Review of LATAM flight Cúcuta → Bogota in Economy

Hello and welcome again, today with a short flight. After almost a month lost in the Mountains of "Serranía de San Lucas" I had planned a short 4 days route to explore some cities such as Bucaramanga and Cúcuta. On the 4th of august I had to be in Bogota. From Cúcuta to Bogota you have 2 options. Bus and plane. By bus is a 16 hours trip which I obviously said NO because it was too long. It was quite cheaper but maybe 30€ less. By plane you is a short 50 minutes hop. From Cucuta to Bogota you can fly with Avianca or LATAM. I choosed LATAM because of the price, even I took a different fare because I had to check my bag. This fare includes seat selection. On national flights LATAM is offering a low cost service so you have to pay for everything (well, like most of common airlines)

On the 4th of august at night, I went to the airport from the city center. Camilo Daza, which is the name of the airport, is located quite close to the city so it didn't take me more than 15 minutes to get there. Nowadays the airport is being remodeled and I think the idea is to make the terminal quite bigger. There are a few check in counters from where I made my check in to Bogota. After that I went to the security control but they requested me to pay a fee for the region. I think the price was 6000 colombian pesos, which are 2€. That was a surprise for me, but i had no chance.

After the security control I went to my gate. The airport is very small and quite old so the process was very fast.

Air side



There is no much traffic but I remember there were 2 flights before mine, one to Bucaramanga and the Avianca flight which was flying to Bogota a few minutes before mine. That was the other option for my flight back to the capital in case not to have choosen LATAM.

Some 30 minutes before STD boarding was made. The flight was full and it was very chaotic, but I managed to board quite fast and occupy my seat, 19L. That was a window in the right side of the aircraft.



Seat 19L



I can't remember the registration of the aircraft but as you can see is painted with the new LATAM's logo. It was cool. Some announcements were made on board requesting the passengers to seat on their seats and not to block the central corridor. And finally boarding was complete. Before boarding I used airport's wifi, which worked very good, to download LATAM's in flight enterteinement app. It was the first time in my life to have this kind of enterteinment but I found it quite cool. Even that, this was a 50 minutes flight and it wasn't a big problem at all but on longer flights it can be a problem for the phone's battery. I have no idea about any battery charge possibilities on newer LATAM airplanes, so just take care about that if you are flying with them.

Phone's picture :D


By the time we started with the pushback. Safety video was also played at the same time and engines were started. Then it started raining. At the background some lights were seen. "We're going to have fun" i thank. We took off at 23:00 under a heavy rain. Those first minutes of flight were obviously quite funny because it was windy outside, so were pretty bumpy. When you take off from Cúcuta you have to depart throught the north because the city is located in the middle of the mountains. We were a few minutes heading north before turning to the southwest to Bogota.




At least we had some nice views from the city while climbing





Avoiding some stormclouds during climbing



After a few minutes we leveled off and seat belts were turned off. Outside it was dark and I couldn't see more than lights.



During the short cruise cabin crew started with the service. As I said before LATAM offers a low cost service on their national flights and that means we had a BOB service. Drinks were free at least. I had water. I wanted to take something for eat but the flight was too short and only small chocolates and some chips were available. So finally I took nothing



And soon descent started. Seat belt sign was turned on and we had a quite smooth descent. We landed in Bogota just after 47 minutes of flight.



Bogota at the back


We taxied to our parking position, which was a remote stand. We parked next to a "Viva Colombia" A320. The famous colombian Ryanair :D :D



That was the flight route today



And I was the last one to disembark the plane. I said goodbye to the cabin crew, I requested a Magazine (I always take plane magazines…) and said goodbye to the plane. A bus took us to the terminal and bags delivery was very fast. Hopefully not much traffic at that time. I got off the terminal and took a taxi to the city center. A few days later I was discovering the southern part of the country, "Los Llanos del Meta" and "Guaviare".

Thank you for reading!!