Since I live close to Frankfurt, the Frankfurt am Main airport is the departure point of many travels I do as airline passenger. Germany’s biggest airport is not exactly an example of good design, simplicity and is really not a time saver. I already posted a lot about it, click here, here, here or here to learn more about my personal relationship with this airport.
This post is not about the new runway (the fourth one) and terminal (the third one) that are being built right now, but on a new iPhone application to help passengers to find their check-in counter or their gate. Hello ? Why on earth would someone need something like that ? A GPS with some WiFi support to guide passengers inside an airport ? Is that such a labyrinth ? What about the signs ? And if the navigation is that complex, why not invest in some simplification, or new design ?
This application is called “Lufthansa Navigator” and can be downloaded for free from the AppStore. I tested it and must say it’s a cool tool. There’s a simulation mode making possible to test it without having to be at the airport, or to get an idea of where you’ll have to go. It looks a bit like a GPS navigator for cars, displaying a map with your present position and the route to follow to destination and the remaining distance. Talking about long transit times… the distance from the parking to the gate A42 is not less than 1400 meters!
On the plus side – there has to be something positive… – it’s possible to select the destination by specifying a flight and let the application automatically finds the corresponding gate. This application works only for terminal 1 and Lufthansa flights.
All of that being said, Frankfurt is not the only “complex” airport in the world. A good friend of mine recently flew back from Hong-Kong and walked around the terminal twelve times without founding the AirFrance lounge…
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I used to work for a large three-letter German software company located not too far from Frankfurt actually who had the same approach to complex systems: keep the system complex and train (i.e. charge in that case) the user.
Funny that you mention the hike from the parking to the very last Lufthansa gate, I had that very experience a few years ago. A good thing they don’t charge for luggage trolleys. Finding your way from the international terminal to the train station also got interesting last year with all the construction work going on.
My top FRA experience has to be trying to find a gas station at night before returning the rental car. The usual gas station (the one next to the Lufthansa employee car park) wouldn’t take my credit card, so I kept driving and ended up driving around Cargo City, where everything looks the same. Then I found the other gas station, the one you cannot see from the terminal because it’s in a dip behind a bridge. Fun times. After that I always refuelled at the last gas station on the A5.
One last thing that amazes me about FRA is that such a large airport cannot have a good restaurant, or maybe I just haven’t found it.
Julien, if you like sushis and Asian food, try the restaurant at behind the check-in counters in terminal 1. And if you’ve a car, take the 20 minutes drive to Egelsbach airport and have lunch at the Schubeck Check-Inn restaurant there, it’s one of the best in the region.
Thanks for the tip! I saw your guest post today on EgelsBach on Golf Hotel Whiskey, I’ll check it out the next time I’m around the area. I’m not sure I’ll come to Germany this year, it looks like the whole of Germany is planning to visit us in Australia