Review of Vueling Airlines flight from Split to Rome in Economy

INTRODUCTION

Hello dear FlightReporters
The 3rd September my cousin get married with a croatian girl
In spring my family and all the other relatives were invited to the wedding ceremony in Split
All of us were offered two nights in Split, 2nd and 3rd September

Since only my father had been in Croatia when he was young, we decided to make a small vacation there after the wedding.
My aunt with her husband and another cousin of mine joined us for the following days visiting Šibenik and Trogir.
With the marriage scheduled for Saturday 3rd September we decided to arrive in Split the day before and stay in Croatia until 6-7th September.

BOOKING OPTIONS

The 9th May we booked the flight from Rome, making a reservation for us and my uncles (6ppl in total).
The best solution appeared to be flying with Vueling, leaving on 2nd Sept afternoon and return home in the morning of 7th Sept.

Of 5 nights we slept 2 nights in Split (hosted by my cousin), 2 nights in Šibenikand 1 night in Trogir. Since the latter is located 5 km from Split Airport we chose to sleep there the last night to avoid a too early wake up on the 7th Sept morning.

Vueling offers three fares: Basic, with under-the-seat baggage only; TimeFlex, with an additional cabin baggage to store in the overhead lockers; Optima, with a checked bag up to 25 kilos.

Since we needed to bring ceremony clothes we decided to divide the reservation in two:
-Three of us flying with Basic fare, adding the seat selection and the cancellation insurance
-The other three flying with Optima fare, adding the insurance only

We selected our seats in advance, 9D-E-F and 10D-E-F.

The overall price was 798€, 133 per person.

routing

before the flight

Vueling allows passengers to check-in for both legs 24 hours before the departure. Therefore the day before FCO-SPU flight we printed both boarding passes.

I want to make an appreciation about Vueling online boarding pass
It contains all the information about the times (check-in, boarding etc.) and the baggages allowed by the chosen fare.
In my opinion this is really useful because sometimes, in my opinion, baggages allowances are not very clear, especially on low cost carriers.

I've no doubts to say it's one of the best I've seen in recent times.

In order to avoid an early wake up we booked an hotel in Trogir which was just 5 km from the airport. We stayed there for the last night (6th September)

The airpor was visible from the room's balcony and this gave me some good spotting occasions

Canadair performing a low pass over the runway

Lufthansa A320neo taking off to Munich

Croatia Airlines Dash 8-Q400 bound to Vienna

WizzAir A321neo leaving to Warsaw

Volotea A320 landing from Venice…

…and departing back

The landing lighting seen at night

Arriving at SPU and check-in

With the flight departing at 9:30 we decided to be at the airport around 7:30. We chose this time also because we had to return our rented car from Dollar Car Rental. We had taken the car in Split city center on the 4th September.

Five minutes after leaving the hotel we arrived at Split-Resnik Airport
Car return area is located just outside the terminal, built in 2019

Entering the terminal 15 minutes after

The main hall is bright and still smells new
The ground floor is occupied by the check-in desks and the arrivals hall, while the departure lounge is on the first floor
I really like the mixed use of wood, glass and steel

Our flight is the fourth departing today, following the WizzAir flight bound to FCO

From the arrivals feed we noticed that the inbound flight had landed almost 20 minutes earlier

Just a few desks were opened and each of them handled all the fights without airline distinction

Once at the counter the agent told us that the plane was full and we needed to checked our cabin baggages for free
Since we already had 3 checked bags we didn't had any problem to check the others

Having one hour and half to spare I went upstairs, at the second floor, to make some spotting

I've seen on a report here that the coffee bar has windows on the apron

Croatia Airlines Dash 8-Q400 departing to Munich

Croatia Airlines A320 ready to board to Frankfurt

WizzAir A321neo bound to FCO

The departure lounge seen from the terrace

Around 8:15 we access the security checkpoint

AT THE AIRPORT

The security screening took less than 5 minutes
It was followed by the border control, which was empty

The departure lounge is equipped with a few good shops

As told by the check-in agent our flight would depart from gate 7

Our plane was already parked in front of gate 7
Vueling Airbus A320neo, EC-NFJ, delivered in August 2019 (3.1 years old) and equipped with 186 Y seats

