SFO Lufthansa First Class Check-in and International Terminal
SFO Lufthansa First Class Check-in and International Terminal
December 2011
Ever since she saw the movie Last Holiday with Queen Latifah, Mrs. SFO has decided that winter vacation in a snowy climate is something she wants to do. Also gives her a chance to wear her furs without worrying about Bay Area animal rights wackos throwing paint on her, or more importantly her coats. Three years ago we did Prague, Vienna and Budapest just before Christmas and loved it. So when our good SoCal friends suggested NYE in Salzburg and a couple of days in Munich, we were on board.
Now the challenge of finding AC Aeroplan awards seats without making ridiculous connections. Amazingly, two seats were available on the SFO-MUC nonstop on the day we wanted to leave. Getting home was more difficult. I originally booked MUC-FRA-ORD-SFO but then adding an extra day in Munich let me book MUC-JFK, although I did find MUC-FRA-NRT-SFO including FRA-NRT on the 380 but you can imagine Mrs. SFO's reaction to that idea. 
UA doesn't normally open JFK-SFO F seats until a few weeks before departure so I figured I'd wait it out and/or hope for MUC-SFO to open up. Meanwhile the good old Aeroplan is history. The old 100K miles for a First award was now 125K when I booked, although they had a December sale that dropped it to 90K for a few weeks. And now they've added fuel surcharges for new LH bookings (and any changes). This added nearly $1,000 in fees when I booked our JFK-SFO UA flight. I considered just flying AA home from JFK, but in the end the J price with the upgrade for Mrs. SFO would have been the same.
In this report...
-United International First Class Lounge SFO
-Lufthansa First Class SFO-Munich
-Hotel Sacher Salzburg
-Salzburg
-Mandarin Oriental Munich
-Munich
-Luthansa First Class Lounge MUC
-Lufthansa First Class Munich-JFK
-United International First Class Lounge JFK
-United p.s. First Class JFK-SFO
And I am excited to play with my new Christmas toy, a Canon EOS 60D with ginormous lens. Just think of all the in flight pics I can take with this sucker. And of course that meant an even earlier departure for the airport to insure plenty of time to enjoy the UA IFL and take pics. We were dropped off at 7PM a full two hours before our 9:05PM departure.
About a 5 minute wait to check in as First Class/HON check-in is now combined with *G. Good news tonight as the same agent we had earlier in the year actual found our Aeroplan award reservation tonight without my having to dig out three sets of AC ticket numbers. And a new feature tonight as the check-in agent told us that a LH representative would escort us from the IFL to the plane.
Security was a 20 minute process tonight with only one station open. Although there were only four of us in the priority lane compared to 30 or so in the commoners line, there was only one ID checker for both sides. Add in a healthy mix of once a year flyers and there was a bottleneck. Once the post ID check line started to move, the friendly ID checker cleared the priority lane before taking any more non-priorities. Past security, the G pier of the International Terminal is quite attractive.
LX38 arriving from ZRH about two hours late.
Our home for the next hour.
Apparently lots of J pax try to crash the party. Go away!
June 2011
Four months of commuting back and forth to Detroit and Pittsburgh, and I'm so ready for some down time. We are off tonight to Stockholm to meet SoCal friends for a couple of days in Stockholm and then an 11 day Crystal Cruise that includes Helsinki, Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Berlin and Copenhagen.
-Lufthansa First Class check-in at SFO aka "I can't seem to find your reservation"
-United International First Class Lounge SFO
-Lufthansa First Class SFO-Munich
-Lufthansa First Class Lounge MUC
-Lufthansa Business Class Munich-Stockholm
-Stockholm
-Crystal Serenity Cruise: Jewels of the Baltic
-Tallin Estonia
-St. Petersburg
-Helsinki
-Berlin
-Copenhagen
-Scandinavian Lounge CPH
-Scandinavian Business Class Copenhagen-Frankfurt
-Lufthansa New First Class Frankfurt-Chicago
-Continental First Class Chicago- SFO
Lufthansa First Class check-in at SFO... aka "I can't seem to find your reservation" 
Check in seemed a little chaotic tonight as lots of pax seemed to have issues, including us. Lots of smiles now, but the dreaded "hum, I don't see you booked on this flight" was not a good way to start. No, we are not going to Denver and Chicago tomorrow. Thank you very much. Seems like AC and LH are still having trouble communicating changes. That double change I made two weeks didn't help. Fortunately, I always bring my complete history of changes with ticket numbers. It took a good ten minutes with a supervisor to straighten everything out. Just as well as the Princess left her new "to die for" (her words) hat in the car and we had to have our driver come back and drop it off.
