After finishing my night shift for the week between London Southend and Kassel (Germany), it was now time for me to head home. I decided to grab the earliest flight available to me, which is EasyJet's flight 7401 from London Southend to Amsterdam at 7.05 am operated with an Airbus A320-200. I am a regular on this route, but I dare to rate this flight as one of the worst to grab with EasyJet. The flight estimated time is to be a hour and 15 minutes, but in practice will not take more than 40 min tops.
I only had to walk for approximately five minutes to reach the terminal to drop-off my luggage and this is the first time I actually have seen those lights being turned on after twenty or so flights from London Southend and I must say that it was a rather pleasant sight to see. The terminal is quite new too, so no comments on that.
Luckily enough there was no waiting line to drop off our luggage (which could vary a lot depending on days), so luggage was dropped in a matter of seconds.
Heading up to security, the hassle started. Waiting fifteen minutes in line to only scan our boarding card to reach security is terrific….. Pathetic to say so. Security itself did require another ten minutes to complete as tons of people never clean up their mess after finishing it.
While security has been cleared, it was yet another waiting game to board our flight, which was already delayed by fifty minutes due to the captain calling in sick. Another captain was called out off standby and was headed to Southend from London Luton.
Eventually the captain was much earlier than expected, so boarding was started on-time.
The aircraft for today's flight was G-EZTD, A 9 year-old A320 being only in service with EasyJet in it's history.
Even though it is probably much safer, I am not sure if I am a fan of those no-steps stairs.
While I was one of the first to board the aircraft, I headed to seat 4A. The seats were new, but the legroom was rather poor. The number of magazines and cards in that pocket were not really helping either.
Now the worst part of the entire flight is about to happen. If you enjoy a nice quiet flight, you can definitely forget about it. The people onboard are so loud and you literally can hear the talks of those in the far aft of the aircraft, while being seated in one of the first rows. This will continue for the entire duration of the flight and will not stop until deboarding is initiated.
Push back was on time, however engines did not start for another ten minutes or so due to a slot of Amsterdam.
Finally the engines did spool up and we were off for an easterly departure from Runway 23 as second in line after another EasyJet A319 bound for Prague.
Tower cleared our flight to line up and wait.
And a minute later, we were officially rolling for take off to Amsterdam.
Five minutes in flight, the flight attendants were starting their duties by selling drinks and food. One of our passengers had a nut allergy, so EasyJet decided that they will not sell any nut-based product to any of us. I did not order anything.
After approximately twenty minutes, descend was already initiated to Amsterdam's runway 18R. The entire flight time from London Southend to Amsterdam is approximately the same time as the ride from 18R to your gate.
The landing itself was quite hard, but the taxi to our gate gave me some time to start some aircraft spotting from inside the plane.
A KLM Boeing 777-200ER (PH-BQO) was being towed to it's gate
An Air Baltic Boeing 737-300 (YL-BBI) was taxiing to it's gate, while arriving from Tallinn.
And three Jet Airways were parked next to each other. 2 777 and a single A330.
As we reached our gate, we were parked next to an EasyJet A320 NEO (G-UZHB) bound for Manchester.
After a minute or two, deboarding was started and we were off for a long walk to border control.
