Review of Transavia flight from Girona to Amsterdam in Economy

Introduction

The previous night I finished my rotation in Girona after a week of night duties and was told by operations that I was on standby for Saturday for a potential new contract, however this contract never came and operations informed me that I was released from standby and that they would buy me a ticket to home. Given that it was later in the day, I had only two options left from Girona. One departing to Rotterdam, while the other one was departing to Amsterdam. Rotterdam is usually my choice as it is closer to home and I was about to suggest that flight, when I saw that Transavia was operating their new A321neo to Amsterdam. Curious about the product, I decided to request them to book me on a flight to Amsterdam.

About thirty minutes later I received my itinerary from operations and they informed me that they already checked me in for the flight to Amsterdam as they didn't receive any confirmation email from Transavia. I wasn't particularly happy with that as they didn't include any luggage (while I told them so) and had misspelled my surname. Transavia's policy is quite lenient to name changes as the first one is free of charge, while any further change was going to cost you about fifty euros, however you are unable to add or change any thing to your itinerary when you are checked in and Transavia's system doesn't allow you to cancel your check-in.

To solve this issue I decided to call the customer service of Transavia and spoke to a lady and was told by this lady to hold on… About five to ten more minutes the connection was abruptly cut short (which to me felt was done by the lady itself as I kind of heard some sounds before being disconnected). 

About ten minutes later without any call back from them I decided to try my luck again and explained my story once again, the second lady understood the situation and was going to make a request to the person who was responsible for that. About twenty minutes or so she returned to me telling me that she didn't get any response from him and asked whether she could call me back on my number if he responded. About 30 minutes past our call, I noticed that the system had checked me out (the return call never came back, however I suspect that the lady responsible for this noticed that I was already aware of it), giving me a chance to add luggage for a much cheaper rate and change my name to the correct one before checking in again.

Girona Costa Brava Airport

About 90 minutes prior to my original departure I decided to leave the hotel I was staying at with just a walk of five minutes to the airport. While there are a few hotels in the vicinity of the airport, Hotel Vilobi is basically the only one that is in walkable distance from the airport itself. The hotel itself is family-ran and is your typical local Spanish hotel.

The walk isn't that bad as it has an pedestrian route all the way to the terminal.

Roughly five minutes later the ugly cubed-styled terminal came into view with limited parking abilities. It does offer a few parking spots which you can use for five minutes only, but they tend to be fully used by others for actually more than the intended time and somehow the airport isn't really actively fighting against it.

While the summer season is about to finished, there were still quite a lot of flights departing at this hour with a Jet2 to London Gatwick and a few Ryanair flights to several destinations, yet the only airline with a huge line was Transavia as usual.

Lining up with only two counters being opened to check-in about 190 to 200 people for their flight back home.

About 45 minutes later I was finally approaching the counters. Staff was extremely friendly and chatty, but this style of check in, however appreciated it is, is not the most efficient way, but staff again wasn't in a rush as the flight was already delayed by an hour.

Eventually I dropped my luggage and went upstairs to security, which to be honest, was a breeze to go through and didn't take more than two minutes or so to clear. Once you passed security, you will pass a duty free shop to enter airside. While normally I would skip the duty free as soon as possible, I know Girona Airport does have a wine I thoroughly enjoy and stopped by to buy this specific bottle.

Given that Girona does not have any lounge nor that I can't access one with my priority pass, I decided to grab a cup of coffee at the outdoor terrace, which unfortunately is pointed in the wrong direction (not to the apron) and does not offer any views. It however does offer some cooler temps than the terminal, which was quite on the warmer side today.

About forty minutes prior to our new scheduled departure time, I made my way to the seating area near gate 14. While the gate was not announced, I was pretty sure that it was one of those gates for our flight to Amsterdam, which is usually the case with them.

