Round The World and other travel

Flight Log 10: LH964

Frankfurt (FRA) - Edinburgh (EDI)

The first thing I noticed on boarding was that the aircraft had the familiar grey seats with fold-down centre tables in Business Class, so that this was not going to be my first experience of the NEK (Neue Europakabine), the new short-haul product in the course of being rolled out. The second thing I noticed was that, as ever, the aircraft was spotless despite its considerable age. There were three rows of Business Class on the port side and two rows on mine. I couldn't help noticing that there was a baby in 4B, in the first row of the Economy cabin, but I wasn't unduly concerned. Magazines were offered when the first bus-load had boarded, newspapers having already been offered to all passengers at the door. The second bus arrived at 1624 and once all were aboard, the occupied seats up front were 2A/C, 2F (me) and 3A/C/D. This was an excellent result, with no-one either beside me or behind me!

An announcement gave the expected flight time as 1hr 30mins and the cabin crew proceeded to give the safety demonstration while we remained on-stand. At 1644, with no explanation of the delay, we eventually pushed back and got on our way, taking off at 1652 from 25R. In the first few seconds of the flight, I got an excellent view of the new landing-only runway to the north-west of the existing apron, due to open later in 2011.

In due course, I was given a beautifully presented light meal inspired by the current asparagus season. Lufthansa really does make a good job of giving Business Class passengers visually attractive food, even when on a flight of less than two hours duration such as this, it is just a collection of light snacks. I drank water, white wine and coffee to accompany the food and was more than satisfied with both quality and quantity. I passed the time browsing the in-flight magazine as we took the usual route along the Rhine, across the Netherlands and the North Sea and up the east coast of England.

Soon we were above the reasonably sunny-looking Scottish Borders, although I knew to expect a temperature on landing that, in Celsius terms, would be a mere 50% of that in Frankfurt. As we crossed the coast around Musselburgh race course and made the usual turn I was on the wrong side of the plane to see the city, but this didn't matter at all as the Firth of Forth looked quite stunning at low tide, with the sky reflected in the shallow water. We touched down at 1718 local time and made it onto stand ahead of schedule, despite the delay in leaving Frankfurt.

A most enjoyable short flight to end another memorable trip!