This series was another short trip to Veneto for work. For background and routing information please refer back to the LX 41 FR. This will be a short report on a short 50-min night time flight down to Venice Marco Polo Airport.
Flight routing
- 1
- 2ZRH-VCE, LX 1664 (operated by WK), Airbus 320, Business
- 3
- 4
After arriving from LAX, I had about an hour to kill after clearing immigration so just briefly stopped into the LX Senator Lounge in the A concourse since my flight was due to depart from Gate A86. The lounge was crowded, but there was fresh fish and chips being prepared in the dining area so I grabbed some to supplement what was anticipated to be a light meal on this short 50-min flight knowing I wouldn't reach my hotel until after 9pm.
SWISS, LX 1664 (operated by WK)
Equipment: Airbus 320 [HB-IHZ “Victoria”, delivered June 1999]
Departure: 17:40 (ATD: 18:00)
Arrival: 18:50 (ATA: 18:50)
Flight Time: 0:50
My boarding pass for this flight.
It was already past sunset when the flight was due to depart so I couldn't get a good picture of our WK A320 that was operating this flight. We were flying Victoria, which is one the oldest A320s in the WK fleet. Boarding was delayed about 10 minutes, but the flight load was light and we were quickly all onboard.
The seats are your standard fare with Recaro seats and middle seat blocked in J. Despite the age of the plane, the cabin is clean and well maintained.
After sitting down, the FA offered a water bottle and moist towelette.
The literature is in the seatback compartment along with a portable device holder. No streaming options were available on this flight.
The old seatback compartment sags into your legroom, which is a standard 32" seat pitch. Luckily the passenger in front did not recline.
I dosed off during the taxi, but woke up as we were lifting up over Lake Zurich.
Service quickly started with the FA laying down this trio, which was followed by a drink service. The light snack was simple, fresh, and well presented.
After the service was completed, we were already into our final descent into VCE. The FA came down the aisle thanked me for flying and offered the LX chocolates.
We landed smoothly into VCE and quickly taxied to our gate, in the winter there is less traffic into VCE so low probability of ending up at a remote stand. Deplaning was quick and the bags were on the carousel in less than 15 minutes. The rest of the J cabin was a group heading back to Maranello, not sure why they don't use BLQ.
The rental cars are located on the top floor of the attached parking structure so I was on the A57 in about 30 minutes after touching down. I'll leave of this series here.
Interesting to see a report on a WK operated LX flight, which is still a thing. WK is such an odd duck of a subsidiary because in many ways, WK has a better product than mainline LX, like with the tablet holders in the seats and the streaming IFE (which wasn't installed yet at the time of your flight). That and free catering in Y on WK's own-branded flights really makes for a confusing product. The seat pitch is theoretically the same 32" in forward rows that can be Business class on WK and LX, but LX have several A320s still in the CY174 configuration, which is more spacious than the current CY180, so possibly closer to 33" in J on older LX configs (similar to older LH cabins). Nevertheless, by today's Euro-J standards, 32" up front is (sadly) on the generous side, when you have big carriers like BA, IB and AF closer to 30-31" in the forward cabin. I mean you have your legs crossed, that right there is rare in more Euro-biz cabins these days!
P.S. There's no hard and fast rules on this because every situation is different when one carrier operates for another, but I updated the airline to WK iso LX. Usually it makes little difference which one is listed when the hard and soft products are pretty much the same, which is usually the case in Y, but in this case the WK seats are different than standard LX seats (soft product is very similar, though). It would mostly make search easier for someone wanting to see what WK short-haul cabin is like.
Thanks for sharing!
Hi Kevin, thanks for stopping by!
This was a tricky flight to classify since it was a WK hard product with LX service. I’m fine if you think it is better classified as WK, gives me a new carrier ;)
Maybe it is just an illusion of less space with that saggy seat back patch blocking some legroom. I normally end up on ERJs on most intra-European routes that are just more comfortable all around (more legroom, wider seats, bigger windows) so maybe lack as much experience with recent trends in the new cabins being installed across the neo fleets. That said, I flew TP recently and it was still 33” seat pitch in the Y174 configuration.
Ah yep, TP legroom is very good up front since they have thinner seats and different even-more-super-uber-thin seats in Y giving more space for extra legroom up front. Though I'm not a fan of how cabins look with 2 types of Y seats like that--it does better differentiate the products between C and Y, which is a good thing.