Hi everyone,
It's nice to be back here after a break. My September exams for sworn translator limited almost all my activities and that's why I can describe my holiday trip to Greece just now.
BACKGROUND
Buying tickets for a trip to Greece in August must start early and I must say I have almost fainted when in mid April I discovered the price of a non-stop Aegean flight WAW-ATH-WAW to be around 600 euro. Ryanair was not an option, so I checked combined flights and this time Austrian Airlines happened to have the best offer - around 250 euro with luggage included and day long stopover in Vienna that would be a great opportunity to visit the city. Actually it wasn't purely an Austrian ticket as the outbound flights were supposed to be operated by LOT and Aegean with stopover in ZRH and only the flights back were fully OS flights.
The whole plan looked like this:
23.08.2019 - WAW-ZRH - LO 411, E-195
23.08.2019 - ZRH-ATH - A3 851, A-320
31.08.2019 - ATH-VIE - OS 804, A-320
31.08.2019 - VIE-WAW - OS 631, DH4
THE FLIGHT
Early morning flight, even if not that early (departure was scheduled 07:40) is not what I like the most. It was Friday so the airport was quite busy with many morning flights to depart between 6:00 and 8:00.
We went directly to LOT counters cause even if our ticket was issued by Austrian and the outbound flights had Swiss (LX) codes, the only webiste when I could make the online check-in was the one of LOT.
Current departures
LOT E-70 in *A livery
LH A320 to FRA
TAP A321 arriving from LIS
Air Canada Rouge 767-300 arriving from YYZ
No need to buy bottled water anymore - there are special tap water distributors and thanks to my filter bottle I can drink water for free now :)
My gate 25. It has double number as it can be easily transformed into NON-Shengen gate and become 25N
We are going to board our plane by bus and that gives an opportunity to see TAP A321 also from the ground level.
A funny thing is that till the very last moment my flight was supposed to be operated by E-75 but when we arrive to the aircraft I discover it to be E-95 SP-LNA - the first E-95 in LOT's fleet (delivered in April 2012), still in the old classic livery.
I must say I'm not a big fan of E-jets but this is because I'm a little bit fed up with them and also because I find their cabins too narrow. Anyway an E-95 is always better than its smaller relatives as the cabin is not wider but at least significantly longer and therefore more spacious.
Legroom is fine
I have a very good window view
After a short taxi we are already on the runway 15
Take off into the cloudless sky
The weather is perfect today and will remain like this until we reach cloudy that day Switzerland
View of WAW after we turned right
Time to look into the seatpocket content… the safety card
BOB menu, fleet and flight map
I decided not to order anything from the BOB as I wasn't hungry and I was looking forward to the lunch that hopefully will be served on the second flight by Aegean. Complimentary service consists of Grzeski chocolate bar, water/tea/coffee.
Cabin during the flight - photo taken by my boyfriend from the aisle seat
The city of Stuttgart and its airport
It becomes more and more cloudy as we are getting closer
Finally Zurich seems fully covered by thick clouds
Landing
Wide-body terminal
Swiss and Air Canada
Croatia DH4
and our parking position
Bye, bye SP-LNA, it was a nice flight
Many thanks for reading! Next parts of this series will follow soon.
Thank you for this report,
Nice flight without any problem, i begin to be also fed up with those E-jets and its narrow cabin.
Milego dnia i na ra !
Thanks, Benoit! :)
czesc
thanks for the FR
its true that lufthansa family offer good prices ,you are luck cause you got them with luggages included
have a nice day
Thank you for stopping by. Yes, the price was good and luggage includes is always an asset.
Hi Loukas! Greece is always a good idea!
Yikes...that's nuts. I guess A3 are getting too popular these days.
Compaired to a mainline narrowbody maybe, but as far as regional jets go, I love E-Jets because they have the widest cabins compared to similar sized CRJ700/900/1000 and therefore widest seats. And of course the 2X2 config is nice since there aren't really any bad (i.e. middle) seats.
Interesting! Will this mean things like sandwiches in Y, or just more options like crisps and things like that?
Always good to see your reports :)
Hi Kevin! I'm not sure regarding the improved LOT service in economy as they announced it in a way not to make you understand too much, but it will be rather snacks, pieces of cake etc. Anyway it's good they finally got it. Greece is always fine, that's true, even in August, even in Mykonos that I personally found overcrowded and not worth the effort, but I will write more in next reports. Thanks for your kind words!
Mykonos is definitely overcrowded at the end of august because of the huge XLSIOR festival. That's why I went in July last year, though the water was still a bit cold so next time I'll probably go early August.