You Don’t Need To Fly Lufthansa First Class To Be Driven To Your Plane In Frankfurt

One of the world’s top first class lounges is the Lufthansa First Class Terminal in Frankfurt.

Lufthansa-FCT

It’s completely separate from the main passenger terminal. Instead you pull up to the First Class Terminal, are greeted by a PA (personal assistant), and they take your bags from you and escort you through the security channel, which is the most efficient process you’ll find anywhere.

Lufthansa-FCT-Entrance

A minute after arriving at the terminal you’ll be sitting in the departures area sipping on a drink.

Lufthansa-FCT

Since the First Class Terminal is completely separate from the rest of the terminal, the only way to get to your plane is by car. Which is awesome, because when your flight is ready for boarding you’ll be driven to your plane in a Mercedes or Porsche. As an aviation geek, there’s something magical about driving across the tarmac under the tails of some massive planes.

Lufthansa-FCT-5

Well, as it turns out, you don’t necessarily have to be flying Lufthansa first class to be driven across the tarmac in a private car. Frankfurt Airport itself offers a gate-to-gate service, described as follows:

Only an hour to change planes! At a large, mostly unfamiliar airport that’s like a labyrinth, full of signs in languages not everyone understands. While also keeping an eye on fellow travelers and managing boarding passes, passports, and hand luggage. It can, but doesn’t have to be, strenuous and stressful. Fortunately, there’s a better way!

The Gate to Gate Service navigates you comfortably through Frankfurt Airport to your continuing flight, taking everything off your hands and freeing you from worrying about anything. We pick you up right at your arrival gate after you deplane, then take you through all of the required checks to the departure gate for your onward flight. You cover most of the distance in a posh limousine or gate taxi right across the apron. Once there, our service employee says goodbye to let you board on your own. If there is enough time and you’re in the mood for shopping, you can request a stop for this along the way.

The promotional image used for this service seems to be of a Mercedes S-Class, so hopefully that’s actually what they use for the service.

Lufthansa-Gate-To-Gate

Now, I’m still not entirely sure how this works, given that this service doesn’t seem to come with lounge access or anything. In other words, if you’re flying Lufthansa business class and have a two hour layover, do they pick you up, bring you to the lounge, and then take you to the plane when your flight is ready for boarding? I’d also only use this if I knew my flights were arriving and departing from different concourses, since I assume they’re not driving you across the tarmac if there’s no need to (as nice as it would be). 😉

The pricing seems quite reasonable, as follows:

  • 1 person: 99EUR
  • 2 people: 99EUR
  • 3 people: 129EUR
  • 4 people: 149EUR
  • 5 people: 169EUR

Bottom line

I’ll be testing this out the next time I’m passing through Frankfurt Airport and not flying Lufthansa first class. There are plenty of airlines which offer VIP services, though usually they’re outrageously priced. While I’m not totally clear on how this one works, in theory it seems like it could be not-too-terrible of a deal.

Has anyone used the gate-to-gate service at Frankfurt Airport? 

(Tip of the hat to Steve)

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soapvivor Guest

Can someone tell me if they used the service and the arrival and departure terminal was the same? Does driving you from gate to gate mean a completely different terminal? I have 1 hour to connect, arriving from Budapest and departing for Calgary, it's both arriving and departing in Terminal 1. Just wondering if they still drive you to the gate, or expedite you through passport control?

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AKS Guest

I used it for my family after a long haul flight, when we had just an hour to make the connection, and I had 2 children under the age of 5. It made all the difference to get to our boarding gate on time. There is a separate security area you go through as well. The Frankfurt airport is immense and some workers use bicycles to get around. Trying to make a connection on the other side of the airport under an hour, with 2 small and very tired kids and all their stuff, is next to impossible. My elderly parents also used this for years when they were shuttled through the airport in wheelchairs. It was a good experience.

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Suzanne Guest

By the way, we were flying economy, not first or business class. And to answer jtpc's question, I don't know if they have their own passport control, but there was only one person in line before us. And we did not have to pass through security again to make the connecting flight.

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Suzanne Guest

Yes! And it was well worth the Euros. My son and I used the Gate to Gate service at Frankfurt and it saved our bacon! Our travel agent booked us on a flight from LAX to FRA giving us a one hour layover in Milan. I didn't realize it until we got home from booking the flights and she said it was too late to change them. We needed to make the flight because we were meeting my cousin at Malpensa, picking up a car and driving for three hours with rain in the forecast (I was not an experienced driver in Italy). I would highly recommend the Gate to Gate service. Even with our flight arriving 30 minutes late, we made our connecting flight thanks to the skilled expediter who picked us up at our gate. We saw her right away - she was waiting at the bottom of the escalator with a sign bearing our name -- and she whisked us away in her clean sedan. She first drove to a back entrance to the immigration/customs desk and got us through lickety split. We got back into her car and she drove us across the runway to the shuttle that would take us to our gate. We made it with just enough time for me to use the restroom before boarding. We would never have made our flight without this service. Do a simple Google search of the Frankfurt Airport and you will see that it is difficult to make short connecting flights. We paid about $100 for the two of us, but it was money well spent.

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idrather notsay New Member

Although my story above leaves me unable to say I have used the service (I was flying economy) I am pretty sure that the 1st class passengers involved in the tight connection I experienced (and wrote about in the previous comments) were driven to their connection and were not simply walked through passport/security. I had to sprint in and go through passports, and they were nowhere to be seen. They had a completely separate route. And they were told that they would be driven, and that they would definitely make the connection, although those of us in economy would not make it. (They relayed to me that they had been told this while we were all waiting to deboard in FRA). I can't see how this worked if they did not have a separate way of clearing passport control, and a way that was guaranteed to be quick enough. That said, I sprinted, and someone else who made the connection sprinted too and told me that he had actually beaten the first class passengers. But we got lucky that passport control was entirely empty at that moment.

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