Review of easyJet flight London → Milan in Economy

London Gatwick & No.1 Lounge

Hello from London Gatwick Airport, its May 2023 and I'm embarking on a deal of a trip. 

I travelled on a day trip to Milan Malpensa (MXP) from London Gatwick (LGW) return with easyJet and Wizzair for only £45 (€‎50/$56US), I grabbed a very early coach to get me to LGW for plenty of time. Napping on the coach I arrived on time around 04:35am in the morning at the North Terminal, I walked to the monorail which took me to the South Terminal where I was flying from.

I was flying easyJet on this outbound flight, for years the airline used both the North & South Terminals for their flights, until 2017 when they moved all their operations under the North Terminal, but since the pandemic and the reopening of travel, the airline is now back to flying from both the North & South Terminals.

I headed for security, when I got to the entrance I noticed a lady on a podium selling priority security for £7 on the go, but at the bottom of the podium was a promotion… Lounge Access from £24. I enquired further and found that I could buy a package of entrance to the No.1 Lounge as well as Priority Security for £32 (due to the gap before my flight). I figured this was an amazing deal as I had seen No.1 was selling Lounge access for £40 alone!

Given I had some 2.5 hour to 3 hours before my flight, I would make my money back on this Airport Lounge stay over going to a restaurant or bar. Also I didn't have to be rushed off if the place got busy. It was nice to return to the No.1 Lounge for the first time since January 2017!

A cooked breakfast was in order as my first priority, then it was off to find a window seat, of which I had some good choices around the lounge. I opted to base at a wooden table (or bar seating area) overlooking the South Terminal pier.

Its safe to say this is a good lounge if you want to indulge in some last minute plane spotting ahead of your trip! Whilst London Gatwick can be quite diverse in its airline traffic- be prepared to sit through so-called "easyJet hours", as it was early morning and the first arrivals were coming in from the other side of the world (North Atlantic & Asia) there were some good sightings including a Qatar Airways Boeing 787-8, Bamboo Airways Boeing 787-9 and JetBlue Airbus A321neo!

Being spring, the sun was rising quite early, just in time for the early departures and arrivals (even if most were easyJet) and I was really relaxed and enjoyed my stay there. It also allowed for some cheeky plane spotting, as well as one or two drinks of a stronger nature (cognac and Jim Bean whiskey, no less).

However the time eventually passed and I had to go off and find my flight, which was due to board at Gate 12, which meant I didn't have a huge transit from the Lounge to the Gate, but none the less- I know what budget airlines are like for boarding, so I made my way after finishing my lounge visit with a Jim Bean whiskey!

Take note of Gate 12, as this means in the line-up shots of the South Terminal from the lounge you'll see my plane is the third in the line of aircraft behind the "albino" easyJet A320!

easyJet EZ6441 (LGW-MXP)

The aircraft operating this flight today was G-EJCI, this Airbus A320ceo is a second hand arrival into the easyJet fleet with an interesting history. It was built and delivered brand new to Niki (the Austrian Airline formed by Niki Lauda in 2003) in January 2011 as OE-LEG, it later transferred into the Air Berlin fleet in February 2017 as D-ABHK. Air Berlin stopped flying in October 2017 and it became one of many ex-Air Berlin Airbus A320s transferred to easyJet Europe (based in Austria) as OE-IZD, before being transferred to the main and original easyJet UK branch the previous month in April 2023 as its current guise of G-EJCI.

When I fly low-cost airlines, I don't pay for priority boarding (Speedy Boarding as used by easyJet) so I often waltz on near the end of the boarding process. This was no exception, its less stress and hassle for me.

I took my place in Seat 5F, which offered a good view of the engine and forward wing. This easyJet A320 sported the old EZY seats as found on the Airbus A319 fleet and older Airbus A320s. I assume this was due to it coming from Air Berlin in 2018 and as easyJet has been systematically retiring the older Airbus A319 in the fleet, they used these seats to furniture the second hand Airbus A320 at a lower cost and to get rid of any sign of its NIKI/Air Berlin predecessor.

We eventually pushed back for an on time departure, but had to join the back of a que of plane all departing London Gatwick in between the morning's arrivals. London Gatwick was at one point the busiest single runway airport in the world. The airport has seen a lot of changes in the last fifty years as airlines have come, gone, reduced services and moved to LHR, but it still sees a huge diversity of airlines despite the big bases of easyJet, TUI Airways, British Airways and Wizzair.

Despite other airports over taking it its still the second busiest in the UK and likely the busiest single runway airport in Europe. Despite a desire to back a Third Runway at London Heathrow, I do believe London Gatwick does need a second operational runway.

Our turn to take off soon came about and we lined up on Runway 26L, we then thundered down the runway and took off, before making a southerly turn towards the English Channel and France as we headed for Northern Italy. The flight was scheduled for about 90 minutes.

The weather that day in the UK was quite nice, allowing for some nice rural views out of London Gatwick. I even saw Dunsfold Aerodrome at one point, the two retired BA 747-400 & ex-RAF VC-10 preserved there standing out even from over 15,000ft!

We climbed to our cruising altitude eventually. After we passed into France, our route took us West of Paris, we did a "Dog Leg" route North of Lyon, passing just West of Geneva & the Swiss boarder. We began our decent North of Turin before coming into Milan from the South of the Airport.

The crew performed their in-flight service promoting the easyJet bistro. As I had a longer flight for once I opted to kick them a good £8.95p (10EUR) for a meal deal with the Ham and Cheese sourdough toastie with a hot tea and shortbread.

It wasn't overly fancy, but I really enjoyed it. The crew also did a Duty Free run later in the flight, but I wasn't interested due to easyJet no longer selling model planes of their Airbus A320 fleet… forget the perfume and watches!

As I had been up for hours at this point (my coach left my town at 01:30am UK time), I opted to grab some shut eye, so I was well untruly "conked out" for the latter half of the flight, until the pilots announced we had began our decent into Milan, giving us a weather update.

As a briefly mentioned earlier, we started descending just North of another popular Italian city- Turin. We did some circuits as we descended through the heavy and multiple layers of cloud cover. Very soon the outskirts of the city of Milan came into view on finals. Before long we touched down into Milan Malpensa, just after 10:30am local time.

After taxiing around Malpensa Airport, even seeing some preserved planes at the Volandia Aviation Museum and various US aircraft having flown in from the likes of New York, Boston and Chicago, we pulled up on a remote stand alongside some other easyJet aircraft, we were going to be finishing with a bus to the non-Schengen arrivals, hopefully ahead of the freshly arrived US travellers.

I was one of the last off the plane (aside from some mobility assistance passengers), I got to the bus and swung around to grab this final shot of our aircraft after the flight down. Concluding my 20th Flight with easyJet!

What's that? How was passport control?

Despite a bit of a wait, however the Italians were allowing UK citizens to use the biometric lanes alongside the US, Israeli and other eligible passports, so it was not too long before we got through. I think overall it was about 15 minutes waiting to be stamped into Italy, so not the worst case scenario by far.