Boarding was eventually called about an hour past our scheduled boarding time and went with no respect to zones. It felt to me that the ground handling just wanted to get things done as soon as possible to go home, though a lot of passengers who bought speedy boarding, were not really happy with this matter and decided to skip lines. Ground handling didn't really bother about it and continued to scan boarding passes of everyone despite whether they skipped a line or not.

Short walk to our aircraft gave us a view of a few Ryanair with one being pushed back for it's flight to Dublin, a few private jets and a few of those old dusty prop planes which I fly :).

Flight HV5764 to Amsterdam

And here's our bird for today.

PH-YHA is an 0.5 year old Airbus A321neo at the time of flight and was newly delivered to Transavia on the 30th of April 2024 as the fifth A321neo in their fleet. This specific aircraft however is the first A321neo of Transavia that was fully owned by the group. It is configured in an all-economy layout with 232 seats and is powered by two CFMI LEAP-1A32 engines.

Fuselage Shot.

Upon embarking the aircraft, we were kindly greeted by two flight attendant with the purser being in a very chatty and friendly mood making some jokes so now and then. Found my way to my seat 20F for today's departure and took a chance to grab a photo of the cabin during boarding. While the overhead panels made the cabin look smaller than it actually was, the storage of them was definitely increased comparing it to their 737s.

Legroom was better comparing it to their 737 fleet, yet still marginal with my 6'' (1,83M).

The seat however is now equiped with a USB-C Charger and a cup-holder. No sockets were available nor any normal USB slot. Also despite being a new aircraft, Transavia did not opt to install any sort of WiFi on board.

The tray itself is also a bit smaller comparing it to their 737 fleet with a cupholder and a two ribons which you can use as a phone holder. While the seat in general feels a bit better-designed, I felt like the top part of the seat was actually closer to you reducing your movement area slightly.

The literature in the seat pocket is literally the same (other than the safety card) as you have on the 737, however I must say that they didn't really bother about the paper sizes as the safety card and the magazine were actually a bit too large for the literature pocket. Cabin cleaning was apparently also skipped as my sick bag was full of trash and lots of casings to be found among the literature.

View from my window seat.

I'm glad that Transavia didn't decide to cut on the individual air vents, which as of now are still installed and definitely could be a life saver so now and then.

Boarding was completed about 15 minutes later and engines were immediately fired up by pilots to start out flight to Amsterdam and to minimize any further delay.

Short emergency briefing was done and about 66 minutes past our scheduled departure time we were rolling for a northerly departure to Amsterdam.

About ten minutes into the flight, the cabin lights turned on and I'm not entirely sure whether this purple atmosphere light is actually matching the green tints of the seats.. It doesn't to me :)

Given that I already have posted the buy on board menu of Transavia quite often in my previous report, I'd like to give you a short review in the gallery below if you fancy to see what they have on offer and about what they charge for it. Personally I wouldn't say that prices are extremely steep nor cheap.

Given that this was the last flight of the day, flight attendants announced that all sandwiches and hot products had a 50% discount, however I did not bother to use any of it and simply opened by Kobe reader to enjoy my book.

About 80 minutes into the flight, the captain announced himself reporting that we would be landing soon in Amsterdam on Runway 18R (Polderbaan) and would expect us to be parked at the gate in roughly 30 minutes from now.

After a quite violent landing on Runway 18R, it took about twenty minutes or so to taxi to our gate only to realize that we had to wait more as the ground crew responsible for our flight was waiting at a wrong parking stand with nothing turned on on our stand.

Upon disembarking I decided to take a quick shot of the seat I was sitting in. The seat itself definitely lost on the padding comparing it to the 737, though is a bit more lenient with the legroom. 

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol

Saying goodbye to PH-YHA.

Our parking stand was quite a distance from the main terminal and it took about 10 to 15 minutes on leisurely pace to reach the baggage claim.

With another 45 minute wait for our luggage to appear…… Waiting 45 minutes for your luggage to appear in the middle of the night (Roughly 2.15 AM) is something I really find unacceptable.

Eventually found my luggage and went on my home, so thanks for stopping by!