Lufthansa messes up (badly)

I couldn't wait for my flight over from Houston to Frankfurt, I was looking forward to flying top deck on the infamous Boeing 747-400. But little did I know, it was all about to go horribly wrong.

I walked over to my gate from the United Polaris lounge, where I saw my 22 year old plane, D-ABTK. Now Lufthansa's fleet of 747-400s are all around their early to mid 20s, which means they're definitely coming near to then end of their 'life' but they still have 5 or so years left. This age factor definitely doesn't compromise any safety also.

My seat was 83k, which is a window seat on the upper deck. The seat was very comfortable, and the crew were as welcoming as it gets. Anyway, I will save the review of the flight for another day, lets get into what went wrong.

We pushed back, albeit 45 minutes late already, and started taxiing, very, very slowly… I could sense something wasn't right, which was confirmed once we stopped about 30 seconds after we started taxiing. The captain came on the intercom and said that something was wrong with engine 3, and that they had crew coming out to have a look. I didn't know what was wrong with the engines, but I figured that it would probably be fine considering that we were still on the taxiway and hadn't turned into a gate, but boy was I wrong.

After around 20 minutes of sitting on the taxiway, we started moving. I thought the problem had been fixed and I breathed a sigh of relief. Moments later, the captain came on the intercom and said "good afternoon passengers, we are now on our way, but not in the direction of Frankfurt, the engine problem has been diagnosed as a malfunction with the starter on engine 3, and they do not have the correct parts to hand, so we will unfortunately have to go back to a gate." I then remembered I had a flight from Frankfurt at 11am tomorrow, and we were due to land at Frankfurt at 8, with the delay pushing back 9, but with this inevitable delay, I had no idea what time I would land.

After arriving back at the gate, the cabin crew members, who were absolutely amazing in the situation, handed out some snacks which included mixed nuts, and chocolate pralines. The captain came on the intercom again and told us to get off the plane as quick as possible and bring everything you had in carry on, and to come back to this gate at 7:45pm, our flight was meant to take off at 3pm. At this point I had just accepted the fate of missing my connection, and decided to head back to the United Polaris lounge for a bite to eat. After waiting for a few hours there I headed back to the gate, accidentally leaving my brand new AirPod pros in the lounge, thanks United for being the most helpful (not) in trying to recover these from the lost and found and send them back, but that's besides the point.

I got back on the plane at around 8 and settled into my seat, luckily, this time, we actually took off. I'm pretty sure the pilot flying stalled about 2 minutes after take off as we slowed down, and started descending quite fast while maintaining a positive attitude, luckily for us, the PF pushed the throttle to full and we started increasing altitude again (phew). A smooth flight followed, and the captain absolutely buttered us down into Frankfurt.

Now after arriving in Frankfurt, I received a notification from the Lufthansa app, telling me that I had been moved to the 2 o'clock flight instead, which was better than what I thought might happen! I arrived at 1:45 at my gate, without being able to visit the Lufthansa Lounge, only to see that our aircraft, wasn't even there… the gate agents then told everyone we had been delayed for an hour! However, every cloud has a silver lining, as I was able to visit the Lufthansa lounge, which was amazing.

My flight took off, an hour late, but it was a smooth flight, with a smooth landing. Arriving into Heathrow, at 5pm, instead of 1pm, I got to the baggage arrivals to find that only 1 out of 4 of my bags had been put on the plane. I went to a baggage agent who checked his computer, and told me 2 more of the bags were due to arrive in half an hour, but the 4th one wasn't due in until 8. I waited for the 2 bags which arrived, but arranged for the 8pm bag to be mailed to my house, because the last thing I wanted to do was wait another 2 hours!

All in all, this experience was, well, stressful. But it was all sorted out eventually (apart from my AirPods, united!)

Thank you for reading this Tatlantic review!

And, as always,

Safe travels!