As it was the usual time for us to do our annual training courses in Spain, operations informed me about two weeks prior to this flight that they will book me some flight tickets to Spain. As I was suppose to be in Girona and Girona is generally good connected to the Netherlands in the summer, I kindly requested them to book me on a flight with Transavia from Rotterdam instead of my base Amsterdam as this airport tends to be closer to my home and had better timings to Girona for me. It actually turned out to be cheaper to fly from Rotterdam too.
On the day of flight with a very hectic planning due to car troubles earlier this week, I made it to Rotterdam Airport where I parked my temporary car for a few days in the vicinity to the terminal on this hot summer day in the Netherlands.
With a walk that took less than five minutes, we are now in front of the small terminal. Rotterdam Airport has done some major overhaul works in the past few years to colour up the terminal with some trees and other plants. It also became quite a maze for car traffic to find your spot, however it is definitely more pedestrian-friendly by now.
The departure hall is definitely on the smaller side and can become quite chaotic in times of larger volumes, however as I'm only going for four days maximum to Girona, I did not need to use any of the check-in counters as I only carried a small backpack. For those who are not aware, Transavia recently changed their policy regarding cabin luggage and the cheapest fare does not contain a trolley.
To smoothen the boarding experience, a staff member of Transavia was already verifying sizes of the trolleys before entering security whether it was according to guidelines. Once again, this was not much of an issue as I was only carrying a backpack, which they did not verify.
Security wasn't that busy and took about five minutes to clear. The friendly chap of security who was directing you to what station you needed to go was very chatty to most passengers making jokes, which was definitely nice comparing it to the usual grumpy faces one sees.
By now airside wasn't overly busy as most flights were still inbound to Rotterdam.
Rotterdam has about 12 gates with no jetbridges and definitely tried to create some ambience, however lacked seating when it handles large volume of passengers.
To my surprise there was a lounge available in Rotterdam and I actually got access to it due to my priority pass, so I did decide to try it out.
The lounge itself is rather tiny and does not offer a lot of seating. My section had about 12 of those fluffy seats and in the other room it had a huge table that could seat around 12 people too.
Some wall decoration and a car with some varieties of bread.
The food and beverage selection was rather limited with a fridge on the left containing some soft drinks and alcoholic beverages such as wines and beers. Two smaller fridges were found below which contained goods such as yoghurt, fruit and spreads for your bread.
Other than that you had some cereals, a limited selection of pastries (Danish & Chocolate cake) a coffee machine and some hard liquor. A grill was also available if you fancied some grilled ham & cheese sandwich.
About five minutes to boarding, I decided to leave the lounge and made a quick visit to the terrace Rotterdam has for their passengers, which comes with an excellent view over the apron and is definitely a pleasure to spend on those sunnier days if the smokers actually did obey to legislation and sticked to smoking in the designated area, which a lot of passengers did not do.
The view of Rotterdam's apron from the terrace with our bird being on the right. Pegasus also flies to Rotterdam from Istanbul and the other Transavia would fly to Pula.
Boarding was called about five minutes past our scheduled boarding call and was done in three different groups. Given that zone 3 (mine) was called as last, we were rounded up in the last bus that brought us over to our aircraft.
As most passengers simply decided to line up in front and knowing that my seat was in the aft section of the aircraft, I decided to walk via the backstairs to my seat and was definitely the right call as there were no long lines in the aft.
The flight to Girona would be performed by PH-XRX, which is a 21.4 year old Boeing 737-700 that has solely been flying for Transavia in it's entire career.
Upon embarking the aircraft, I was kindly greeted by a single flight attendant.
However given that I was in one of the aft seats with the characteristics of the Boeing 737 fuselage, this was a very tight fit for me with my knees sticking into the back of the other seats (I'm 1.83m tall (6'')).
The view from my seat however was not too shabby.
The cabin of this bird was a rather old one, though well maintained and was showing the famous apple green of Transavia.
Captain informed us prior to taxiing that we were departing about ten minutes past our scheduled departure due to the amount of luggage's to be loaded, and about 16 minutes past our scheduled departure time we were rolling from Runway 06 into an easterly departure giving us views of Rotterdam's Skyline.
A right turn into southerly direction was soon performed giving us a view of Rotterdam's harbour.
The literature in Transavia's seatpocket contains of a sickbag, a magazine including duty free, a worn safety card and a buy on board menu.
The buy on board menu as seen below isn't overly expensive, however isn't cheap either and does provide some nice & interesting options
So far legroom hasn't improved :).
The table itself was clean and sturdy.
Given that I've been running all day with a busy schedule on a hot summer day, I decided to treat myself on one of my guilty pleasures and ordered myself an IPA for 5.5 EUR. Quite expensive for a beer in the air, yet I needed it :).
Unfortunately I couldn't really enjoy watching the scenery below with the sun being so bright in my window.
About 70 minutes into the flight, the captain announced himself to inform us that we were about to descend into Girona and the scenery into Girona definitely gave us some good views with the sun setting.
The landing was firm, yet not overly hard and it took about three minutes or so to dock into our stand.
A final view of the old bird that brought us over to Girona.
Given that I did not have any luggage other than my backpack, I made my way out of the terminal as quickly as possible and made a call to the hotel I was staying to arrange a pick up.
Thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for sharing this FR. RTM looks like a nice small airport and the terrace being lower to the ground makes for some nice views over the apron. The lounge probably has demand with the premium business routes into London-City and Luxembourg. From the US perspective, the beer is cheap since you’d pay almost double for that on a US carrier. TO doesn’t look as comfortable as FR with that tight pitch, but for a reliable point-to-point flight option, they seem to do the trick.
To be fair FR might give you a better pitch, however the seat is defo more comfortable of Transavia, so it tends to hurt less in the long run if you have them on the longer routes.
Oooh that outdoor terrace looks nice! The traffic isn't super exciting at RTM for planespotting, but it's still great to have, especially on a nice day like that.
Thanks for sharing!
While the scheduled lines do not really offer a large variety of airlines, it sometimes does see an odd older bird that is not allowed in Amsterdam due regulations, so yeah, but you'd need to be lucked out to find one.