Review of Malta Air (Ryanair) flight Tangier → Toulouse in Economy

Hi everyone and welcome on board this report, presenting the return flight of a long week-end escapade in North Morocco.

introduction

We are mid-December when Ryanair offers its cyberweek discounts before the Christmas holidays. It's been a while since we'vent had a little weekend trip with my girlfriend, so I'm looking Ryanair offers.

It must be said that the Irish low-cost has become the airline offering the most international destinations directly from Toulouse.

In destinations matching our dates and convenient times pops Tangier in northern Morocco. Not the most touristic place in Morocco but it can be nice to go and sunbath to leave the cold France winter the time of a week-end. That was the original plan…

We therefore take our tickets for a bargain price of around €40 return flights per passenger, to which we will add a large cabin baggage item for around fifteen euros. For once it was largely the price that drove our choice of destination. Would we have chosen Tangier otherwise? I don't think so, even if we had the idea of ​​going back to Morocco.

 Which gives us the following routing:

Unsurprisingly, the Tangier-Toulouse line is an exclusivity for our website database, it must be said that the line has only been in operation for a year. Opened for the 2019/2020 winter season, it was quickly stopped due to covid before reopening for the 2022 summer season thanks to the reduction in travel restrictions from Moroccan authorities.

There was no report of Tangier airport on English database

Ryanair the biggest actor on Moroccan market from Toulouse with flights to Tangier, Fez, Marrakesh, Agadir, Rabat and Oujda, not to mention Nador which as open this summer in exchange for a weekly rotation to Tangier.
The rest of the offer between Toulouse and Morocco is shared between RAM (Casablanca), Air Arabia Maroc (to Casablanca and Fez) and Easyjet (to Marrakesh). Line without competition for Ryanair to Tangier.

monday afternoon at tangier airport

We reach the airport using a taxi booked by our hotel, no worries about traffic in the middle of the afternoon. Count 150 dirhams (15€) for a journey time of around 25 minutes.

Like many airports infrastructures in Morocco, the entry of Ibn Battouta airport in Tangier presents well and has a rather modern appearance. In addition, the place in front with many cypresses and palm trees is quite nice. To give you an idea of ​​the traffic passing through the airport, it welcomed 1,350,000 passengers in 2019, which rank it in 5th place among the busiest Moroccan airports, it is approximately the traffic of an airport like Strasbourg.

We are authorized to join the inside of the building after an initial X-ray luggage check filter, a common practice in Morocco. The groundside area is rather large and has several services with the Air Arabia Maroc and RAM airliners which have a ticket sales counter.

Another Moroccan specificity, it is imperative to go through the check-in counters in order to have your ID checked and boarding pass- stamped.

Despite having a large number of counters, all passengers having to pass in front of the agent who takes the opportunity to check all the hand luggage (weight included), this formality takes a certain amount of time. It must be kept in mind when traveling to Morocco that the various formalities take a lot of time!

The crossing of security checks will take a little less than 15 minutes mainly due to the fact that only 2 lines were open. In the queue for passport control (located just after security checks), I spot this Ryanair Boeing 737-800 leaving for Valencia, which is one of the first aircraft to have recently received scimitar wingtip retrofits.

After another 10 minutes of waiting queue for passport controls and we "finally" arrive in the international airside part of the airport… Well, it's not huge and you have most of the terminal on this photo.

2 shops and a coffee are the main service provider

A small lounge is available, as well as a prayer room and sanitary facilities in rather good condition despite the crowds.

The flight indication display showing mainly low-cost carrier flights such as Ryanair or Air Arabia Maroc.

Three flights will board in the space of thirty minutes the terminal area will soon be crowded, even if the seats are available in large number.

Large windows illuminate the whole area and give a good view of the tarmac in particular the hangars of the Royal Moroccan Gendarmerie where you can see a Puma helicopter as well as an EC145.

Our aircraft did not take long to arrive on time from Toulouse, it will be 9H-QCO today, a Boeing 737-800 a little less than 7 years old. All passed in the Ryanair group.

