Review of Wizz Air flight from Chişinău to Beauvais in Economy

Routing

This flight report covers the return leg of a short trip to discover Moldova and its mysterious neighbor - on a flight that was not at all the one I had originally chosen in January:

But in early March, SkyUp cancelled our return flight.
Plan B was this:

But in mid-May, HiSky in turn cancelled our return flight! We could delay our return home due to other commitments, so we were left with this Plan C only: the 6:30 am Wizz Air red-eye flight to BVA - an airport which I had managed to avoid so far and did not nothing to help me change my mind (spoiler alert…):

RMO at dawn

The short branch to RMO from a main road is decorated with this Air Moldova Tu-134, shortly before the terminal.

Designed to serve airports with rudimentary runways in Siberia, the Tu-134 featured a reinforced landing gear (much like the tri-jet Tu-154). It was the standard short- and medium-haul aircraft for Warsaw Pact countries.

Let's go back to the day of departure: it was 4:30 AM, yet there were crowds both outside…

…and inside, where the line to reach the security check stretched diagonally across the entire terminal.

The first flight out of RMO is as early as 4:40 AM!

This luggage scale wasn't here by chance in an airport served mainly by low-cost carriers. At 7.6 kg, our cabin lugggage was well below Wizz Air's 10 kg maximum for an overhead cabin bags (there was a fee for that, of course!).

The line for the security screening was long, but was moving quickly.

Very quickly: ten minutes after the picture above, we had already cleared security, and another ten minutes later, we found seats airside… though not next to each other, because while not overcrowded, the airside waiting area was quite full.

Power outlets are scarce in this hall, and all the harder to find given the high seat occupancy.

The duty-free shopping area, seen here from the mezzanine, could be walked through quickly

There was no lack of customers for the kid play area on the mezzanine…

… and a long queue off-camera to the right for those wanting to grab a bite.

These different cabin luggage sizers illustrate the dominance of low-cost carriers at this airport

I found this water fountain useful

Plane spotting at RMO

An open-air smoking area offers a partial view of the tarmac, but most of the following pictures have been taken from outside, between the boarding gate and the aircraft.
T7-888, an Embraer 135BJ belonging to Avcon Jet, a business aviation company

Arrival of ER-SMA, a 737-700 from Skyup Nistru (a Moldovan subsidiary of Ukraine’s SkyUp Airlines) sporting a very eye-catching livery, arriving from DLM (Dalaman, Turkey). She was going stay there until its next flight to MAD at 2:30 PM, according to a fellow traveller who was going to fly home with her.
This picture also shows that while the airside lounge has large windows overlooking the tarmac, they are tinted, generating a greenish tint in all pictures taken from inside.

The boarding gates for our flight were displayed at 5:30 AM (STD – 60 mins). Gate 02 was initially reserved for priority passengers, who were very few.

A queue quickly materialized for Gate 01.

Not only had the sun risen, but moving out into the open air meant I no longer had to deal with the tinted windows. A321neo Wizzair, hiding a 737 Sun Express

Skyup Airlines 737-700

ER-00005, a Flyone A320ceo

9H-SAT, a Skyup Airlines 737-800

airBaltic A220-300

HA-LGT, a Wizzair A321neo

T7-TOY, a cute Cirrus VisionJet. This is the G2+ version—the latest (2023) model - equipped by default with an emergency automatic landing system capable of landing the aircraft, including the communication with air traffic control (and also equipped, like all versions of this aircraft, with a ballistic parachute system; there has been two instances of its deployment, saving a total of four lives).

The terminal, viewed from the shuttle bus

And the aircraft parked opposite

ER-SKY, a SkyUp Airlines A319

TC-EYN, a Turkish Airlines 737-900ER

The cabin of a Wizz Air A321neo

Boarding via the doors: front…

…and back

SunExpress 737-800

Door shot

Blue seats

And blue-tinted lighting. Contrary to what the picture above might suggest, the flight was going to be be full - how could it be otherwise, given that the other two flights to Paris had been cancelled?

Unlike the Flyone seats on the outbound flight, there was a mesh seatback pocket under the tray table. However, just like on Flyone, the seatback did not recline (a plus, in my humble opinion).

That did not fully account for having 3 cm less knee room, but the space remained well within the average for economy class.

The width between armrests was standard for the A32x family.

Icons about the seatbelt and life vest (the latter was not going to be mentioned during the safety demonstration, as the flight path remained well away from any bodies of water).

Safety card, both sides

Wizz Air’s destination map—though not every route operates daily or from every base!

The full Buy-on-Board (BOB) offering, for the geeks.

