Review of Austrian Airlines flight Vienna → Amsterdam in Economy

Goodday to you.

For the past few months I haven't created a lot of reports despite being busy flying. I did not bother to report about them as they were similar legs to my previous flights and did not want to become very repetitive, but back to the story of the flight.

After completing my cargo flight from Birmingham to Bratislava at around 11 AM in Bratislava, I was notified by operations that the aircraft will remain in Bratislava, Slovakia for the weekend and that they would book me on the last flight out from Vienna with Austrian as earlier flights were extremely expensive (about 400 USD more on top of the 400 USD operations paid for the ticket)….. An additional mail was forwarded to me with a reservation with Flixbus which departs every hour or so from Bratislava Airport (with three stops in Bratislava) to Vienna Airport.

Given that they booked me on the flixbus of 1.45 PM, it also meant I had about 5 hours to kill or so in Vienna as the ride from Bratislava to Vienna would only take about 1.5 hours to complete.

Despite being fully booked, the ride with Flixbus was pleasant and dropped me off in the arrival section of Terminal 3 with a small delay of approximately 15 minutes. The only downside of being dropped off here is that you need to cross a lot of smoking people and the smell is quite obnoxious for someone who doesn't.

As I still had to grab some lunch, I decided to sit down with Dean&David to grab myself a bite and a Wiener Original (Beer). This wasn't my first choice of a restaurant, but it was the only one that had a few seats left and wasn't overcrowded like the others. 

After spending a solid hour in Dean&David, I decided to drop my luggage a bit early via the self-scan service which did not take more than a single minute to complete. Given that my gate was not known, the departure screens told us it was going to be from one of the gates from the F Pier. 

Walking to the security for schengen departures, one of the screens informed us that security would only take four minutes to clear, which wasn't really up to date as security was completely crowded and took more like 15 minutes to complete, though without any hassle. Upon clearing security, you are being guided through a large duty free shop (which seems to be so common nowadays) with goods that you're able to buy at any airport if you intend to do so.

The F pier was extremely crowded near the beginning of the pier, so I made my way to the aft of the pier as it was much more pleasant and deserted. The amount of seating is limited though and half of the seating is in the middle of the walkway having people constantly cross in front and behind you. I decided to grab my computer to do some work and to kill some of the remaining 3.5 hours.

About 1 hour prior to departure, the gate was announced and I had to make my way back to the beginning of the pier as Gate F06 would be used for today's departure. About 5 minutes prior to boarding time, an announcement was made by one of the ground attendants whether someone was willing to give up one of his seats for a cash compensation of 250 EUR & Hotelnight and you would depart with Austrian's first flight of the next day. I assume someone took that option as 5 minutes later boarding was called right on time.

Boarding was done by bus boarding and the flight would be performed by OE-LBV. OE-LBV is an 22.8 year old Airbus A320 and is named 'Weinviertel', a famous district in Lower-Austria. This particularly Airbus A320 was delivered to LTU in February 2001 before joining Austrian's fleet in February 2011.

Using the aft stairs as my seat would be 26F.

Upon entering the aircraft, I was kindly greeted by a very cheerful flight attendant and made my way to my seat, which to now wasn't still occupied (would be occupied). Padding of those seats is obviously poor, but legroom is increased with those seats.

I'm about 1.83m tall (6'' for our American fellows) and legroom wasn't great either. Though knees did not touch the seat in front of me.

It's amazing to see how well this aircraft is maintained by Austrian as there were no signs of wear anywhere to be found despite the aircraft age of 22.8 years. It shows that Austrian cares about the state of the aircraft and the way they are displaying their brand to their customer.

A view of the cabin.

Boarding was slower than planned and we were eventually rolling for departure about 15 minutes past of scheduled departure with a westerly departure from Runway 29. It gave us a beautiful view over Vienna.

Shortly after our departure from Vienna, the flight attendant announced that people who are Miles&More Member or be willing to sign up for the membership will be given a complimentary 30 minute wifi package suitable for messaging. As I already was a member myself, I tried to gain access several times throughout the flight but was unable to connect during my tries. Never understood why the airlines promote this kind of service when it's not even functioning properly.

`The literature on today's flight consisted of two different safety cards, a sickbag, Buy on Board Menu & A Shopping magazine. No airline magazine was present.

The buy on board service was engaged shortly after reaching cruising level with not a lot of people opting for it. The two flight attendants following suit were a tad busier providing us with a complimentary cup of water and a chocolate and needed 35 minutes or so to reach our row of seats. The older flight attendant was very cheerful and did increase the level of service given to us by a lot as the other flight attendants were quite distant and did not really fancy a chat

About 15 minutes prior to landing, the captain announced himself reporting us that we were in our descent to Amsterdam and would land in a westerly direction on Runway 27. Thanked us for flying with Austrian and wished us a good onward journey. This was once again a notification for cabin crew to start to clean the cabin and point people towards their seats. Landing on Runway 27 was ahead of our scheduled arrival time and was smooth.

Disembarking was a bit slow from my row as people in the last rows were even trying to get to the exit as soon as possible blocking other people in front of them to actually get out of their seats….. Not really nice either as most of us had to wait for our bags in the baggage claim sector anyway. Schiphol was quite deserted by now with only just a handful of flights still departing.

Baggage belt 6 was in use and by the time I reached the baggage claim, the first bags were already loaded on the belt. It took another 10 minutes for my bags to arrive as it was one of the last to arrive. Upon grabbing my luggage I had about four minutes to grab my train to home and managed to catch that train with a few seconds to spare!

Thanks for the read and safe flying!

I'll be having a nice journey ahead of me in November/December with plenty of flights to report on.