Then taxiing just in front of my camera to make a U-turn and be parked nose out to be ready for an autonomous departure.

Same way of taxiing for this Airbus A320 of Air Arabia Maroc which arrives a few minutes later from Amsterdam.

Boarding begins but is stopped in the middle the time to let passengers from another flight reach the arrival area without mixing the flow, which will take around 10 minutes.

Boarding pass that should have been printed before joining the check-in.

We are finally allowed to move towards our plane parked under the beautiful blue sky which will have illuminated the end of our Morocco stay.

To speed up the boarding process, in addition to the staircase integrated in the nose of our Boeing, a movable stair is placed at the rear door to allow access to passengers from both ends of the cabin.

 Fuselage shoot and detail on our CFM-56 left engine.

on board Malta AIR Boeing 737-800

The door from the integrated staircase gives you an idea of ​​the angle of it, which is quite steep. The welcome on board by our 2 male cabin crew members will be friendly and smiling, one of them will be French-speaker and will ask me what model my camera is.

I join my seat located in row 7 on the right side of the cabin. our plane being equipped with the skyinterior as usual, we find the most recent seats of Ryanair, the Z100 of the manufacturer Zodiac.

The seat map proposed by Aerolopa for the layout of the 189 seats of our Boeing of the day.

With about 30" inches, the pitch remains acceptable for a flight of less than 2 hours, especially when you don't exceed 1.80m like me.

Boarding continues in a somewhat chaotic manner, in fact Ryanair tends to spread passengers on the same booking if they have not paid for their seats selections during check-in. And some passengers place themselves therefore next to their friends / families without respecting their allocated seat number. Note that the skyinterior cabin equips this Boeing.

 This gives a nice upgrade to the design of the ceiling light, another Ryanair feature is the storage of life jackets located in the ceiling panels.

The view from my seat, we are finally ready for departure with a cabin crew member who will make announcements in Arabic, something quite rare on Ryanair.

Our taxiing for departure runway begins, and we will have a nice review all the planes parked during this afternoon on the tarmac of Tangier with these Airbus A320 of Air Arabia respectively in the process of boarding for Paris CDG and Brussels.

On the cargo appron we can see this Boeing 737-400 cargo plane from the Spanish airline Swiftair which will take off in the evening for Paris CDG.

A little further on, 2 old-generation cargo ATRs are parked with an ATR72-200 and an ATR42-300 from the Hungarian operator Fleetair.

 The cabin is armed for takeoff, the mood light turns to blue.

We are following the taxiway parallel to the runway towards the entry point of runway 28, the airport's single runway. We will wait a few seconds before being allowed to line up. We can guess the shade of the city in the distance.

 We will soon start our take off and lift off without any difficulty above the green fields. With the small village of Jbila on our right.

We quickly arrive above the Atlantic Ocean and the large beaches that border the western Moroccan coast.

 We can see the Cap Spartel and its lighthouse where we were the day before, a pretty little rather wild spot.

After our initial climb, we change our heading to northeast for the rest of our flight. On the right part of the photo we can see the airport from which we left.

 We begin our short crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar leaving "the pearl of the north" behind us, it was a great discovery!

 When I tell you that the crossing is short… Europe and Africa in the same photo!

 Last look at the African continent which moves away irresistibly through the window.

While we find back the good old Europe with the Andalusian coasts.

 We start to flight back over the land around the small fishing port of Barbate.

In the distance between 2 clouds we guess the British territory of Gibraltar, unfortunately the famous rock will be hidden behind a small cumulus but we guess the contours of the famous airport.

We quickly gain height over the Spanish lands. Unfortunately the cloud cover is also increasing, hiding us of the view of the landscapes

Fortunately the clouds will only be present above Andalusia and we will have a beautiful view of the superb and different colors offered by the Spanish lands.

In the cabin, the atmosphere is very calm and the round of the different services can begin. Food and drink sales service, scratch cards and finally the duty-free trolley which will be the only one stopping along the aisle.

