the fact that they’re retiring them soon, and probably don’t spend too much time and money on maintenance of the entertainment system. Fortunately, I had a good book and my laptop with me.

Trip Report, Scandinavian Airlines flight SK605, Boeing 737-600, registration LN-RPY, Stockholm Arlanda to Zurich Kloten, ARN-ZRH, business class, with pictures and video, and with pictures from the SAS Business Lounge in Stockholm, March 2011.

I arrived at Arlanda airport early in the morning to check in for my flight, and there was absolutely no line at the SAS business class counter. The security check was also a breeze as I had access to the fast track.

I immediately went to the SAS business lounge. The lounge is located next to gate number 1. Take the following stairs or elevators to reach the lounge.

And when you exit the elevator, this is the lounge entrance.

The lounge is actually split into two separate quarters. To the right is the business lounge, for business class passengers, and to the left is the Scandinavian lounge, for Star Alliance gold card holders. I turned to the right, and the first thing I saw was the newspaper rack with a good selection of papers.

Next to the newspaper stand is the computer corner. You can either borrow one of their Macs or plug in your own laptop.

On the other side of the wall is the children’s corner with some fun stuff for the little ones.

This is the main seating area where I had something to eat. Power sockets are available to charge your laptop or phone. There’s a view of the departure hall from the lounge (behind the white curtains).

This is the self-service cafeteria.

With a selection of bread.

And everything that’s needed to make a sandwich.

A toaster and some fruit.

More fruit.

Time’s up! My flight is boarding.

This is a shot of the actual airplane that I found in my archives.

I had seat 1F, a first-row seat with a window, but not so much to brag about. The SAS business seat on the 737 is basically the same seat as in economy, but with the middle seat kept free. On this particular flight, there were only two passengers in business class, 10 in economy extra, and 51 in economy. The two of us had a total of 15 seats to choose from. But the business section was still quite busy as several economy class passengers used the business lavatory during the flight.

Before take-off, the crew offered us drinks and magazines to read. A small cut-out in the bulkhead gave me some more legroom, but you could hardly call it generous. I switched back and forth between the middle seat and the window seat.

A view of Upplands-Väsby shortly after take-off.

And when we made a starboard turn, I got a shot of the airport.

The crew soon gave us hot towels and served us breakfast.

You could hardly call it a light breakfast, with potatoes, scrambled eggs, and bacon. It was okay, but nothing to write home about.

During the approach to Zurich airport, at an altitude of some 3,500 feet, I got this shot of the river that separates Germany and Switzerland at this specific place.

And I also got this video of the landing itself.