Review of Fly2Sky flight Riga → Frankfurt in Economy

Welcome to this new trip report! This time, we're flying back from our short Riga trip back to Frankfurt. We booked this flight via Air Baltic but from the very beginning it was clearly communicated that this flight would be operated by Bulgarian ACMI airline Fly2Sky. If you've missed the inboud on leg on Air Baltic proper, check it out here.
And without further ado, let's get going.

Riga Airport

Bus number 22 from Riga's city center dropped us right curbside at the airport so that it was a pretty short walk to the entrance. In general, the airport appears to be very compact, even tiny if one is used to airports like Frankfurt. A feature that it shares with Frankfurt airport, in my opinion, is that it is pretty gray and simplistic in style. At least the walk paths are short and everything is pretty easy to find.

The Air Baltic check-in and bag drop desk is pretty much located right at the entrance to the terminal building, which makes sense given that they are by far the biggest airline at RIX. Remember to check in online to avoid the 35€ airport check-in fee, for the cheapest fares at least.

There were quite some people waiting to drop their baggage but the wait wasn't too long, maybe 5-10 minutes. We were prepared for a full flight, as the employee asked us whether we would like to check a piece of hand baggage. As this one didn't contain anything of much importance anyways, we agreed to have a bit less to carry and to get through the security checks. However, I wouldn't recommend doing this if you are flying to Frankfurt and don't have checked luggage anyways. You'll see why later.

The security checks were a bit special, in a way. The positives first: before the security checks we happened to find some airport staff who could answer us a question we had. Also, the checks were quite quick and waiting times existed but were short enough. What made the checks slightly annoying, though, was that they were uncommonly thorough. For example, I had to refill all my liquids into another plastic bag and explain each and every component in there. My boyfriend managed to run into yet another explosive wipe check (see the outbound leg), but this time for no obvious reason.
Anyhow, the terminal itself was compact, as I said, and everything was pretty easy to find. There was also a nice selection of shops and eateries around the terminal, even though a certain dominance of one convenience store chain was noticeable. Still, this is not bad, in my opinion, as this is by some margin the cheapest way to get drinks and basic food (up to hot sandwiches) in the airport.

I said earlier that Riga airport was quite a gray place, but in some ways I think they are trying to improve this image; for instance, with the wooden decor scattered around the airport and little touches like the viking ship playground for children. However, there's only one place where you can find a water dispenser in all of the Schengen part of the terminal, namely at the very end of concourse B.
From there, it was only a short walk back to gate B6, today's departure gate. As we were at the airport too early, we snatched seats near the terminal and waited for departure across the destination map of the airport. We had actually planned to go to McDonalds to get some spicy chicken nuggets that we didn't know from Germany, so we were curious. Sadly, though, there wasn't a McDonalds here. Maybe for the better for the health of passengers, including us.

One proper shortcoming of RIX, in my opinion, is the lack of seating spaces and power sockets. We were lucky because we were early, but later it got pretty crowded. On the other hand, the large windows make it easy to do some rudimentary spotting. Apart from some Air Baltic A220s, there was a Ryanair Max-200 arriving from Stockholm and of course one of BT's special livery A220s. In this case, this was YL-CSJ with the Estonian flag special livery.
If you are reading flight-report.com, you probably already have heard about the difficulties with Pratt & Whitney's PW1000G geared turbines. In short, issues with spare parts and shortened maintenance intervals mean that this summer, BT with their 100% A220 fleet has to rely on ACMI carriers. This is also the reason for quite some special guests in RIX, such as the Carpatair Fokker photographed on the inbound flight, or other white tails like the one in picture 3 of the gallery below.

A closer look at YL-CSJ, captured later during boarding.

Anyhow, we were early enough at the airport to witness the arrival of today's airplane, coming in from Palma de Mallorca.

Today's ship: LZ-FSC, an 21.5 year old A321-200. Built at Hamburg XFW, then delivered new to British Mediterranean Airlines in April 2002. After flying a long time for British Airways, amongst other operators, it was acquired by Fly2Sky in June 2023.
(The livery is still heavily "inspired" from BA).

Note that  the catering trucks here still say LSG Sky Chefs even though for some years, their European business has been sold to the Gate Group. Hence, you almost exclusively see Gate Gourmet trucks in Frankfurt, where LSG used to have a lot of business due to parent company Lufthansa's operations.

Somehow we missed the announcement to line up for boarding so we were kind of late to the party. Didn't matter, as the boarding pass checks proceeded very quickly. In an instant, we were heading down the stairs to the apron…

…and found ourselves right in front of the airplane, while baggage and mail was loaded.

We were routinely greeted by the crew and were instantly surprised by the extent and quality of the business class cabin. If you happen to find yourself on an Air Baltic flight operated by Fly2Sky, be sure to check the upgrade rates… it seems to be really worth it, given you get a flat bed (very nice depending on the length of the flight), and there are even some "throne" seats. If you think about it, it's not super surprising, given that this airframe used to fly as far as Kazakhstan for BA. (Don't tell that to airlines that fly 5h+ with Eurobusiness…)

The economy class clearly wasn't a standard European short-haul product either. The seats sported a pitch similar to that of the A220 on the inbound leg, a quite nice pitch for inner-European routes albeit not overly generous for medium- or long-haul routes. The presence of individually adjustable and folding headrests were remarkable, even though both our headrests had different defects. The seats featured USB plug sockets (which worked for charging), an audio-jack for the IFE and the IFE screen itself, which didn't show anything, though. The tradeoff was a rather big IFE box which was situated under each and every middle seat.
Speaking of middle seat, no luck today - the aisle seat was taken, so we didn't have the row to ourselves. The flight was quite full, but not 100%, so it would have been in the realm of possibilities.
The cabin wasn't the freshest anymore, but still satisfactory. Pretty much the same can be said about the cabin's cleanliness: it wasn't immaculate, but still good.

