Review of Vueling Airlines flight Barcelona → Tel Aviv in Economy

Hello Everyone. Here's another FR. This time a Red-eye flight with vueling from Barcelona to Tel Aviv. At the begining of october 2018 I was invited a few days in the middle east in order to participate in a conference, so I had the opportunity to analize this flight. There are not many pictures because all flight was made during the night, but anyway I hope you like it! So let's go.

From Barcelona to Tel Aviv there are many options, both cities are connected with lots of flights every day. You can fly with El Al, Vueling, Norwegian, Arkia directly. Also you can choose any european city with a stopover. In my case the flight was choosen by an organisation, so I wasn't able to choose the flight. Anyway it's interesting to share this experience.

I arrived at Terminal 1 two hours before departure. At that time vueling check in counters were absoutely empty (but during the day they are absolutely full of people, specially on summer time) and I made the check in very quick. After the security and immigration controls, it was time to proceed to our boarding area. Because it was very early I spent some time in the bar. During  that time EK186 to Dubai was being boarded by hunreds of people and it's crew. 

Our STD was 23:05, but gate was ready an hour before boarding. This flight was gonna be full that day, even EL AL is offering the same flight just a few minutes later. So it was time to board our A320 for tonight's flight. 

Once on board I went to my seat: 16 F tonight. As you know, vueling is famous for it's reduced legroom and it's poor service. Usually I use this airline to fly from Barcelona to other regions of Europe and the Iberian Peninsula, but I've never been on such a long flight with the airline. Of course no pillow or blankets were offered to the passengers, you can't also buy them on these longer flights. 

Captain welcomed us onboard and informed us some things about the flight: 3:45 flight time with nice weather but a little delay because of heavy weight which obligated to change flight plan and fuel consumption. While we were waiting a brandly new Iberia A320(neo?) arrived on the last flight of the day from Madrid.  

We made pushback and taxied to runway 7L for takeoff. Usually flights are departing from RWY 25L/7R but due to heavy weight captain told us he wanted to use the longest runway of the airport. I was quite surprised about what kind of weight were we wearing onboard…

Anyway, we took off a few minutes before midnight and headed to the west to across the mediterranean sea, 

The flight was uneventful. Seat pitch was very small and it was difficult to sleep. Cabin crew passed through the cabin to offer the BOB service, but at that time of the night most of the passengers were asleep. Even that, cabin lights remained ON most of the flight. I still don't understand that, but it was very uncomfortable. 

Here's a picture of the menu, which I didn't use.  

I slept a little bit and I woke up a few minutes before the start of our descent. As Vueling is not offering any kind of flight map or APP, I had no information about our location or how far we were from our destination. 
The cabin crew made a second round offering BOB products. I wanted to take a sandwich but they didn't hear me. Actually I was still kinda asleep. 

We started our descent into Tel Aviv airport and finally lights were possible to be seen from the window.  

We were getting closer and landed a few minutes after 4AM. Crew welcomed us in Ben Gurion airport and we taxied to our gate. We used a remote stand and the bus picked us and brought passengers to the terminal. 

Sorry for the bad quality of some of the pictures. 

I arrived at the building where I made our border control access (surprisingly fast) and got out of the terminal. There was a taxi driver waiting and made it to got out of the airport and headed to our final destination, quite far away. 


My return flight to Barcelona was made by Arkia a few days later, but It was made under other circumstances and I didn't had the chance to make a FR. A bad experience at the departure airport helped to take my decision not to work on my flight back home. I hope you understand this personal decision!

Thank you very much for your attention!