Review of Austrian Airlines flight from Milan to Vienna in Economy

Hi,
This is the 3rd leg of my short trip to Milan with Austrian Airlines. It hasn't been a very long stay unfortunately and even though I don't consider Milan my favourite Italian city I was sad to be leaving this great country having spent here just 1,5 day.
The greatest thing about being in Milan, except for food and coffee, is one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. I didn't have much time yet I found a moment to go there in the evening for a short walk.

I woke up quite early in the morning to get to this situated in the middle of nowhere airport on time and saw this great Alps view from my hotel room

As I have already mentioned I don't like Malpensa not only because it isn't a very nice airport but also because it is really far away from the city. The best airport to travel to Milan is without doubt Linate but currently there are no flights to this airport from Warsaw as Alitalia stopped operating on LIN-WAW route 2 years ago. I used to fly from Rome to Warsaw via Linate in 2014 and having a less than 5 hours break between the flights I managed to go to the city center, visit my favourite catherdral and come back to the aiport having still plenty of time left. It wouldn't be possible while flying via Malpensa. Alitalia closed the LIN-WAW route even thought it was quite popular but who understands Alitalia?
This time I was quite lucky to get a car ride to Malpensa so it wasn't that bad. I found Austrian desks easily too, so maybe something has changed for better? :)

Having nothing to do lanside, I headed to the gates, passed the very uneventful as always security check, bought a bottle of Aperol in duty free, took some pictures and waited near my gate for boarding.

Look who's coming!

And my E-195 arrives from Vienna

Boarding starts on time and while passing the gate I'm given a new boarding pass with a new seat. Ok, let's see how we fly on the 19F…

I take my changed seat, look out of the window and see … direct flight to Warsaw by LOT boarding at the next gate. Hi there!

Some spotting during push back and taxi

Finnair A321 to HEL

Some nice tails including SAS, TAP and Aegean

Blue Panorama

Neos

Meridiana

and Qatar cargo

Time to go up and leave Malpensa

We take a deep turn right and the airport appears in the distance

The cabin of this E-95 looks very nice too while in the aft rows.

However comparing to the first rows, the legroom is much poorer

Standard Austrian service: choice of beverages and salty/sweet snack

We are slowly leaving northern Italy an preparing to cross the Alps. This is going to be another very calm flight over the mountains.

Having crossed the Alps not a very good message arrives from the cockpit: due to a congested air traffic over Vienna we will need to wait a little bit up in the air before landing. Having only 30 minutes between the flights, this holding can cost me hours of waiting for another connection. The guy sitting next to me has a connecting flight too, just five minutes later and we both decide to ask one of the FAs if we are going to make it. She assures us we should be fine and catch our connecting flights. It seems most of the passengers are in the same situation and become more and more anxious with every circle we make. Finally the Neusiedler See appears and it seems we are on short finals.

It's very cloudy in Vienna, nothing like just an hour ago in Milan

Finally on the ground, it seems I'm going to make it…

Wait, a bus deboarding? oh no! My chances to catch Fokker 100 to WAW are again smaller and smaller… I don't care about waiting for another flight but I don't want to miss perhaps the one and only possibility to fly F100 before it stops it's operations. Hope dies last!

Thanks for reading!