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214 reviews
Welcome to the 4th segment in this series of Flight-Reports. This review will cover the second leg of an SAS itinerary between Copenhagen and Harstad/Narvik Evenes airport in northern Norway, near the beautiful Lofoten Islands.
Only a handful of airlines serve Evenes, and most flights go through Oslo in the off-season. SAS was the best option from CPH with the best schedule with most frequency, and decent fares including bags. Norwegian had slightly lower fares, but I don't care to fly low-cost carriers when connections are involved–if anything goes wrong, there are fewer options compared to a larger network carrier.
Reviews in this series:
Oslo Gardermoen is a very pleasant airport and transit was easy and stress-free. There are two zones–international and domestic. We'd arrived from Copenhagen in the international zone and needed to head to the domestic zone for our next flight, but there was no rush as we had plenty of time.
The terminal is impressive and very clean with tons of seating areas, shops, and restaurants. There are also several play areas for children, which parents will appreciate.
There's even an area with screens where kids can paint and design aircraft and then launch them on a big screen.
Though we were able to bid (successfully) for upgrades to SAS Plus on the previous leg, this was not offered for the Norwegian domestic sectors, so we didn't have lounge access in Oslo and there are no Priority Pass lounges, only a priority pass restaurant.
Nevertheless, it was a pleasant wait between flights as the airport was quiet that day, especially in the international zone. It was fun just to sit and watch the planes.
We wandered over to the Domestic section about a half hour before boarding.
We found that there was another fun aviation themed children's play area, right next to our gate–very convenient!
We were able to watch our plane come in to the gate from the play area.
This time we were in Boarding group 2. Boarding was very orderly and it was not crowded in the gate area.
SAS A320neos have a capacity of 180 passengers, which is one row less than the maximum of 186, making the cabin a bit less cramped than low-cost carriers flying the 186-seat configuration.
Legroom, while not spacious, felt a little better than on the inbound Jet Time 737-800. Seat pitch on these aircraft is 30" (76cm) in rows in front of the overwing exits, which are used to the SAS Plus (Premium Economy) cabin, and 29" (74cm) in the back.
Each Recaro slimline seat is equipped with a USB-A port and has the seatback pocket at eye-level, which allows for some additional knee clearance and can also serve as a makeshift tablet holder if you can manage to dangle your table by its cover there.
In the seat pocket, there are instructions for connecting to the Wi-Fi, along with some good information, including the Wi-Fi satellite coverage map.
The buy-on-board menu can also be found in the seat-back pocket. There are more options than there were on the Jet Time operated flight, including fresh options. There are even better fresh food options available for pre-booking.
Boarding wrapped up early as the flight was only about 60% full.
Wow, it had been a while since I'd sat this far back on a plane, haha.
After a quick taxi through the fog and drizzle, we were off.
Much nicer above the clouds ☀
The Wi-Fi was available once we reached 10,000 ft in altitude.
The buy-on-board menu was also available through the Wi-Fi portal.
I found the price to be very reasonable at 39NOK, or about $3.75.
Cabin crew were in the aisle for the in-flight service shortly after. Only tea and coffee are complimentary in Economy, everything else if for purchase. I wasn't hungry and I still had my juice from the previous flight, so I didn't get anything.
Beautiful scenes of snow-capped mountains throughout the flight.
With a flight time of only 1 hour and 20 minutes, it wasn't long before we began our descent.
There were absolutely amazing views of the Lofoten islands on approach to EVE. This was probably one of the most scenic approaches I'd ever seen. Being the big nerd that I am, of course I did my research ahead of time to know where to sit to catch the best views ?
It looked like we were skimming the mountain tops as we descended.
We landed right on time into EVE. Cabin crew made an announcement as we taxied not to take any photos due to regulations concerning a military installation at the airport (I took this photo before that announcement was made).
Overall a nice cabin. I like the bulkheads–very Scandinavian.
Evenes is a cool little regional airport. It's definitely small, but charming and kind of reminded me a bit of Puerto Montt airport in Chile, though smaller and less modern–probably because of all the wood.
We had a 2-hour drive ahead of us to reach our destination in Lofoten Islands. It was a gorgeous sunny day, so perfect for a scenic drive!
This view from our waterfront cabin rental was well-worth the 2 flights and 2-hour drive!
A pleasant 1.5 hour flight with amazing views of Norway's majestic landscapes. Cabin crew were friendly and the cabin was quite nice and new. Nice amenities with cheap fast Wi-Fi and charging ports.
8 Comments
Wasn’t familiar with EVE, feel like TOS always pops up looking at options to Northern Norway. With the expansion of subsidized routes with DX and WF into these rural areas, did you find large differences in prices between cities?
Reminds me of HND with kids play areas everywhere, looks like plenty of distractions for the little ones.
Hope you had a shower afterwards to cleanse yourself. SK has a pretty meh reputation, but at least they have USB outlets and WiFi, which is more than can be said for some of the “full-service” carriers in Europe.
Not tempted by that Cava? ;)
Beautiful aerials throughout and looking forward to the Lofoten Islands bonus.
Yeah so actually I really wanted to try WF for the AvGeekiness of it all and WF fly into even smaller airports right in the Lofoten Islands, but they all involved at least two stops from CPH and were almost twice the price of flying SK or DY into EVE.
Honestly, I really expected worse because of that meh reputation, but was pleasantly surprised in the end.
Not even remotely haha. Maybe if it were free
Thanks for reading!
I highly recommend it!
Thanks for your comments!
Thanks for sharing!
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