Flying | Eating | Sleeping

TAM Shuttle: Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro

Both Sao Paulo and Rio have downtown airports which are extremely convenient for domestic flights.  Congonhas, in Sao Paulo, is in the middle of the city, surrounded on all sides by dense housing, offices and warehouses.  In contrast, Rio's Santos Dumont sits on the seafront, creating some of the most scenic approaches and take-offs imagineable - be sure to snag a window seat.

Curiously, in stark relief to the mayhem prevalent at Sao Paulo's main international Airport, both Congonhas and Santos Dumont give the impression of calm, if crowded, efficiency.  Similarly, in contrast to the dissapointment of their long-haul business class product, TAM's shuttle between the two cities includes a busy crew rushing to serve refreshments and snacks during the short flight.

Searching for flights between Congonhas and Santos Dumont on Kayak, Expedia or any of the other UK agents will return plenty of results, usually at a similar (high) price, but only on TAM, who offer a half-hourly frequency for most of the day.  GOL also offer a half-hourly service, while WebJet (soon to be swalloed by GOL) and Avianca offer less frequent servce.

Visiting the websites of TAM, GOL, WebJet or Avianca will yield any number of flights at fares far below those being offered by TAM through European agents.  These exisit only to tease you.  It seems that the websites of Brazilian airlines will only accept domestically issued credit and debit cards.  At first I assumed that my poor (well, non-existant) grasp of Portuguese was the problem - many of the "English" websites revert back to Portuguese at the payment screens, but a Portuguese colleague had similar issues.  Together, we spent hours trying to book cheaper tickets, first on GOL then on Avianca, trying a variety of credit and debit cards with absoltely no joy. 

I can almost understand that some payment systems only accept local cards, but why aren't GOL or Avianca offering fares through the global distribution systems, even at a slight premium to those booked dorectly on their websites?

TAM Business Class: Frankfurt to Sao Paulo

Flights to Sao Paulo are at a premium these days since Brazil’s ongoing failure to upgrade airport infrastructure, coupled with a booming economy, has ensured that demand has overwhelmed supply.  Both British Airways and TAM offer non-stop flights from London to Sao Paulo, but business class fares are significantly lower if you can stand a stop in Europe.

The lowest fares are normally with TAP via Lisbon, while Iberia can also be good value through Madrid.  Beware that, in addition to the main airport at Guarulhos, TAP also serves Sao Paulo’s secondary airport at Viracopos; a hub for Azul’s domestic flights, but not too convenient for anything else.  If a travel agent offers you an unfeasibly cheap TAP flight to Sao Paulo, ask them to double check the airport code, GRU is the main airport, VCP refers to Viracopos and few agents seem to be aware of it’s existence; an American Express agent spent 20 minutes assuring me that a flight was heading to “the city’s only airport”.

As it happens, American Express had an offer on a flight via Frankfurt.  Lufthansa and TAM flights from Frankfurt carry each other’s code and leave at very similar times.  There was, however, a steeper discount on the ticket if I opted for the TAM operated flight.  As Lufthansa’s business class is wholly unremarkable, and I’d never tried TAM, I thought it was time for a new experience.

Wondering why I’ve rattled on for an age about airline fares?  That would be because I’ve nothing polite to say about the flights.  The seats are a fairly standard angled-flat product, but it is seven-abreast on the 777s; the dreaded middle seat is alive and well in Brazil.

The food was actively unpleasant - the mystery chicken dish, pictured above, was actually the high point.  Throughout both flights, service was minimal.  Before each take-off the crew solicited orders for drinks after take-off, then didn’t bother to serve them.  On the outbound flight, the crew didn’t serve anyone anything until they were dishing-up food, 90 minutes out of Frankfurt.  Empty drinks glasses and bottles sat, unmoved, for over eight hours at one point.  The entire impression was one of crews doing as little as they could possibly get away with.

TAM’s lounge offering in Sao Paulo is so appalling as to be comical.  The business class lounge has, perhaps, thirty seats.  In the evening rush, with flights leaving in quick succession to a variety of European and American destinations, the lounge was a zoo.  People were sharing seats and sitting in the floor space between them.  Inexplicably, despite the obvious shortage of space, the lounge features a grand piano.  As the receptionist was apologising to another customer about the unavailability of toilet roll, I turned around and used Priority Pass to access the United Lounge.

United’s Red Carpet Club is much larger than TAM’s lounge, but was also packed and chaotic.  The guy at reception did say that seats should become available when the flight to Chicago was boarding and, sure enough, a boarding call a few minutes later emptied the room.  However, having bashed TAM, I should mention that United’s facility was visibly filthy (sofas you stick to) and ran out of basics; like glasses and water.Guarulhos airport is amongst the world’s most cramped, TAM can’t really be blamed for this.  The dreadful standards of on-board service and woeful food, are, however, cause to avoid TAM as much as possible.

Lufthansa First Class: Washington Dulles to Frankfurt

Given that this is the second Lufthansa First segment this year (I know, I know...), I'll focus on the big difference between the flights.  Specifically, this flight featured one of Lufthansa's new First Class seats.

