Easter trip to Berlin (part 1: LCY-ZRH)

While I was in Boston, the two friends I was visiting told me that they were heading to Berlin around the Easter weekend.  I have a general policy that if any of my friends show up to Europe, I’ll join them for the weekend.  Normally it’s because I haven’t seen them for a while, but I’ve never been to Berlin before, and I didn’t have any plans for the 4-day weekend.  So, I decided to go ahead and join them.

I wanted to book the London City to Berlin flights on British Airways, but the flights were prohibitively expensive, which was partially due to the close-in booking and partially because BA had an operational melt down in Early April due to travel coming back but the Heathrow being understaffed.  EasyJet also had one, so my preferred flight (Gatwick to Berlin) wasn’t available either.

When I checked, the most reasonable paid-for option I could find was to fly Lufthansa via Frankfurt for £450, which was more than I wanted to pay.  I tried to find an award ticket on British Airways but couldn’t, so no direct flight for me.  I did find award availability on United, however.  Because I booked the ticket pretty close-in, the best/most interesting flights I found were London City to Zurich to Berlin and then Berlin to Warsaw to Heathrow.  Not the most direct routings, but definitely interesting ones.  United (in theory) priced the flights for 33k miles in economy or 53k in business.  Only business class was available on the return leg, however.  I opted to spend the extra 10k miles (5k/flight) and upgrade to business class. 

At the very least, I managed to get a flight from London City, which meant I was able to take the Jubilee Line to the DLR for a 40-minute journey, instead of an 80-minute journey.  In addition, I only needed to arrive >30 minutes before the flight, instead of >90 minutes. 

On the one hand, I like sitting in an airport lounge before a flight, but strolling up to an airport and then immediately getting on the flight is arguably much better.  I made my way to gate 22, which was apparently downstairs. 

Like my previous flight from City Airport, I got to walk up to the plane and board via the stairs. 

They boarded business class first.  This time, I decided to get on early to check out the plane, since I had never been on this type of plane before and wanted to scope it out.

I love walking up to planes specifically because I get to be up close and personal with the aircraft and its engines.

I selected seat 1A for myself.  The A220 is set up in a 2-3 configuration, which means that in business class, I got the 2 seats to myself and the middle seat is blocked on the 3 side.  This is a step up from British Airways or Finnair, where they only block middle seats (so no seats are blocked when there are only 2 seats).

Interestingly, I got the entire set of 5 to myself.  The last time I flew Swiss (in 2015), the business class was way oversized (at least 8 empty rows) and coach was very poorly spaced out.  I don’t know if they do this on purpose so that business class feels like more of a step up or if the seating IT system just doesn’t try to optimize anything.  Based on my experience on Lufthansa in 2020, it might well just be the latter…

The tiny monitor was a great touch; I loved being able to see the flight map, and it’s also very helpful for the safety video.  As is standard since the pandemic, a small water bottle and sanitizing wipe were handed to each business class passenger.

The meal service was served shortly after the strong take off.  It consisted of a small cheese plate, some cold cuts with a (soggy) crouton salad.  It was served with a choice of a white or brown bread roll and an apple compote for dessert.  I also selected a Swiss beer to go with it. The food was largely on par with what you’d expect from such a short intra-European flight.  However, I was a bit underwhelmed given that this was nominally a dinner time flight and City Airport doesn’t have a lounge.  At the end of the flight, they gave out pieces of Swiss chocolate, as is standard. 

I had a really nice flight and enjoyed the gorgeous scenery into Zurich.  The A220 is a marvelous aircraft and is a noticeable step up over the E190s that almost every other airline uses to serve London City.

In summary, the first short flight of this trip was a lot of fun.  I was extremely excited to try out a new aircraft type, and it certainly did not disappoint.  The ground experience at City airport was typical (3/5).  The A220 business class seat was typical for intra-Europe, but the blocked off aisle seat was a nice plus (4/5).  The food was typical but underwhelming for a dinner time flight (2/5).  The service was fine as well (4/5).  The in-flight entertainment was limited to the inflight map, but that’s a step up over some airlines in Europe (2/5). I enjoyed this short flight on a new aircraft type, even if the flight itself was unremarkable (15/25 overall).

From a points perspective, I used 53,000 United miles and spent $156 in total for the entire set of 4 flights.  The comparison flight is a return trip in Lufthansa in economy, which would’ve cost £450 ($585). I’d value 53,000 miles as being worth around $585.  That’s a bit much for a weekend trip to/from Berlin, but that’s the advantage of having a points stash; every once in a while, you can splurge a bit.