Milan Malpensa
Around 14:00 there were no one queuing at the desk of the Senator Lounge in Milan’s Malpena airport and I approached the desk and asked about the flights to DUS and offered also my seat on the last flight out of MXP if they could use if and put me on an earlier flight. She told me, she was not sure but write it down anyway since the probably would have some misconnections and it would always be good to have seats available on the last
flight out of MXP to DUS.
I waited in the lounge, fellow flyertalker rampant checked in for his LX flight and returned to the lounge and checked the flight times. The lounge became crowded and several people were delayed or missed their connections or simply arrived earlier at the airport.
Around 16:30 the agent approached me and told if I was booked in C. Unfortunately only in Y and handed her my boarding pass for the flight. At 16:50 she approached me again gave me back my original boarding pass and told me to got to the gate were a new boarding pass was awaiting me. At the gate learned that I was upgraded to C but no meal was catered for me.
At the gate I saw some members of the LH employees who have been also on the inaugural flight. They were at the Senator Lounge desk and it seems that they were booked on non-revenue tickets and due to the cancellations and the weather situation had now difficulties to get back to Germany.
This flight was operated by a Canadair Jet, so we had to take a bus to the plane. Meanwhile the temperature was above 0°C and it had started to rain. It was really a huge mess on the tarmac.
The bus brought us to our plane and I was lucky to have a hood. A few passengers remained in the bus, while the most of us queued in front of the stairs.
02 February 2009
MXP - DUS
[Milan Malpensa - Dusseldorf]
LH 1261 (Eurowings); Canadair CRJ 200 (D-ACRJ)
Gate A 22
17:30 – 19:05 [effective 17:36 – 19:01]
Business Class
Seat 08 D
I had a seat in the exit row, but as my hand luggage did not fit into the overhead compartment I moved to another row where I could store in under the seat in front of me.
We pushed back at 17:36 and the safety demonstration was done while we taxied to the runway. The Italian Language Version was done by tape later. We queued at the runway before it was our turn and we left Milan at 17:48 and climbed into the sky above Milan. It was not that cloudy anymore after a few minutes of flight time and one could see the ground and the Alps wile we were heading towards Bergamo. The meal service began at 17:55, but also I could have had a meal since a few passengers did not eat anything
I was not really hungry and skipped like the most of the Business Class Passengers the meal and opted only for a glass of sparkling water and a coffee.
We flew over Bergamo, Lucerne and Frankfurt and the weather above the region between Frankfurt and Düsseldorf was good and only a few clouds were in the sky so we had good view to the ground. I listened to music during the flight relaxed and watch the landscape. We had an approach to Düsseldorf from the West meaning we flew over Düsseldorf and then made a sharp U turn and approached Düsseldorf from the region of Mönchengladbach.
We touched down at 19:01 and had a bus gate where we arrived at 19:04. A bus brought us to the terminal where a friend picked me up and drove me home.