Review of Ukraine International flight from Warsaw to Kiev in Economy

Hi everyone,
Welcome to the first part of my trip to Belarus via Kiev with Ukraine International Airlines. Here is the whole trip plan:
12.08 WAW-KBP, FLIGHT PS 804
12.08 KBP-MSQ, FLIGHT PS 893
15.08 MSQ-KBP, FLIGHT PS 892
15.08 KBP-WAW, FLIGHT PS 803
When in the beginning of this year Belarus opened its borders to EU citizens with no need for visa (the only condition is to stay not more than 5 days and come to Minsk by plane), we decided it's high time to visit this neighbour country that in our minds has always been so distant and somehow exotic. Some of our friends reactions where more than funny: "are you crazy?", "what for?", "isn't it dangerous?". Sad but true: when you know almost nothing about one place and you let your imagination powered by media work, you begin to be afraid and spread your fear. I can't say Belarus is just a typical democratic European country, we all know it is not, some even compare it to the North Korea (that's no doubt exagerated), but if you make an effort to read about it, ask people who have already been there, and finally go there yourself, you find out there's nothing to be afraid of. Travelling makes you a better, more open minded and generally wiser man. That's why I love it so much.
There are at least two direct daily flights from Warsaw to Minsk operated or by LOT or by Belavia but no matter what day you choose, you always loose half of the day as the flights are in the afternoon only and as we wanted to make it within the long weekend (15.08 is a bank holiday in Poland and that combined with a day off on Monday the 14th and weekend, gave us 4 days), the best solution was to fly UIA and use a day long stopover to see Kiev that we always heard of as a beautiful city.
A week before our trip, I decided to order us an extra meal for the last leg (the flight back from Kiev to Warsaw on the 15th of August). The main reason was I already knew from my flight via KBP in March that the food offer on this airport is terribly poor. On the other hand I was simply curious about this UIA meal service and the price 7 euro didn't seem high at all. I chose two meals, paid by credit card and after a while received a strange e-mail saying that my meals will be served on the first leg. Attached to the same e-mail was a voucher for two meals to be served on the last leg, exactly as I ordered it. After more than 15 minutes spent on the phone with both Warsaw and Kiev UIA call center, I received an e-mail that everything is fine, there's been a mistake and our meals will be served on the last leg, not before. To be honest some silent voice inside me told me it wasn't truth, but let's life tell the story itself.
Our first flight was supposed to be operated by a 5 year old Embraer 190. I was happy as I didn't want to fly any of the UIA classic 737s and I have already flown their 737-800, so an E190 would be a nice change. Unfortunately, the aircraft that came to Warsaw the previous evening and was supposed to take us to Kiev in the morning was a 20-year old 737-300. I wasn't happy at all…
We were scheduled to depart at 06:00 a.m., so needed to wake up early and come to the airport at least 1:30 before the flight, having in mind the time needed for baggage drop, security and passport control. There where many charter flights to depart this morning so despite the airport being quite empty in total, all the check points were more than crowded.

Wizz A-321 to Luton

There she is, our 737-300 UR-GBA

Boarding starts on time and that's good as we are quite sleepy

The aircraft nose seen from the jetbridge

Well, the first onboard impression isn't bad at all. The interior looks well maintained, clean and the legroom is more than ok.

Let's look out of the window (that is not scratched as often on older aircraft).

Travel Service 737-800

Not to much traffic this hour

Sunrise and Air Berlin Q400

Wizz A321

It was one of the longest take-offs in my life and definitely the longest I've had on a 737. I don't know why (I've read that in high temeperatures the air density is lower and the aircraft needs more speed to generate enough lift) but it took us almost 45 seconds and almost the whole lenght of the runway before we finally got airborn. The last seconds were scary as I know very well the airport area and I knew we were already close to the runway edge and still on the ground. When we finally made it we flew very low for about 20 seconds. That was strange too. Then we started to climb and everything looked normal.

It was 10 minutes after the fasten seat belt sign was off, when a young CC approached us and before she even started to speak, I knew what she was going to ask: "Did you order a meal?" Yes I did but not for this flight…. I explained her the situation and showed the voucher received from the airline for the meal to be served on the last flight, not the first one. She said there must have occured a mistake and we for sure will receive a meal on the last flight but as this one is also for us, she would recommend taking it. So we did. Unwilling to eat anything so early in the morning, we were served chicken with ratatouille and pasta carbonara in the second set. There was also a salad (broccoli with feta cheese and almond flakes) and a piece of gingerbread cake, a roll and butter. Even though I wasn't hungry and we didn't plan to eat that early, I must say it was very good! The second meal (italian lunch with pasta carbonara) was too dry but my chicken tasted good and the cake even better.

To my big surprise the cuttlery was a metal one and everything was served on china with UIA logo. Nice.

I think we attracted quite an audience with our trays with lunch on an early morning flight where only water was served for free. Anyway this extra meal made our day and having had this lunch for breakfast we were ready to start a day long stay in Kiev.
Let's look what we have inside the seatpocket. A very classic safety card of this classic 737…

An inflight magazine, duty free magazine and the BOB menu

The truth is that an onboard meal always makes time run faster. We start our descend towards Kiev and shortly the big Dnipro river appears. That means we are about to land.

Dnipro is perhaps the widest river I have ever seen (or maybe Volga in Russia that I saw while flying from BKK to SVO was bigger) and it is always nice to overfly it. It looks as if the surrounding fields have been flooded.

On short finals with the view of summer Ukrainian fields

And here I am, back to Boryspil airport 5 months later, this time the weather is quite different, 35 degrees Celsius forecasted for today, no clouds, just sun and blue sky :) When I landed here from Athens in March there were only 2 degrees Celsius and after 22 degrees in Athens it was quite a shock.

We stopped at a very remote stand and waited about 10 minutes for the stairs to come. The aircraft interior immidiately became so hot it was hardly bearable but finally the stairs and the bus appeared.
Our 737-300 during deboarding

The way to the terminal is long but the passport control very smooth and fast. We have 11 hours between the flights so I hope to be able to see the main sites in Kiev. That's it for now. I will post some pics in the next leg report. Many thanks for reading!