Review of Brussels Airlines flight Madrid → Brussels in Economy

Hello and welcome back to this series of flight reports covering my trip to Madrid and Senegal!

Here's the routing:

8/1/16: DL415 - JFK-MAD, A330-300, Business (Here)
8/6/16: SN3732 - MAD-BRU, A319, Economy (Plus?) (This Report)
8/6/16: SN203 - BRU-DKR, A330-300, Economy (Here
8/12/16: DL216 - DKR-JFK, B757-200, Economy (Here)

After a very early wake-up call and a short cab ride to the airport (the metro doesn't start running until 6am), we arrived at Terminal 2 at 4:30.



The interior of T2 is quite nice.



Even though I had just booked a standard economy ticket, we ended up with the 'Flex and Fast' version of economy. Basically, we ended up with a lot of perks that we didn't pay for.

Perk #1 - check in was in the premium line, but a very slow family going to NYC ended up making the line longer than the standard economy line, taking about 10 minutes.



Old school FIDS on the way to security.



I knew this seemed too quick - it actually took about 6 minutes.



Once through security, the only route to the gates was through duty-free.



Our gate today was B64.



OO-SSS was the plane of the day. Although it's 13 years old, it had spent the majority of its life with Frontier, having only been delivered to SN 11 days before this flight on a lease from GECAS.



There was a ton of seating around the gate, so I chose a seat and took a nap until it was time for boarding, which was called right at 6:00.



Perk #2 - Flex and Fast yields priority boarding, so, for the second flight in the row, I was the first passenger on the plane. The cabin still smelled new.



Perk #3 - sitting in the second row of the plane. The first row of the plane was reserved for "J", but it stayed empty on this flight.



Some UX planes next door.



The pitch actually seemed pretty decent (travel backpack makes another appearance!).



No IFE here.



The purser of the flight introduced himself by name to everyone in Flex and Fast and told us that if we needed anything, to just ask.

Soon enough, boarding was complete - it only took 14 minutes! The purser made announcements in English, German, and French, but no Spanish - odd. Flight time would be 2 hours.

We pushed back at 6:27.



Taxi began at 6:32. Unfortunately, iPhone pictures don't come out too well when it's dark.



Takeoff down runway 36L at 6:41 - 16 minutes behind schedule.



Unsure of whether I was going to get a meal or not, I decided to explore the seatback 'pocket' contents.



Right around 7:00, the purser came back with breakfast in hand and asked if I wanted to drink. I asked for a Sprite, but, "we don't have sprite", so he offered Fanta instead.

When I turned around, however, there was nothing! I guess that's perk #4 - free food!



It was actually a decent selection for breakfast - a hot 'scrambled egg disk', a chocolate croissant, peach yogurt, and some type of sweet bread. Everything was tasty.



Before descent, I'll recap seat and crew.

The seat was VERY thin and hard, but I guess that's what short haul Y is in Europe these days. The width and legroom were sufficient. Overall, it was great for a 2 hour flight.

I can't say enough good things about the purser. He was SO nice and friendly and really treated me like I was sitting in a longhaul J cabin.

Around 8:15, I felt the plane start to descend, but I also felt myself falling asleep.



This has never ever happened to me before, but I fell asleep and woke up as we hit the runway! We touched down on 26L at 8:44 - 4 minutes behind schedule.

Some spotting on the way to the gate.



The captain announced that we would deplane at the non-Schengen area of the terminal and take a bus to the Schengen area.

We arrived at the gate at 8:48.



The bus ride offered some nice views of a TUI B788.



That pretty much wraps up this report - to be continued in BRU-DKR!

Thanks so much for reading! Please leave a comment if you feel inclined - I love reading and responding to them!

-Daniel