Travelling to the USA with Lufthansa and Lufthansa Express

I admit that when I trav­el, I like to know what to expect. This is espe­cial­ly true for air trav­el, where a lot can go wrong any­way. When book­ing a flight includ­ing Air­port Express Rail there were some draw­backs that are not obvi­ous at first sight.

Outward journey

Lufthansa’s Air Rail Option offers some impon­der­ables, espe­cial­ly when used for the first time. This starts with the fact that the train con­nec­tion receives an LH num­ber that resem­bles a flight. The trav­el doc­u­ments also men­tion a flight, although it is a train con­nec­tion.

How­ev­er, the LH num­ber can­not be found in the depar­ture plan of the Bun­des­bahn. It is there­fore almost impos­si­ble to check in advance whether a train is on time or not, as it is impos­si­ble to find out which ICE is used for this “Lufthansa flight”. Air Rail only means that cer­tain com­part­ments of a nor­mal ICE are reserved for air pas­sen­gers. With a lit­tle luck, a search with Google or Bing can spit out with which ICE the train jour­ney is car­ried out.

Like­wise, at the sta­tion you can only see on the plat­form which train it is. On the large board, where all depar­tures are list­ed, an LH num­ber can­not be found. How­ev­er, both the trans­fer by train to the air­port and the flight itself are checked in at the same time, so that at least the track was indi­cat­ed. And it was only there that the first indi­ca­tions were found that you were at the right place. Only on this track (in Cologne main sta­tion track 6) you can find hints, where the train will stop and only there you could see on the score­board, at which ICE the Air Rail com­part­ments were locat­ed.

At the airport

When pas­sen­gers leave the train in Frank­furt, there is a hall right at the tran­si­tion to the air­port where lug­gage can be checked in. This is quite prac­ti­cal because you don’t have to car­ry it through the entire air­port. But there is a snag. It only applies to Lufthansa flights that are also oper­at­ed by Lufthansa. If Lufthansa has com­mis­sioned an alter­na­tive air­line for the flight, the air­line is sole­ly respon­si­ble for the bag­gage and it can­not be checked in at this point.

Entering the USA

The USA is mak­ing a lot of pub­lic­i­ty that entry has been sim­pli­fied at some air­ports by automat­ing pass­port con­trol via ter­mi­nals. There is a small snag: Hard­ly any pas­sen­ger comes through this auto­mat­ed con­trol, so that 99% of all pas­sen­gers are sent to a counter after all. This in turn means that you can sched­ule a good hour to get through pass­port con­trols to get on U.S. ground (this only applies to non‑U.S. cit­i­zens.).

After all, the intro­duc­tion of the ESTA pro­ce­dure has made things a lot eas­i­er. Now a ques­tion­naire is no longer filled out in the air­craft, but online via a web­site. How­ev­er, there are fees of about 15 Euro (depend­ing on the exchange rate).

Return journey

Any­one who thinks that on the return jour­ney it is the same as on the out­ward jour­ney is mis­tak­en. One could assume that if Lufthansa has rearranged a flight to anoth­er air­line (in this case Unit­ed Air­lines) and the lug­gage on the out­ward jour­ney is han­dled com­plete­ly by this air­line, this is also the case for the return flight and the return jour­ney. False.

Of course I wait­ed at the bag­gage carousel for my lug­gage. But it did­n’t come. This alone took a while. Those who have built in lit­tle time buffer here will be left out in the cold. Because I was look­ing in vain for an employ­ee of the air­line, so that he could give me infor­ma­tion, what could have hap­pened with my lug­gage. The nice gen­tle­men from Fra­port and Lufthansa unfor­tu­nate­ly could­n’t help me. And there is no Unit­ed counter for bag­gage trac­ing.

So I tried my luck at the Air Rail Ter­mi­nal. But on the way there there is the next snag. At the begin­ning the ter­mi­nal is still sign­post­ed, but at some point it ends and there is no fur­ther indi­ca­tion of a direc­tion. Tip: Now go in the direc­tion of the long dis­tance train sta­tion. Once you have arrived at the long dis­tance sta­tion, you will also get direc­tions to the Air Rail Ter­mi­nal.

Anoth­er tip: You should go to the restroom at the air­port. The Air Rail Ter­mi­nal is locat­ed in a Deutsche Bahn build­ing and they don’t have restrooms like that. And I’m not talk­ing about pay­ing com­par­a­tive­ly high fees for it, there are sim­ply none.

At the bag­gage claim of the Air Rail Ter­mi­nal, how­ev­er, my piece of lug­gage could not be found either. So I turned to the employ­ees there and claimed as a lit­tle white lie that the Unit­ed employ­ees had sent me direct­ly to this place to col­lect my lug­gage. After a few phone calls, the Fra­port employ­ees found out that it was in the cat­a­combs of the air­port and some­how nobody knew where it belonged. Final­ly it was trans­port­ed to the Air Rail Ter­mi­nal where I could receive it.

Back at the station

How­ev­er, at the sta­tion (this time the long-dis­tance sta­tion at Frank­furt air­port) there was the prob­lem that I was only told the track. On the train sched­ules, where it is shown which wag­on stops at which point of the plat­form, it was not shown where the Lufthansa com­part­ments were locat­ed (in con­trast to the Cologne main sta­tion).

Since the flight was delayed, I missed the train. After all, I was auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to anoth­er train where I could check in online. How­ev­er, I could not be assigned a seat (i.e. Lufthansa over­booked its com­part­ment and I was put on a wait­ing list) and the “board­ing pass” dis­played a wag­on num­ber that did not exist.

To make mat­ters worse, once again all dis­plays on the ICE had failed when it final­ly arrived (after all, only 10 min­utes late). But all train pas­sen­gers stood a bit help­less in front of the train and nobody real­ly knew where to go. An obvi­ous­ly usu­al con­di­tion with the train, which did not hap­pen to me for the first time, because also the rail­way cowork­ers do not know what do next.

For­tu­nate­ly the ICE was not ful­ly booked, so I chose some free place after the train left. When there’s more activ­i­ty, it usu­al­ly does­n’t work.

Conclusion

Basi­cal­ly, the idea that air trav­ellers arriv­ing at the air­port by train can check in and pick up their lug­gage direct­ly at the sta­tion is a good one. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the flow of infor­ma­tion does not work and the trav­eller is not told what the pro­ce­dure is like if the flight is not oper­at­ed by Lufthansa, but by anoth­er air­line. It is well known that the rail­ways have such prob­lems with ICE trains that you have to plan suf­fi­cient time buffers so that the trips can be car­ried out with­out stress.

In my case, I was at the air­port three hours ear­li­er on the out­ward jour­ney and could use it, because the bag­gage check includ­ing the search for the right counter as well as the secu­ri­ty check took about one hour. Also on my way back I had almost com­plete­ly used up the time buffer of two hours at the air­port in Frank­furt to get my lug­gage.