Overhead bin reserved for the Row 1 passengers who will need to stow all their hand luggage for takeoff and landing.

Departure and ascent

Cleared for departure!

Goodbye, Chisinau!

The control tower

The airport firefighters

The cemetery of the defunct Air Moldova: Tu-134

An-26

Yak-40

And EMB-120

The flight was on time: it was exactly 6:30 a.m. !

Singera and, in the foreground, the Landing Church of Chișinău airport, already seen when landing.

Singera

On the left, the boundary of the municipality of Chisinau

The plane turned left; these are the meanders of the Dniestr River (Parata, in the center)

Stauceni, near the road junction of the M1, M2 and M21 roads

Cruise, and descent to BVA

The panorama was going to be hidden for a long time by clouds

The Vltava River, just upstream from Prague…

…which is right here:

And this is its airport (PRG)

The Tušimice thermal power plant in the center of the picture, in front of to the lignite mine that supplies it; to the left is the much more powerfull Prunéřov plant. These two plants generate together as much electricity as two nuclear reactors (and also provide 500 MW of heat to the local towns).
Lignite is not quite the best fuel choice in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, and the Prunéřov plant faced criticism regarding this issue in the early 2000s. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation estimated its CO2 emissions to be then ten times those of Wizz Air’s entire current fleet… I don’t know what the situation is today.

In this case, it was not CO2, but water vapor in the form of clouds which obscured the view until we reached below the cloud base—which was quite low there.

The flight path had a rather strange trajectory (thanks to Flightradar24)

The former Laon-Couvron airbase, closed in 2012

In the background, the ponds along the Oise River, east of Tergnier, and in the foreground…

… Saint-Gobain, the eponymous birthplace of a well-known industrial group. Their original glass and mirror making factory, which closed in 1995 was built there in the late 17th century, in a location chosen for the abundance of firewood.

Tergnier

Chauny

Noyon

In the center of the photo, the Mennechet castle, in Chiry-Ourscamp

The N31 national road at Ronquerolles on the right and Gicourt on the left

Bresles

Landing at 8:31 a.m., only 1 minute behind schedule

BVA, its hangar, and its bus to Paris

Simply put, BVA is a Ryanair and Wizz Air airport

The control tower located on the other side of the runway was commissioned 2019.

It repalced this one, inaugurated in 1962

Fuselage shot while deplaning (via both ends of the plane)

A walkway with a very "LCC hangar" aesthetic, but which has the merit of being short.

One last look at the plane that had brought us home… though not close to home

Automated passport reading equipment incongruously lined up along a wall on the way to immigration (which turned out to be quick).

Once landside, there are fully operational terminals for purchasing bus tickets, as BVA has no rail connection. Taking a bus to the Beauvais train station and continue by train would be more expensive.
At €18—considering the distance—the one-way trip isn't actually that pricey when compared to the €14 fare for the real Paris airports (CDG and ORY), especially since you still have to add at least €2.04 for the metro and/or bus to reach your final destination.

Exiting the terminal. The signage was clear

Reaching the queue for the next bus: only 6 minutes have passed since the fuselage shot of the Wizz Air plane!

The plane had landed at 8:31 am, and we still had plenty of time to board this bus scheduled to leave at 9:02 am.

That’s when things took a turn for the worse, as the skyscrapers of the La Défense business area appeared in the distance.

Our bus driver was obviously not using a real time navigation app got bogged down in increasingly heavy traffic jams on the highway and then in the northern suburbs. This mural, viewed (at length!) in Saint-Denis, could serve as an allegory for this journey.

This was the reason: all the Paris-bound lanes of the A1 motorway were closed due to an accident that had happened well before we had departed from BVA. Our bus driver had no excuse—or rather, the bus company didn't have any, since they should have provided him with modern tools for route optimization.

The driver made a stop at the station on the way at the Stade de France RER station to drop two passengers without any luggage in the bus hold—we would have done the same had we not had one.

The standard travel time (which should have been jam-free on a Sunday morning) is an hour and a half, yet it took us a full two hours and forty-five minutes to finally reach Porte Maillot. What’s more, for almost the entire journey, we had to endure a crappy radio station blasting at an excessive volume; it certainly convinced me that I’m no longer a teenager.

When flying home, you can take the risk of getting stuck in traffic jams—however unlikely—but on the way out? Never say never, but I’ll think twice before buying a ticket departing from BVA!

Bonus: Transnistria

I offer you a bonus on a "country that doesn't exist" - since it isn't recognized by any UN member state - yet is very real indeed.