First off, let me begin by thanking @BP-Aviation for giving me the idea for this route! I haven’t done a narrowbody flight on a European carrier in a while, so it was fun to get back into the groove with this flight from an underrated airport in northern Spain to Lufthansa’s main hub in Frankfurt.
Server: Solo
Airline: Lufthansa
Aircraft: Airbus A321-200
Origin: Bilbao Airport, Loiu, Spain (BIO)
Destination: Frankfurt Airport, Frankfurt, Germany (FRA)
Flight Number: LH1147
Route: LEBB-EDDF
Seat: 14F (Economy)
Time En Route: 2 Hours 13 Minutes
Waiting to board via airstair at Gate, or rather Stand A11 at an overcast Bilbao. Bilbao Airport is the largest in Basque Country and northern Spain as a whole, and serves as the gateway to the former region.
What would a flight on a member of the A320 family be without the classic Power Transfer Unit (PTU) barking? The inside of the cabin sounds like a mix between a kennel and wet shoes on a tile floor as we lower the flaps while hydraulic fluid is transferred by the PTU.
Getting a solid look at Bilbao Tower, which is situated at the foot of the hills on the south side of the airport, while we taxi
Blasting out of Bilbao with a high-thrust IAE V2500 takeoff
Climbing over the Bay of Biscay as we hug the Basque coast
In cruise over the Bordeaux Region of France, long considered the be-all end-all of winemaking until the 1976 Judgement of Paris, when California wines topped local favorites in both the Chardonnay and Cabernet Saivignon categories, firmly establishing the Golden State as a producer of world-class wine. Our flight offers a Famille Perrin, from the southern end of the Rhône Valley in France.
Descending into *Frankfurt am Main* over the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia
Landing on Runway 07L, north of the main terminal
Taxiing to Terminal 1 by the Lufthansa Cargo ramp, which has a pair of Lufthansa 777Fs, one arrived from Mumbai and the other loading cargo to go to Shenzen this evening, and an AeroLogic 777F that just came in from Atlanta.
Deplaned at the A Gates. Terminal 1 is strange, as least to most Americans like ourselves, in that a given gate’s alphabetical prefix varies based on where the flight is arriving or departing from. Flights that originate from airports within the Schengen area of the European Union use gates with A- prefixes, while flights going to or coming from airports outside it use gates with Z- ones. Great flight and I plan on doing more European narrowbody flying in the near future!