Review of Transavia flight Amsterdam → Girona in Economy

Hello,

After having spent two full weeks at home, it was time for me to return to work and the company booked me on a flight with Transavia bound for Girona as my aircraft was located over there. The start of the day didn't go as planned as I became completely soaked during my walk to my local train station (As it started to rain cats and dogs out of nowhere) and took the first part of my trip finding myself a way to dry.

Eventually I managed to dry myself up to a reasonable level that was bearable and went up to terminal 1 which is used by Transavia for schengen flights. As I already checked in online, the system didn't allow me to use the drop off section, so I made my way to one of the staffed counters worrying that Transavia would kick me off the plane due to high load (which happened to me twice already within this year). Luckily the friendly ground attendant told me that the drop off was being difficult today and that it didn't really cooporate with them.

Dropped my luggage and made my way up to the departures. Security was a breeze and it took no more than five minutes to clear, though I must admit that the new baggage scanners of Schiphol are really nice as you are not required to take out any of your stuff anymore including electronics. 

Given the time of the departure I had to leave my home prior to dinner time and took this opportunity to grab some Ramen noodles with Two Tigers, which was part of La Place and I most likely would not recommend it. The staff is completely negligent to their customers and their efficiency was abysmal, the food was very basic and it took over 45 minutes to serve me, while only four or five people were ahead of me.

Eventually made my way up to the C gates which was again completely crowded with very limited seating capacity for the amount of passengers. Schiphol has seriously lost most of it's efficiency and appearances to what used to be a pleasant airport to depart from. The seating capacity in high season is below average, the escalators seem to break down every time and pannels are missing from the ceiling…. Every time I return, something else became broken while the other issues were not fixed.

On my way to Gate C17, I spotted a different Boeing 737-800 of Transavia. This bird brought me over to Rotterdam last month.

Boarding was called an hour after our scheduled departure and we were greeted by two friendly flight attendants who seemed to be very chatty and loving their job as they were doing their best to provide us with a great service.

The captain also came out of his cockpit to inform us about the delay from previous flight via the intercom from the flight attendant. He apologized for the delay, but told us that Schiphol didn't allow them to depart on time from Malaga due to the predicted thunderstorms (code Orange for weather), which in the end was just a small storm of 5 to 10 minutes. He told us that he would do his best to depart as soon as possible to Girona. 

Seat 22F would be my seat and legroom was very limited. Luckily enough I got lucky and didn't have a neighbour in the middle seat. The aisle seat was occupied by someone else who seemed to be very pleased with that too as it would have been a very tight fit if a third person was inbetween us. Padding of the seat was above average to other competitors.

The literature of the seat contains a safety card for their aircraft, a Buy on Board menu & Magazine.

The seat is equipped with individual air vents which I'm pretty much a fan of as you can control the heat a bit by yourself.

And a quick view of the green cabin of Transavia.

85 minutes past our scheduled departure time, we were finally pushed back for our departure to Girona.

It took about 10 minutes from pushback to our active runway, which was going to be runway 36C for today's flight.

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The aircraft required quite a long take off length with an immediate right turn giving us an opportunity to view Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in it's entirety.

The sun was already setting by the time we were in our climb to cruise level.

I fell asleep throughout most of the flight, but upon wake up I found out that the aircraft wasn't as clean as it should be. It had those dirty circular brown spots on a lot of the flat surfaces throughout the cabin. 

and the light and pannel connections were sticking out or becoming loose throughout some of the locations in the cabin too. I think it would be time for Transavia to maybe clean the aircraft a tad better.

Though by the time I woke up, we were also in our descent to Girona Airport for a straight in arrival to runway 19….. It turned out to become an absolute smacker on the runway with a delay of 80 minutes in the end.

Disembarkation happened about 10 to 15 minutes after our arrival and gave us a good view of the aircraft. PH-HZJ (Boeing 737-8K2) was the aircraft that brought me over and was an aircraft of 23.2 year old at the day of the flight.

It took an additional 10 to 15 minutes for our luggage to arrive on this simple and small baggage claim before being off to my hotel to start my duty the following day.

Thanks for stopping by!