This trip report's flight between Puerto Vallarta and Mexico City will take a short 1hr 15 mins at distance of 411mi/662km
Introduction
Welcome to another exciting trip report! Today's flight will be on a new airline for me called Viva Aerobus which is one of two major LCC's here in Mexico. When planning out this trip and finding fares between PVR and MEX, I found VB's fares to be quite competitive when comparing to AM who were charging of upwards of 120 USD for a one way flight versus VB which was 55 USD. It's clear to say I went with VB and my fare included a carryon luggage and one personal item.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
Puerto Vallarta has to be one of my favorite beach destinations in Mexico, before Cancun. To say the least I had an amazing time and would recommend everyone to come visit this coastal city. Enjoy some of my collage of photos from my short stay there ?.
I came here to visit PV in the end of May and the weather was perfect!
day of departure
After spending a few days here, the day had finally arrived and it was time to sadly leave this amazing place. The day before I had checked in for my flight, since I was flying on a LCC I was hoping that I would be randomly assigned a window or aisle seat but lo and behold I was assigned a middle seat. My other hope would be that the flight wouldn't be full and I could ask the FA's to move to an available window or aisle seat but for that I would have to wait until I got to the airport. Ultimately VB was charging 22USD to select a seat on the flight which was half the cost of my ticket and did not think it was worth the price for a flight of this length.
From my airbnb I ordered an Uber and we made our way to the airport.
Unfortunately I lost all my footage of my arrival to the airport and checkin area which really sucked and was left with footage only of the boarding area and my aircraft pulling in.
Some information about my plane:
Flight number: VB 1167
Aircraft: Airbus A321-251NX
Registration: XA-VXE
Delivered: October 6, 2022
Age: 1.2 years
Here's our aircraft arriving inbound from Mexico City as VB 1166
Boarding
Boarding began on time and we boarded with group 6.
The only good view I'd have of XA-VXE.
A look at the seats onboard VB.
A view from my seat 32B. There was a male FA on the aisle helping everyone find their seats and he directed me to mines. I took at the opportunity and asked the FA if there's a possibility that I can move to an empty aisle or window seat if the flight wasn't full and he told me that he would let me know if any seats become available.
Legroom was what you'd would expect from a LCC. These seats offer 28" of pitch, I'm 5'9" or 176cm for reference.
Unfortunately the flight today was completely full and I had to suck it up and stay in my middle seat. Weird though that when checking the seat map yesterday it showed quite a lot of open seats. I heard somewhere that when flying LCC (especially Ryanair) that those without a seat reservation to always check in at about 3 hours before departure as the first ones to check in always get the middle seats. Therefore if your the last ones to receive a seat you'll have a better chance getting an aisle or window seat. Gonna have to give that method a try for next time.
Boarding was quickly completed and we pushed back on time.
Taking off…
tray table/seat back contents
The tray table was a little on the small side and was not extendable. It did have indentation to place a tablet or phone and a cup.
Seat back contained a onboard BOB menu, a credit card brochure and the safety card.
The prices seem descent and had this been a longer flight I would of bought something.
Lastly the safety card. Though I did notice it did not say A321Neo anywhere on this card.
This was a shorter flight than I thought and before we knew it the FA's were preparing the cabin for landing.
Downtown Mexico City.
Got a cool view of the Torre Latinoamerica.
On final.
Welcome to CDMX!
deplaning
This concludes the trip report, thanks for reading!
Totally agree! While the water is usually clearer in the Riviera Maya, the setting of Puerto Vallarta with mountains and beautiful West Coast sunsets is more of a draw to me.
The new Geven seats look quite nice and it's nice to hear they're comfortable. It's a newer model and one of the best slimline designs out there that manages to give more legspace and seat width greater than 18" at minimal 28" pitch. Haha yeah, the tray table is very small, but then again it's an LCC so they're not selling big meals on huge trays so all good.
Thanks for sharing!