BLQ ➡️ FRA

At first it looked like boarding LH283 would be chaotic, adding to today’s ‘zoo’ experience.

There were two lines at Gate 7 … Priority and All Passengers. What happened to boarding by groups … of which we were assigned to #2. With no expectation of priority privileges, we were about to join the very long All Passengers queue, when a gate agent put up signs directing groups 1 and 2 to the Priority lane. Whew!

There are no jetways at BLQ. You either walk to/from your aircraft or you are bused. Today, was the latter. Soon enough, we were in our exit row seats. Not much legroom advantage as it turns out … just a tad bit more than the rest of the rows.

Once we were settled into our seats, the flight attendant stopped by to give us our emergency evacuation briefing. We had stored our carry-on bags and personal items in the overhead bin — a requirement for exit rows on most airlines these days. Being compliant earned us a bravo from the flight attendant 😉.

The aircraft — an Airbus A320 — pushed back at 10:40a … just 5 minutes late. We were in the air by 10:45a. The service cart came through soon after the aircraft had leveled off at its cruising altitude … water and a bite-size Lindt chocolate complimentary; everything else at a price.

We are now almost an hour into the flight and it has been uneventful thus far. The scenery outside the window is hazy — has been that way since we took off from BLQ … smog? summer heat haze? both perhaps? I’ve clicked a few ‘memory shots’ of what I think is Italy’s Südtirol … where we were in July for our ‘escape the heat’ mountain trip.

We’re scheduled to land in about 30 minutes. More later …Read more