Review of Transavia flight from Rotterdam to Barcelona in Economy

Introduction

Hi there,

Before starting this journey, I did not intend to write a report on this flight to Barcelona with Transavia from Rotterdam as I recently already reported about a very similar flight with Transavia to Girona and it didn't seem worth to me to write another report about it. However upon embarking the aircraft, I realized that I made a huge mistake by selecting the seat I chose, so in the end I did decide to make a report about this flight to perhaps warn other people to avoid those seats if you ever fly on a Boeing 737-800 of Transavia and a few other airlines with the same bird / configuration. So photos of Rotterdam were a bit limited.

Two days prior to my flight, Our OPS department informed me that I will have to be by 4 pm in Girona and given that there are only two direct flights to Girona on a sunday with one departing at 6 AM in the morning and the other one at 8 PM, I kindly asked them to book me on the flight to Barcelona from Rotterdam with Transavia. An hour later I received my itinerary and they gave me information to pick up one of the company car to position myself to Girona.

Rotterdam The Hague Airport

Given that my flight left Rotterdam about 11.25 AM, my lovely wife kindly dropped me off at the airport about 90 minutes prior to my departure to Barcelona El Prat. Said my goodbyes and made my way to the terminal.

The departure hall of Rotterdam itself is rather tiny and is somewhat of a tight fit for all passengers to drop their luggage off. Transavia did open many counters and made specific counters handle specific flights, however the amount of counters were insufficient to the amount of people that wanted to drop their luggage. 

As Rotterdam does have a few self drop-off counters, I made my way over to one of them with success as the majority of passengers were not aware that they existed given that the lines of people for the counter were blocking them for the majority, so in the end it only took about two minutes to drop off my luggage.

Security on the other hand wasn't as busy with just a few people in line and took about 5 to 10 minutes to clear. Once done, I made my way to the Prima Vista lounge, which you can access through Priority Pass, Privium, J class with BA or simply pay your admittance fee (which I highly recommend not to do). 

The lounge itself is rather limited with just a few seats and a marginal selection of snacks and beverages. The food cart in the picture below contained a small variety of breads, pastries and crisps.

On the other side you can find some coffee, tea, additional snacks and some spreads in the fridge below with some alcoholic beverages available too and a grill to grill a toast with ham and cheese. Left of the counter (not on the photo) you could find a fridge with some soft drinks, beers, wines and cold dishes like pasta or cheeses to snack on.

While the lounge is tiny, the lounge is set up that it does feel a bit more spacious than it really is. The seats itself are rather comfy and do have powerplugs, however the lounge does not have a private bathroom. The bathroom if one want to use one is just outside of the entry to the lounge, but given that the lounge is somewhat secluded, the lavatory is not overly used.

Flight HV6303

Boarding was called right on time, but it actually took them about ten more minutes to start performing it. The entire process was rather slow and unlike last time, we were now allowed to walk to our plane, which was at the exact same parking spot as my previous flight with Transavia from Rotterdam. Our flight to Barcelona was going to be performed by a 15.4 year old Boeing 737-800 (PH-HSW) that was newly delivered to Transavia Holland in April 2009. It has seen temporary leases to airlines such as Caribbean Airlines, GOL & Sun Country Airlines as Transavia is using those leases to gain some extra revenue in their winter season.

The airline has 189 seats installed in their aircraft in an all-economy configuration with a seat pitch of 29-30'' (roughly 74cm) and a seat width of 17'' (roughly 43cm). 

Upon embarking our aircraft as the last passenger, I was kindly greeted by two flight attendants. One of them actually was a flight attendant on my previous flight.

Upon walking to my seat, I quickly noticed the error I made. Somewhere in my brain it was known, however upon selecting my seat during check-in, I did not realize this, however a quick peek from the window at my seat.

Luckily today I had the entire row to myself. The seats are in an apple-green colour and do have some nice padding for a low cost / Holiday airline, however this does also mean you're stuck with quite a tight seat pitch. The width is also somewhat reduced with those older larger armrest as this is included in the 17''. The armrest is also movable to an angle of approximately 60 to 70% making it useless for them to be even movable.

The worst part of the seat is that the window is completely misaligned for both 11A & 12A, so both passengers in my seat and their seat are somewhat stuck with a view that is barely visible. While the seats can recline, the chap in front of me didn't, so during my entire flight I had somewhat of a view.

The legroom has previously said is also rather poor with my knees into the seat in front of me and I'm only about 1.83 cm(6'')  tall. The literature in the seat pocket is definitely limiting it more, so if you want a tad more legroom, I'd say to take out the literature for your flight and to put them somewhere else, just don't forget to put them back in the seat pocket when you leave the aircraft.

The captain announced himself that they were ready with a long story about our flight to Barcelona before starting to move to Runway 24 for an westerly departure. About 22 minutes past our scheduled boarding time, we were finally rolling down the runway.

A view of Rotterdam's Apron with a few aircraft. Three Transavia, One Corendon and an ATR 42 of Blue Island pulling into stand. The platform near the winglet is Rotterdam's private jet apron.

Soon a southbound turn was engaged and a few minutes later we had a nice view of the ''Oosterschelde''

About 20 minutes into the flight, the flight attendants started to perform their buy on board service. Given that I wanted something to drink, I took the literature out of my seat pocket and this contains of a safety card, waste bag, buy on board menu and a duty free magazine which also includes some news articles and promotions of some airports Transavia flies to.

While I didn't capture the photos of the buy on board menu, I uploaded them below from my previous flight in case you haven't read them and would like to know what kind of products they offer and about the prices they charge for certain items.

By the time the flight attendants arrived to my seat, I decided to grab a cup of coffee and a stroopwafel, which is probably of the most famous Dutch snacks you can find, however the one I had was rather old and wasn't the best. The price for both was 5 euro, which I found reasonable, however expected a bit more quality of the products.

As I had plenty of water in the lounge and no person next to me, it was an easy move to get to one of the lavatories. I went to the one upfront as that one had no line nor wasn't as used as often as the one in the aft, however the lavatory upfront is definitely more of a tight fit with not a lot of room to manoeuvre. The state of it however was clean and did not smell. 

Not a lot of amenities as one can expect other than some handsoap and an air freshener spray to make it more bearable in the lavatory :).

The pilots were very engaged with their passengers making multiple announcements telling us about our location and made suggestions to look outside when we were over interesting sights such as Paris etc.. Not a lot of pilots do it, though it is a nice gesture for them to do such things.

The view of the cabin in-flight.

About 1 hour and 45 minutes into the flight, the captain announced himself for the last time thanking us for flying with Transavia, wishing us a safe onward journey and informing us that we will be landing soon into Runway 06L with a short ride to our gate. He also gave us the latest weather and instructed flight attendant to prepare the cabin for landing.

On final approach of 06L.

Touchdown was smooth, but 11 minutes past our scheduled arrival time resulting us being 16 minutes late at our gate in Terminal 2. Disembarkation followed soon after and went orderly.

Barcelona El Prat's terminal 2

It took about twenty minutes for our luggage to appear (including a 10 minute walk from Gate to Belt) and my luggage was one of the first to appear on the belt. Catching my luggage, I quickly went to Barcelona's Airport Train Station for a short ride to the next destination to pick up the company's car.

Thanks for stopping by!