Review of Austrian Airlines flight Vienna → Copenhagen in Economy

Hello everyone, and welcome to my another trip report.

This report is going to cover my problably last trip this year. The pre-christmas madness at work is underway already and as I expected that a way before - I wanted to have a day off with flying, plane spotting and see some European city. I started thinking of this trip in early October and wanted to go to Scandinavia. It´s not an easy task to get a reasonable price for 1 day trip and good flight times. It actually took some time to find something. I wanted to try Norwegian, but was unable to find any possible flights with returning on same day - neither from Prague or Vienna. I tried to mix it with SAS, but it still did not help even when mixing it with some Czech Airlines and Austrian fares.

After few days of searching I gave up and took an option I knew is ready for use, but I had left it before as a reserve. Austrian Airlines have their long-term offer to Copenhagen for 88EUR with return on the same day. I decided to take it. Departure time at 7:15AM is ok for me, but return flight was scheduled for 17:40 the earliest possible. I wasn´t very happy about it at the beginning , because I originally planned to go there only for spotting. Standing somewhere near the airport in November for 6 or 7 hours wasn´t something I considered to be too necessary. Then I decided I can have a look around city for few hours and just started looking forward to it.


As I had to get from Brno to Vienna first, that meant waking up pretty early. I got up at 1:00AM after 3,5hours of sleeping and knew this day was going to be really challenging, mainly physically. I took a taxi to bus station, from where my bus to Vienna leaves at 2:45. Luckily, Student Agency - czech bus operator runs daily connections from Prague to Brno, which continues to Vienna and Schwechat airport, which makes things much easier for me.

Bus was empty and quite comfortable, which was fine for my ride. Headsets were distributed after departure for those who wanted to use their PTVs. I wasn´t interested in that as I wanted to sleep at least a bit during this 2 hours drive to VIE.

Unfortunately I managed to sleep only for about 30 minutes and woke up at Vienna Praterstern


Everyone had PTV in his seat


Bus after arriving at Schwechat


Control tower in the foggy early morning


I entered terminal at 5:00AM and airport was very calm at this time. First departures were set at 6 o´clock


Departures screen


I checked-in online, but always prefer to have the small boarding pass from these machines compared to walking through the airport with printed A4. So reprinted my boarding pass with earlier selected seat 18A. I wanted to get an emergency exit, but I logged into online check-in aprox.a minute after its opening and no seats in exit rows were available…
Also wanted to check into my returning flight from CPH, which I was unable to do at home, but neither here it was not possible.


Airport´s landside


Austrian´s check-in desk


There was nothing much to do around so I decided to go to security. VIE is quite nice and modern airport, but with observation deck closed during winter it´s not very entertaining. Also the airport is very dark. Although it´s clean, I do not feel too good there.
Security was quick, it just took a minute. As it was dark outside and a lot of lights inside, there was nothing visible throgh the windows, except you wanna watch yourself :-). So I slowly proceeded to my gate F27


I was second, who reached the gate. One lady was sleeping there pretty hard. I just sat down, relaxed and watching left out of the window it was possible to see OE-LBI, an A320 that was going to take me to CPH.


Our plane was just parked at the gate and left completely alone. About 1 hour to departure, catering showed up followed by fuel track and some more people around later. Gate area started filling up with people too.

The only photo of our plane I managed to get in those bad light conditions


Boarding was called at 6:55


I was one of the first to board OE-LBI on that day




Flight OS 301

Date: 19/11/2013
Departure airport: VIE - Vienna Schwechat
Arrival airport: CPH - Copenhagen Kastrup
Airline: Austrian Airlines
Aircraft: Airbus A320-214, OE-LBI, 10,8 years in service
Seat: 18A
STD: 07:15
STA: 09:00
Leaving gate: 07:22
Arriving gate: 09:05

My:
20th flight overall
6th on Airbus A320
1st on Austrian
1st on OE-LBI



After stepping onboard I was amazed. The aircraft didn´t feel 10 years old, it actually felt like almost new, nice colours, very clean.


My seat 18A


Wingview, I prefer sitting near the wing. I´m fascinated to watch wing and its flex


Legroom was some kind of shock to me. There was some much space and seat was very comfortable. I simply could not believe I boarded aircraft for intra-european flight. Well done Austrian!


Another good news - middle seat in row 18 stayed vacant throughout the flight


Austrian A319 - Sarajevo
Captain came on the radio saying preparations were completed and said flight time is expected to be 1h20mins. He also mentioned weather at Copenhagen was as bad as here at Vienna.


Safety demo had to be played two times. On first attempt we heard sound, but there were only black screens


Pushing back with tower in background


Engines start. Since pushback to take off it took ages. Although this was first flight of the day for this aircraft, we departed about 30 minutes late. We were caught by bussy morning. Many flights were set for departure at time close to us and they just managed to get pushed-back earlier.


TK B737


OS B767


HG A320


During taxi we joined queue behind these two company Fokkers


Freebird A320 following behind us


Austrian Airlines terminal


Some Big Boys from Korea


When we got closer to RWY16 we got stuck in traffic. There were at least 5 aircraft waiting for departure ahead of us

When we finally lined up on runway for a take off


Acceleration was powerful


After we rotated we immediately hided in the mist


I was looking forward to leave the clouds and enjoy beautiful sunshine. Instead of that we left the first layer of clouds and it seemed there is still some way to go to get above the rest


Turning left to head to the north


Climbing away from the second layer of clouds


Cabin during climb. Load was around 85% on this flight.


TVs showing our flight progress


Finally it started looking nice outside


Service started after we leveled of at our cruising altitude. Everyone was given nutcake, coffee/tea and some cold drink. Cake was good. I only forgot to ask for sugar with my tea so I was quite relieved when I finished it, due to to its taste.
Cabin crew were 3 ladies and 1 man. Three of them nice and friendly. Only one younger lady was not looking to be in the possible mood. Oldest FA, maybe around 50 was looking after business class passengers.


Seatbelt sign went on for several minutes with captain coming on the radio telling us we´re about to fly in area with high winds. Aircraft started vibrating, but nothing really worth mentioning.


I don´t like this kind of entertainment. They started playing some animated films. I would much more prefer to have a moving map playing instead - on this flight even more with clouds covering whole Europe to at least know, where are we flying at the moment. I would even prefer watching advertisments compared to this..


At about 30 minutes prior landing I began struggling with icing. My view from window was getting worse and worse.


Approaching Copenhagen


At this moment it was already almost impossible to take any photo through this window.
Fortunately I had a part of another window behind, so I tried using it to get at least some pictures


Bye bye nice weather


Then we dived back into clouds


Cabin during descend


I was absolutely disoriented. Map didn´t show up again and I had no idea which direction we were flying. With fog around and window being frozen I had no clue which runway we landed on. My father (following my flight on FlightRadar as always) later told me it was 22L, we landed on.


It was one of those normal landings, I think it was nice providing the conditions.


DY B738


We landed on time and at 9:05 we were at the gate. Crew thanked us for flying and wished us nice rest of the day.


Our aircraft - OE-LBI resting before her flight home


Air Greenland A330


I proceeded to arrival hall which took only few moments and then I started searching how to get to the city. I planned to go to the city first and then to return to the airport for some planespotting.
I would probably make FR about flying back to Vienna as well, so I will add few words about visiting the city and Kastrup airport there.

Thank you guys for reading up to here and looking forward to any of your comments.

Cheers,
Michael