[Anonymous]

[business traveller]

We were originally booked to fly back from New York on the A380. That was one of the reasons we booked this particular flight! It came as a shock just a few weeks before the flight that I found out that it had changed to an older 747-400. I felt that the flight back would not be as good as the flight there which was on a B747-8i. It turned out in the end though that it was better! Simply because of the new in-flight entertainment screens! These were the new (I think, Panasonic) style screens, which were black, high resolution and very fast and responsive compared to the older type! The only downside compared to the newer jumbo was no cameras you could watch, and the choice of films wasn't as good as the flight out, but there were still some good picks and enough to keep me entertained!

Check-In:

We flew into Newark and for this flight, we departed from JFK. After the miserable sights of Newark, we firmly decided never to fly there again and were very much looking forward to flying from JFK Terminal 1. We were not disappointed! Check-in was smooth and we checked our bags in and were through security within the space of about 30 minutes.

JFK Terminal 1:

Terminal 1 is not the biggest terminal I have ever flown form but it was a decent size. It had all the essentials, a decent sized duty free store, good views to the apron and plenty of comfortable seating. It was fairly modern inside, but more importantly for us, 100,000 times better than Newark!

Air France Lounge:

As we were Priority Pass members, we were able to use either the Korean Air or Air France lounges at Terminal 1. We opted for the Air France one as it had much better reviews. As we entered, the man at the counter was not talkative at all. The only words he muttered were "First Floor only." Not a happy welcome but none the less, it was a very modern lounge which had only been refurbished a couple of years ok. There were some very nice food and drink options, including free champagne! There was an ok amount of seating and decent views to the New York City Skyline. Poor views to the apron though. It was very comfortable though and 3 hours simply flew by!

Boarding:

For reasons I still am not aware about our flight was delayed for 1 hour. However, once boarding began, it was pretty smooth and didn't take very long at all. Once everyone was on-board, we set off straight away. We didn't have to wait too long at the runway but air traffic was quite busy. Once we did take-off, I was amazed to see on my screen that the estimated flight time was just 6:30hrs! In reality though, it was just 6, resulting in us arriving in Frankfurt exactly on time!

Food and Drink:

Cabin crew came around regularly with drinks for passengers. For our dinner, we had the choice of either chicken or pasta. I opted for the pasta as I had the chicken on the outbound flight. I was expecting it to be the same as my brothers as he had it on the way out and it was very good for air plane food! Unfortunately, this was not the case. It wasn't something to scream about, I could only call it decent. About 1:30hr before landing though, we were served breakfast which included a muffin and some fruit. The fruit I didn't like as I don't like Mango's, but the muffin was excellent. The muffin wasn't too small either!

Entertainment:

As I said before, the newly refitted 747-400 fleet have the new screens which are very high definition, responsive and fast! The only let down was a pretty poor selection of films to choose from. It was not as good as the selection on the flight out (we flew out in March 2016 and back in April 2016).

Arrival: I had a connecting flight back to Birmingham, UK, but we arrived on time, somehow! We arrived at our gate at the Z concourse, which resulted in a very, very, very long walk to my gate which departed from B concourse. We eventually went through security again though and arrived at my connecting flight in perfect time! Frankfurt Airport is one of the best airports I have been to. Despite it's gigantic size, it copes very well, in terms of connecting flights and organisation. It may change regularly but I love that you receive your departure gate like 3 days in advance! So organised.

Conclusion:

Overall, I was satisfied on this flight. The food could have been better, but it must have just been JFK as the food out from Frankfurt was fantastic! To sum it all up: "One of the better economy class' I have experienced".

Review courtesy of Seatplans.com. Original review by user ThomasSmith2 can be found here

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