Review of Vueling Airlines flight Barcelona → Amsterdam in Economy

After two weeks of ground training in Barcelona with my new employer, they booked me on a flight returning to Amsterdam with Vueling. I finished my training about 2.5 hours prior to my flight and opted to grab the underground to reach El Prat's Airport. While an underground ticket to any location within Barcelona (Single ticket) would normally cost you about 2,40 EUR, yet a ticket to the airport (which was only five stations away) costs you 5.50 EUR.

The ride itself took only 20 minutes and is alright. They are newer trains and pretty clean, yet it is still obligated to wear a face mask, which is not strictly followed by a lot of people nor is it checked upon. I believe this regulation will be canceled by tomorrow (7th February 2023).

It takes about a 5-10 minute walk from the underground station of Terminal 1 to reach your departure area.

Terminal 1's departure hall feels spacious, yet it is quite lively.

As I had to drop off my bag, I decided to use the self check-in counter for my flight, which is very easy to understand, responded fast and allows you to pay for additional goods if you needed to do so.

After the fight of adding your baggage tag to your luggage, which is explained on the back of the luggage tag though, It was now time to head to one of the many drop-off counters available with Vueling. The shere amount of counters available to drop your luggage yourself made this process very quick with no line at all. All you needed to do is to scan your luggage tag and your bag was off.

Security wasn't too busy and took less than ten minutes to clear, but this was mostly due to the fact that I've had a very slow person in front of me who seemed not to listen to instructions by emptying his pockets, watch etcetera and became quite agitated towards the security agent….

I decided to grab a sandwich and a drink prior to boarding my flight and with about 40 minutes to departure, I decided to move my way to my gate B47, which is more to the aft of the B Pier. It however gave me a spectacular view of this Airbus A330 of Turkish Airlines who was preparing for a flight to Istanbul.

It is another 10 minute walk or so to reach B47, which was slowed down heavily as people didn't really follow any structure by following a certain path.

And here is our aircraft for our flight today to Amsterdam. EC-MEL would do the honours of bringing us to Amsterdam. It is an eight year old Airbus A320 equipped with Sharklets who has solely been flying for Vueling.

Boarding was called five minutes after the scheduled boarding time and was quite slow, though the jetbridge gave me a wonderful view of our neighbour (A321) who was preparing for a flight to Munich.

Upon entering the cabin, we were welcomed by the flight attendants and it was quite apparent that it would be a 100% full flight with the overhead bins being completely packed. The view of my window seat wasn't too bad though.

Considering that the flight was full and all overhead bins were packed, I had to stow my bag below my seat, which limited my space a lot and I had to sit for two hours with my knees against the seat in front of me. It's going to be a very unpleasant two hours given my legroom.

A view of the cabin which looks similar to my previous flight and this aircraft was also equiped with Wi-Fi and face masks are still mandatory to be worn and strictly followed by the flight attendants.

Pushback was about five minutes past our departure time and we were rolling for take off about 15 minutes past our scheduled departure from Runway 24R (Runway numbers were changed in November 2022 due to the shift of the magnetic north in reference to the true north).

The last view of the beautiful Spanish coast before the sun is fading and providing us only with a black view. Buy on Board service was also engaged by the flight attendants very quickly after departure, but was not taken upon by a lot of passengers.

Literature was exactly the same with a BoB Menu, Safety Card, Sickbag & an additional card with promotions.

Vueling Wi-Fi was available and required you to conenct to their hotspot obviously. It gives you an option to change languages here too.

Thereafter it will give you a page telling you how to connect to their wi-fi.

Once connected to the wi-fi, it will give you a small overview with the weather of your destination airport, the estimated flight time left to your destination, the BoB Menu you can download for free and buy Wi-Fi packages if you require them.

Two different packages are available to be bought. Browse & Stream which is available from 5.99 EUR or Messaging from 3.49 EUR.

While the messaging package for 3.49 EUR is available for the entire flight, the Browse & Stream option has two options. You either can buy 1 hour for 5.99 EUR or opt for the entire flight for 8.99 EUR. Prices aren't steep compared to other carriers I have seen and if the flight is longer than 2 hours, I think the 8.99 EUR would be the obvious deal here if you decide to buy it.

By this time we were already descending to Amsterdam and by this time I was quite aching due to my limited room…. Two hours is really the max. on them and they become very very unpleasant.

Captain did not check-in with us to provide us with details about the weather in Amsterdam or estimated arrival time, yet we were lining up for Runway 27 with an arrival time of 20.34, which meant that we were 21 minutes ahead of our schedule today.

Short taxi to our gate in which we had to hold for a minute or two for the parking system of the gate to become online. The flight attendants also instructed us to remain seated until our row was called for disembarkation as that was Vueling's procedure.

Parked next to this CRJ of Nordica who was flying a flight on behalf of Scandinavian. The moment we were parked, a lot of passengers disregarded the last call and were standing up to grab their bags. The flight attendant immediately called on intercom to remain seated, which were ignored by a few passengers. Thereafter he announced that disembarkation was canceled, which somehow did get to them and everyone was back in their seat. That last call seemed to do the trick and the disembarkation went smooth after.

You can't complain about the flight attendants of Vueling as they're one of the fews I've seen to strictly follow the procedures set up by the airline.

It takes about 10 to 15 minutes to reach your baggage claim from the B Pier by foot. No people mover's are to your disposal in the last ten minutes. 

Luckily enough it would not take long for my bag to appear and be on my way to home.

Thanks for stopping by!