The only reading offered by Ryanair to its passengers on board the plane, namely the safety card stuck on the backrest of the front seat. Some passenger might think that the IFE got stuck on the presentation of safety demonstartion.

Here is the route of the day presented by Flightradar24 taking us across Spain from side to side at the altitude of 38,000ft

 We arrive in the northern part of Spain and the arid Aragon, we were passing close to city of Zaragoza.

Immediately after the landscape becomes much more hilly

Indeed these are already the beginning of the Pyrenean mountains which appears in front of us with its snowy peaks. As often the views are spectacular unfortunately clouds on the French side (as often as well) will spoil this superb panorama.

Once the natural obstacle has been passed, our descent is announced and we will quickly cross the small layer of cloud which separates the sky from the Garonne countryside at the end of the February afternoon.

We arrive from the south of Toulouse, here the town of Auterive on the banks of the Ariège river.

Approach from the south for a landing on runway 32 says passing above the hill of Pech-David now perfectly served by public transport since the opening of the urban cable car "Téléo" whose white pylons are clearly visible.

Vertical to the Garonne for a while. Next to the city center of Toulouse with a beautiful view of the Ile du Ramiers and the Stadium (Toulouse football stadium) which will host some rugby World Cup games in a couple of months.

 We then fly over the arena district with the hippodrome and the Toulouse concert hall.

Then we arrive quickly above the airport facilities of Toulouse airport, we are on the left of runway 32R but don't panic we land on 32L.

The cargo appron welcome their usual cargo visitors but also an Airbus A319 from Volotea which will probably not be flying that day.

Back to Toulouse homebase

Rought landing in pure Ryanair DNA. Braking will be rather quiet using the reverses in idle mode and airbrakes. Although our flight is on time we will not hear the usual Ryanair trumpets sounds (probably forgeted by our crew)

We leave the runway and cross the parallel runway during our taxiing to the terminal

Hall D in sight and there is some traffic in this afternoon with an Airbus A320 from AF, another A320 from the Tunisian company Nouvelair but also another Boeing 737-800 from Ryanair based in Toulouse, which we took on our outbound flight to Tanger.

 We will park at the end of the terminal alongside this Brussels Airlines Airbus A319 which arrived a little earlier from the Belgian capital.

With a scheduled turn around time of 25 minutes, let me tell you that the ground operations are not dragging on, well helped by passengers getting up as one man as soon as the engines were shutted down. Cabin Crew Members deploy the forward staircase themselves from the cabin. The crew will leave us with a smiling goodbye.

 Disembarking by the steep front staircase and detail on our CFM56 engine which has working hard during the flight.

Byebye Charlie Oscar !

We have to go to the second floor to reach the arrival path and at the the identity control lines, Short waiting time and the agent will not be really chatty or friendly this time not answering to my good day…

This Air France Airbus A320 have made no less than 3 round trips between Toulouse and Orly that day.

Along the way, the Beluga XL gives us a wink and welcomes us to the lands of the European aircraft manufacturer.

Non-stop passage through the baggage claim area.

Flight indication display with the scheduled arrivals of this end of afternoon.

We are quickly ground side

Temperature much cooler than in Tangier but no rain, here is the weather forecast for us in front of Dominique Baudis airport

It will be a return back home with the help of the tram, still as cheap as €1.80 unfortunately it should not last long with the schedule closure of the T2 line for a little over 2 years, the time to carry out the works of the future metro line passing about 2 kilometers away.

I hope you've enjoyed this report and I wish you pleasant flights!

Bonus : Click here display hide

Small tourist bonus on the small port city of Asilah (أصيلة) whose small Medina overlooking the sea is worth a detour.

The particularity of this small typical seaside town is the presence of ephemeral street art works renewed every years and painted by a mix of local and international artists. The place was extremely quiet with many Moroccans were also visiting the Medina.

Despite the capricious weather, we loved our stay in Tangier and its surroundings, a real bridge between Africa and Europe, the city is dynamic but knows how to remain peaceful in certain places, in the oldest districts, particularly the old kasbah (upper walled city). well preserved and far from the mass tourism which can often disrupt the traveler's experience.