Volotea Airbus A319 landing from Lyon

easyJet A319 just arrived from London-Gatwick

15 minutes to 9 our flight began to board

Descending to the apron

The A320neo engine looks massive from the ground

Fuselage shot

Unfortunately before I checked my bag I forget to take the flight report form
No problem, since I've the one from the FCO-SPU flight

The view from my seat, 10F

Boarding ended just after we got onboard and in a few minutes we left the gate

The airport is not equipped with a parallel taxiway, so a departing plane needs to backtrack the runway
Turning 180° to take off

A very short taxiway

the flight

Almost 20 minutes before scheduled we started our take off run
The engines seemed to be more silent than the ones mounted on older A320s

Banking over Kaštela gulf with Trogir in the background

Trogir, located on an island between the mainland (right) and Čiovo island (left)

Split Airport with the mountains in the background

Climbing over the coastline

Lot of wind generators on the mountains

Leaving Croatia behind us…

…and approaching Italy's coast minutes after

The coastline north of Pescara, in Abruzzo region

Giulianova, in Abruzzo region

A viaduct on A14 motorway, connecting Bologna to Taranto

Approaching the Appenines

Gran Sasso, 2912m, the tallest mountain on the Appenines

L'Aquila, the capital city of Abruzzo region

Torano junction, where A24 Rome-Teramo and A25 Rome-Pescara motorways split

Pietrasecca viaduct, on A24 motorway, with it's distintive S-shape. It's almost 2km long and 70 meters high

Meanwhile we started a gradual descent to Rome

Castel Madama, in Lazio region

Tivoli, 25 km from Rome

Banking over roman countryside, heading north

Guidonia Airport (ICAO: LIRG), a military airport near Rome. It hosts Italian Air Force's main logistic center.

Turning towards South over Bracciano Lake
We'd land from north

Descending through a light layer of clouds

Aligning to runway 16L with Tyrrean coast in sight

A12 motorway toll plaza

Last moments on air

Two minutes before 10 (42 minutes in advance) we touched down at Rome-Fiumicino "Leonardo da Vinci" Airport
Landing was smooth and brake run long

Vacating runway 16L-34R

ITA Airways A320 in old AZ-livery lining up for departure

Qatar Airways Boeing 787 waiting for its turn to take-off

WizzAir A321neo waiting in line

Helvetic Airways Embraer E-195

Air Transat A330 landing in the distance

ITA Airways A330

Poste Air Cargo Boeing 737F

Qatar Airways Boeing 787 taking-off behind a Vueling A320

ITA Airways A319 being towed with a Norwegian Boeing 737 parked at pier A61-83

Lufthansa and Vueling A320s and Norwegian Boeing 737 parked at pier A61-83, opened in May 2022

Parked next to a WizzAir A321neo, on an apron stand

arrival procedures in rome

Waiting for disembark

ITA Airways A320 being towed

Last views of our plane from the stairs, with the new pier in the background

Stored Alitalia Boeing 777
So sad they're not flying anymore

Air France A321

WizzAir A321neo

Three Alitalia Triple-777s

Delta Airlines A330 parked at pier E11-24

Pier E11-24 with Iberia A320 and WizzAir A321neo

ITA Airways A350 parked at the pier

Pure porn XD

The bus ride was very long (2 kms in 10 minutes)
As I've discovered later from FlightRadar our plane departed later that day to Barcelona. Probably due to this reason it wasn't possible to park it at a non-Schenghen contact gate

Entering the terminal almost half a hour after touching down

The passport control took 5 minutes with eGates

We got at the baggage carousel around 10:30 and the delivery was planned for 10:46
Later it was postponed to 10:57, with a flight from Dublin being delivered first
At 11 baggages from Dublin started to emerge from the belt, but no passengers from that flight seemed to be there
It took another 15 minutes to finally get our bags, one hour after disembark

The baggage reclaim area is undergoing a big refurbishment and half of the belts are not in use, drastically reducing operations efficency. Hopefully the ongoing works are gonna improve the situation.

After grabbing our baggages we get outside and to the multi-level parking to get our car.

Thank you for your attention and see you at the next flight :)