Lufthansa is doing something rather odd with it's First Class product - installing three variations of a new cabin in different aircraft.  Deliveries of their A380 aircraft come with the standard new seat, which appears to be a re-working of the old layout with more contemporary materials and a larger screen.  I understand that this cabin also includes personal storage lockers, which is really the only thing that differentiates the product from that being installed, slowly, as A340 and A330 aircraft are refurbished.  Rumour would have it that this is also the cabin that will feature on the airline's new 747-8 aircraft.

The third, and most radical version, is being retro-fitted to Lufthansa's older 747-400s.  It seems that, as new aircraft arrive, the oldest 747s will be retired, some will be converted to a high-density layout, with no first class, for leisure routes, and a small subfleet will feature the, amazing, product I'm about to tell you about.

Before we go into more detail though, it should be noted that the chances of enjoying one of Lufthansa's new First Class products are slim, unless you're flying a route operated by the A380.  As far as I can tell, at the time of writing, the proportion of aircraft which feature the new seats are:

• A330-300 - 0 of 15
• A340-300 - 1 of 26
• A340-600 - 2 of 24
• A380-800 - 8 of 8
• B747-400 - 10 of 30.

It seems that, to date, the refurbished aircraft all work on routes out of Frankfurt, so you have no chance if booked through Munich or Dusseldorf.

Given those odds, it was a massive treat to board the plane in Washington and find a brand new cabin.  I mentioned above that the seats being fitted to the 747's are quite distinct from those on the other aircraft - the difference is that they come with a completely seperate bed.  As shown in the photo below, each passenger has a large seat and, next to it, a fully made up bed - there's no complicated lie-flat mechanism or wait for the crew to make up a mattress and duvet here.

The whole thing is incredible.  OK, the seats are placed individually on either side of the aisle, so it's not the best set-up for a conversation, but the sleep was the best I've ever had in the air.  Strippled of all the moving parts and extendable pieces that are normally needed to turn seats into beds, the chair is also very comfortable.  Honestly, I could go on enthusing about, what is essentially, furniture, but I fear most of you are already bored.

If there is a downside to this product, it's that Lufthansa are only fitting eight seats into a space that once held sixteen; on unrefurbished aircraft, they're still only selling eight seats, each passenger gets two.  As a result, their First Class capacity is reduced and, consequently, there seem to be far fewer seats available for those of us booking with miles.  Indeed, if the, usually accurate, One Mile at a Time is to be trusted, it's now almost impossible to redeem miles for Lufthansa First.

The other big difference this time around was that we were flying through Frankfurt, so were able to access one of Lufthansa's First Class Lounge's, rather than the Senator Lounge that is offered in Dussledorf.  Lufthansa do have a seperate First Class Terminal in Frankfurt; it's mainly for those starting their journey, but connecting passengers can access it if they clear security and walk out of the main building.  As we had a fairly tight connection, we headed to one of the Lounges within Terminal 1.

After the dissappointment of the Senator Lounges in Dusseldorf and Washington (more about that in a moment), the First Class lounge was a revelation; peaceful, comfortable and with excellent food and drinks served by friendly staff.   The, actually fantastic, bellinis were served with an apology about the peach juice not, apparently, being up to the usual standards.  We were also treated to a rather amusing floor show as a young american (I struggle to use the term gent given the sea of man-made ugliness that he was wearing) tried to argue his way into the facility.  A wall of three statuesque ladies in Lufthansa uniform were stood, slowly shaking their heads, as he spent a full ten minutes sucking air through his teeth and mumbling nonsense about why they should be "working with me to find a solution to this problem".

Now that the interesting, "new", things are dealt with, I should probably give passing mention to the rest of the flight.

As I suggested, the Senator Lounge at Dulles Airport is not particularly pleasant.  It's crowded, noisy, offers a WiFi service which is so slow as to be useless, while the food and beverage offering is deeply unappealling.

I was actually asleep for the last majority of the flight, but during the hour or so that I was conscious, the service was excellent.  Perhaps not quite as accomodating as we experienced on BA the previous week, but otherwise faultless.

Before sleeping, I did partake of the full meal service, including all three appetisers.  By the time I ordered they had run out of my preffered main, halibut, so I took the steak.  Again, it was perfectly edible, but overcooked in comparisson to BA's effort with a similar dish.

Pictures and details of the food follow.  Sadly, given the apparently impending demise of BMI and, it's to be presumed, their generous frequent flyer programme, I doubt I'll be able to book Lufthansa First again anytime soon.  It was definately worth the additional miles that BMI charge, over, for example, first class on United.  If any of you are sitting on a stash of BMI miles, I would urge you to make some effort to blow them on a Lufthansa First ticket before they turn into magic beans or, more likely, something even less useful.

The, frankly rather odd, potato salad that was served as a pre-apetiser.

The caviar service arrived in sealed, individual, portions, rather than being served from a tin.  The crew suggested that this was an anomly and not a new policy.

A full rack of appetisers.

Tuna Teradito (no, I've no idea what Teradito means either) with a citrus-cilantro vinaigrette.

Poached chicken salad with grapes.

Roasted corn flan with mushrooms... Not a sterling effort.

Salad with "delicious" dressing.  It wasn't bad, I'm not sure about "delicious", but there you are.

Grilled tenderloin of beef with Chimichurri sauce, Costa Rican rice 'n' beans and green beans.