Frankfurt Trip Report 15/16th May

Frankfurt has always been in the top lists of the best airports for spotters to visit, and considering it is only a little over an hours flight and £79 away my uncle and I decided to visit last weekend.
We got into T1 at Heathrow at around 0630, ate some breakfast, looked at all the nightstoppers and the early morning arrivals (Kenya 767 and the 2 UA 744s one after the other), and wandered up to gate 40 where we saw our plane, a BA 767 G-BZHC.
We boarded about 30 minutes before departure, and were unfortunatley in the rear cabin of the aircraft with cloth seats. These were not uncomfortable, but nowhere near as nice as the leather ones in the front.
We pushed back a little late due to congestion in the cul-de-sac, and taxiied straight up to 27R, past all the queing traffic and did a rolling start. We made the left turn after departure, and then another left towards Dover.
After my last 2 morning flights with BA I was expecting another superb hot english brekfast, or at the very least a hot Ciabatta. However we were rather dispointed to be served a yoghurt, muffin, and fruit salad!! This was not what we were expecting, but BA do have a policy of reflecting the culture of the country you are travelling too, and so I suppose it was not too disimilar to a continental breakfast.
The next hour of the flight was very uneventful, we made a steep initial approach into FRA using the speedbrakes that made the plane shake like crazy! We made our approach onto runway 25L, and the winds must have been quite strong as there were considerable changes in pitch and thrust all the way down, resulting in a rather hard landing. Thankfully the flight was very empty, with less than 100 pax onboard.
We used no reverse thrust which I was a little surprised about as we were going to T2, the terminal at the other end of the runway we had just landed on, we rolled past the USAF base, passed lots of C17s, a KC10 and a C130, and taxiied up the centre taxiway, before crossing over 25L, and getting a good view of the planes, largely Lufthansa!
We disembarked very promptly, and spent the best part of 30 minutes getting lost around the 2 terminals before finding the viewing terrace at about 1000. We spoke to a very grumpy German man who clearly didn’t like English people and refused to speak any English, so finding out about the “famous” ramp tours was impossible. We struggled past on my very mediocre German to get onto the terrace, costing 4 Euros each.
It is a VERY long walk out onto the terrace, but it is well worth it. There are 2 levels to the deck, bothe circular, and on the lower deck there is a small cafe selling drinks (Alcoholic and soft) and hot and cold food, and appropriatley for that weekend Ice Creams!!
We positioned ourselves on the top deck, and realised that the 5 people around us were English too!
Here we had s uperb view of the runways, and especially the gate areas. In the morning the sun was ahead of us, and so was quite difficult to read regs, but in the afternoon it was behind us, making things a lot easier, and allowing us to read off the C17s, which were coming and going with as much regularity as the Lufthansas!
Over the course of the weekend 2 Atlas Air 744s, an Omni Air DC10, and a World Airways MD11 came in to the Air base, and many many more exotic planes carrying passengers.
Among them were Iran Air A300, Yemenia A310, Uzbekistan A310, PIA A310 (new colours) lots of Russian airliners, Yaks and Tupolevs, and a Cargo IL76, US carriers were much in evidence in the morning, NW A330s, lots of Deltas, many UAs and AAs, and 2 CO 764s as well. In the afternoon the airport was invaded by the Far East with a Malaysian 777 and Cargo 742, a Cathay 744 and cargo 742, a pax ANA 744 and cargo 742, a cargo China Airlines Jumbo, a pax china airlines A340, and 2 Air China 744s, a pax Korean 744 and cargo 742, and 2 Asiana pax 744s!!!!
Lots of other local airlinres were in evidence too, Lithuanian Saab 2000, lots of SWISS ERJs, Cirrus EMB145, Austrian Dash 8s, Fokker 70s of KLM, and of course Eurowings and Lufthansa Cityline.
Other airliners of interest were the SAA A346s, Fedex MD11, Gemini DC10, a USAF C5 Galaxy and of course the LH A346s and A333s.
One A333 returning from the Berlin airshow performed a low flypast of the airport before returning to land!
We checked in for our return flight in the morning following a 2.5 hour city tour with a hilarious tour guide, along with a Canadian, a Morrocan, and a Swiss gentlemen! The city is rather interesting, and there is more to it than just banks, despite its amazing small population. We checked in early due to our original flight being cancelled in advance, we were given the opportunity of chosing our return time at no extra cost, and we chose the 1840 767 flight home. We were infromed of 1 passport control and 2 security checks, not too disimilar to LHR so we left an hour to get through.
At 1730 we were greeted by a HUGE queue, far exceeding the marked queing area for passport control. At 1820 we finally made it through the passport control, after being barged out of the way and trodden on by the lack of defintiton in the queing areas. Out of 12 desks that could have been open, only 5 were, making the situation horrendous. By 1825 we had cleared the first security checkpoint, but you would think that after an hour of queing people might have moved their metallic items into their bags so as not to hold everything up :rolleyes:
At 1828 we fnally cleared the 2nd security control. I could not figure out why it was there, all there was between it and the previous one were some shops. Surely if those shops sold things that were not allowed on planes shouldn’t the airport authorities do something about it?!?!
After running to the gate with many other frustrated passengers I checked my watch, 18:29:50, we had made it with 10 seconds to spare!!!
We boarded the plane and took our seats in the very empty middle section, and collapsed, breathless and frustrated into our nice comfy leather seats, stretching our legs in the sumptious leg room. “That was why we chose to fly BA” I told myself!
The crew decided however to extend the gate closure time by 15 minutes, something we couldn’t really argue with, however several peoples bags were unloaded before we pushed back 25 minutes late.
We taxiied down the length of the airport to tunway 18, and did another rolling start, taking off to the south, and then to the west in a similar pattern to before.
We were served our dinner which consisted of a Bacon and Egg sandwhich and…………the same yoghurt I had been served for breakfast the previous morning :rolleyes:
We had to hold over Lambourne on our return, giving me the dubious honour of holding over every single one of heathrows holding patterns. The hold gave us a good view of Stansted, before we left the hold, heading to the west, before turning back to the east to land on 09L. Out of every singal flight I have done into LHR, I have ALWAYS landed on 09L which is rather annoying!
After our very smooth landing we vacated, and I saw a Kuwaiti A310, new colours PIA B743, CAL A340, and the 2 new BMI A319s we taxiied onto one of the nearest T1 stands, before disembarking and returning home, via a crawl of the permiter road of course 😉

The trip, overall was a huge success, the viewing facilites at FRA are superb, and I really hope they do not close in Septmeber. With that threat in mind though I am already forward planning for my next trip to FRA in the summer, maybe taking into account some of the other German cities too. 🙂