Each seat featured a table, which didn't have any special features, but extended at least. I further proved my talent of choosing rows with impaired views: if you're sat on 29A or 29F, prepare to have your field of vision right between two windows (but hey you can look outside if you lean back or forth). The seat pockets contained an Air Baltic inflight magazine (the same as on the inbound leg), a neutral white sickbag, and a Fly2Sky safety card.
The overhead facilities were classic A320 family, with the baggage compartment lids opening upwards, and the by now somewhat nostalgic old-school A320 ceiling panels with individual air nozzles.

Boarding was completed at 16:55 for a scheduled 17:10 departure. Pushback occured at 17:06.

Inflight

We started taxiing towards the runway at around 17:11. On our way, we didn't just notice our two whitetails friends here in photo 1, below, but also some Air Baltic maintenance facilities and more than one Air Baltic A220 with one or both of its engines missing.

Takeoff was announced around 17:15 and lowwed not much later. Sorry for the following photos, during takeoff it wasn't 100% easy to take nice shots from my middle seat.

We soared through the low cloud ceiling and made a sharp turn to the left, getting on course directly towards Germany over the Baltic Sea. Enjoy the last glimpse at the Latvian landscape…

…because at that point, I stopped taking photos. Of the landscape that is. For this flight, we preordered meals, because it was a convenient time for dinner and the prices didn't seem too outlandish (12-20€ depending on the type of the meal). Each meal comes with a main, a drink (orange juice in our case), and a dessert. Some come with a starter. Preordered meals appeared lightning fast - when a cabin attendant came to us to deliver the food it was only 17:27, some 12 minutes after takeoff.

The preordered meals came in boxes like this, which contained everything but the cups themselves.

We had two different meals: The Asian chicken noodles and the "Latvian chicken", both of which came in simple plastic trays and a cake each, which were pretty good. Also included where a slice of rye bread and a paper bag with napkins and cutlery made of some sort of recyclable bio plastic. The Latvian chicken, which was also more expensive, included a nice and fresh salad with a thick slice of salmon on it. The orange juice was fairly average.
Pretty much the same can be said about the Asian chicken. Still, I think it's a nice departure from the usual standard airplane food, and at least the chicken tasted like chicken and the noodles weren't overcooked. The Latvian chicken, on the other hand, was pretty good. The ingredients appeared to be fresh and the tastes of the different vegetables and the potatoes very recognizeable. The chicken was as moist as it can get when it gets microwaved in a plastic tray 25-odd thousand feet over the ground. Something I liked but might not be everyone's taste is the sauce the chicken came with, as it was very garlicky.I can imagine that some of my neighbors in the plane weren't a fan of my meal.

All in all, I think it's a very decent product for a BOB meal on a European economy flight. If I could improve one thing, I would maybe open up the selection of drinks. Yes, it would create another item the cabin crew would have to handle other than the box and the cup. But they have drinks for sale on the tray anyway. Well, maybe it would compromise the speed at which the meal fly out of the galley.

Speaking of flying, during and after the meal time did really fly by, and the flight was very uneventful. Before we knew it, we had already traversed the Baltic Sea…

Land ahoy! (Actually well past that point at the time of the below photo)

Around 18:34 we started our descent, which I noticed because my ears were starting to act up (and would continue to do so for the next 1-2 days or so). Apart from my pressure differential problem, please enjoy the nice and scenig views below. On photo 1 we have a random shot of the Main river which also flows through Frankfurt, with the coal power plant of Großkrotzenburg in photo 2. On photo 3, we get a nice view of the Frankfurt suburb Neu-Isenburg and Dreieich-Sprendlingen in the background. After some forest, we finally cross the last train line before the main runways of Frankfurt airport. On the last photos, you can see one of the ramps leading to Frankfurt airport's long-distance train station at the bottom left.

After the customary shot of the Autobahn A5 when landing from the East, we crossed onto airport territory and touched down very softly around 19:07. We made a 180 degree turn at the next exit and slowly rolled our way to Terminal 2, which is located at the East of the airport - basically where we just came from. (Nothing else to see, really, except maybe Anadolu Jet who's tailfin design in my taste is a bit too similar to Cathay Pacific's).

Turning left, I spotted this European Air Charter MD-82. The Bulgarian ACMI carrier operates 7 of those ancient but (by now) unique aircraft with an average age of 30.3 years as of May 2023. And like always, an Air Europa B738. They operate only 2 flights a day out of Frankfurt but they seem to be everywhere^^ (at least when I fly)
Finally and surprisingly, we came to a stop at a terminal gate position next to this KAL 777.

Frankfurt Airport

We weren't in a hurry so we relaxed a bit until the doors had opened, most people had alighted, and then we casually stepped through the jet bridge into the terminal building.

We were spat out directly onto the terminal concourse, pretty much exactly where we started.

Turning left, we found the exit pretty soon on our right side and entered the baggage claim, where a lot was going on.

As per usual in Frankfurt, there was some chaos going on regarding the baggage. We were lucky, in a way - because our baggage took only about 30 minutes to arrive, and it did arrive.

After we've gotten our baggage (both pieces), we made our way to the bus stop and caught bus 61 back to the city.

And with this I'd like to thank you for coming along this time. If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to leave them below. See you next time!

PS: You're welcome for the first review of Fly2Sky on this site ;)