JAL celebrated 50 years in Frankfurt

JAL celebrated 50th anniversary of the Tokyo - Frankfurt route. But something is seriously wrong with the cake they received as a gift from FRAPORT. Image from Japan Airlines

Japan Airlines (JAL) celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Tokyo - Frankfurt route on October 4 2012. A JAL mini Oktoberfest was held at the departure gate of JL408 to celebrate the occasion and the lucky passengers also received some special gifts from JAL too!

At the JAL mini Oktoberfest, an exhibition was held showing photos of JAL's 50 years in Frankfurt. JAL staffs also dressed in traditional national costumes of both countries. So you could see Japanese and German staffs dressed in Tracht and Kimono. They also brought out some of the old JAL cabin attendant uniforms! But of course they were not drinking at this special Oktoberfest :P

The Frankfurt airport company, FRAPORT, also gifted JAL a giant cake with a JAL plane on it. It was a really nice gesture but as you can see in the photo above, the cake was wrong in so many levels LOL You can still see it has the old "The Arc of the Sun" logo and livery. They obviously noticed the mistake and put the new Tsurumaru (crane) logo to cover up the old one. But what about the tail? I would have at least put 2 on the tail too :P The person in charge of the cake at FRAPORT should have done a better job :P They probably made this mistake because currently none of the 777-300ER has been painted with the new livery yet. Therefore, the only planes JAL sends to Frankfurt are the ones with the old livery and logo and they just assume that's the latest one :)

The lucky passengers on this flight also receive some special souvenirs. In addition to the standard certificate, they also received origami cranes made by JAL staffs and a timetable showing JAL's flight schedules to Europe back in October 1962. Turns out back in the days when JAL first launched the Frankfurt route, it took the passengers approximately 28 hours to get from Tokyo to Frankfurt :o It was originally operated with a 2 class configured Convair 880. The crazy routing was Tokyo Haneda - Hong Kong - Bangkok - Calcutta - Karachi - Kuwait - Cairo - Rome - Frankfurt. A total of 7 meals were served during the entire journey LOL Can you imagine eating 7 meals within 28 hours :o Nowadays the Tokyo Narita - Frankfurt flight only takes about 11 hours!

JAL official Facebook page (Japanese only) has posted an article and photos of the celebration.