LisbonJet's Travels: Munich

Showing posts with label Munich. Show all posts

Two photos from Munich

Munich, August 2025

The first one of the Domberg in Freising where the former pope Benedict XVI was ordained a priest in 1951. The second depicts the amazing morning colors at the airport Franz Joseph Strauss, just before sunrise.

The World's Oldest Brewery in Freising

Freising, January 2024

Again in Freising... this time in a more planned way and without a huge amount of snow.

I always find this old university town so charming, peaceful and fascinating that I don't feel compelled going to the Munich center at all.

Weather was a bit cold but I learned how to properly master low temperatures over the years. It snowed a little.

I decided to have lunch at the Weihenstephan Brewery - the oldest brewery in the world. The brewery is located on the site of the former monastery Weihenstephan Abbey.

I've been there before: first time many years ago during my first take in the medium haul and the last time recently during the blizzard in last December. I was in the mood for a beer and a schnitzel:

Most of the times I don't mind being alone, or together with myself. Particularly in winter time, I enjoy being inside a café or a diner for hours. Sipping on a cup of coffee or having a beer. Reading a book. Listening to my music. Watching the locals and their habits.

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Münich, December 2023

It's been 3 months since I moved back to the European fleet in my airline. And I must say it was a wise decision to take. The first time I gave it a thought was in 2019 when I started to feel really tired and my personal routine and energy strongly impacted with all those long red eye flights. After the full recovery of air travel in 2022, I decided in October that year to ask for a fleet change which was now granted.

This was supposed to be an uneventful turnaround flight to Munich. We were flying on our company's retrojet with tail number CS-TJR. As a curiosity I was a working crew member on the first revenue flight of our first retrojet - the Airbus A330 CS-TOV which is now flying for Air Canada. I was also a passenger on the first revenue flight of this Airbus A321neo retrojet. And this was my first time as a working crew member on CS-TJR. I think the retro livery suits the A321neo even better.

It was snowing in Munich when we arrived and we had to fly a holding pattern before landing. Quite for sure we would need a de-icing procedure before our departure back to Lisbon. After the passengers bound to Lisbon were boarded we started getting delays by the air traffic control.

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Munich Airport

While we waited for our departure slot, the snowfall started to increase and one could see many snow plow trucks working without stopping on the runway and taxiways. Things didn't seem pretty for us, although the outside scenario was absolutely astonishing and unusual for me.

After a very long wait with all passengers boarded, and short after we were given a three more hours wait, the airport suddenly suspended all operations and flights were cancelled.

This poor Lufthansa A320 wasn't going anywhere too...

And so we also had to leave to the hotel... None of us was prepared for this unforeseen circumstance.

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Freising

Next day, Munich Airport remained shut down and we allowed ourselves to explore a true winter wonderland in Freising. Despite the flights disruption and all the chaos... wow, what a beautiful sight!

Freising Marienplatz

Only later that day we got the information that the airport would reopen at 6am.

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Return Flight

It took a lot of procedures and time to reactivate our frozen aircraft and remove all the accumulated snow.

And we finally made it home safe :)

This episode made me remember an older one when I experienced a huge snowfall in Milan (Malpensa) 14 years ago. That time I was lucky enough to escape the bad weather and go back home on the same day. You can read about it here.

Flights to Heathrow and Munich Airport

Aviation Shots, April 2016

Let's have an insight to a couple of recent roundtrips!

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Heathrow

The week started with a roundtrip to London/Heathrow which is my favorite European airport in terms of air traffic. It's always a great opportunity to watch impressive aircraft that come from all points of the world map.

But even before proceeding to the aircraft I took a peek of this TAP's ATR72 through the window of our briefing room, at Lisbon Airport.

Then the usual routine followed, as well as the recurrent holding procedure to land at the congested Heathrow airport.

Turn during our hold

I don't have many photos of the aircraft movement I had the pleasure to watch at LHR. But I can tell about a Boeing 767 from Air Canada, a 737 Classic from LOT, a British Airways 747, some 787s, a couple of private (unidentified) 777s, a Korean A380, etc, etc.

Near us it was parked a regular A320 from Lufthansa with sharklets installed.

D-AIUM

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Munich

The next day it was time to go to Munich Airport/Franz Josef Strauss. I usually appreciate these roundtrips to Germany because the typical passengers of these flights are very easy to deal with. They bring few hand luggage (no problems with overloaded bins) and they seem to be familiar with air travel and comply with basic rules without having to alert them. However, our flight back to Lisbon was a little bit different from this standard. I'll tell why later!

Our aircraft, the A321 CS-TJG, arrived a little bit delayed from the previous flight. It parked close to our crew terminal at Lisbon airport.

The flight to Munich was an absolutely smooth one. It was also very fast due to strong tail wind.

Contrary to Heathrow, you do not see the same variety of airlines at Munich Airport. In fact, MUC is the second "kingdom" of Lufthansa in Germany.

A321 D-AIRA on our left

As a curiosity, the name of this Lufthansa A321 is "Finkenwerder", the name of the airport in Hamburg, where Airbus has a final assembly line for all models of the A320 family and where the same aircraft (plus the A380) get their cabin interiors fitted and are also painted.

A319 D-AILX on our right

During our turnaround time, the A321 was pushed back for its departure and later an amazing A340-600 from South African Airways came in.

A346 ZS-SNC - such a big aircraft

Window distortion...

The flight back to Lisbon was almost complete and many of the passengers were Bayern Munich's supporters that were going to watch live the Champions League's game opposing their club and SL Benfica, on the quarter-finals of the competion. That's why this time we had a little bit more work. Not a single beer can of our catering survived intact to this flight! Also, the flight time was almost one hour (!) longer due to the tail wind. But in the end everyone was happy!

After a long period on the long haul flight, it feels good to be back on the European routes!

Again in Freising

Freising, September 2013

Once more, photos of this small town in Germany, near Munich Airport. Small but beautiful and with lots of interesting details (some) yet to be discovered.

I always travel with a book - this one with something in common with the hotel's pillow.