I had a free weekend and wanted to go and experience a little bit of Europe. I went for the cheapest discount ecom fares (is this Y or Q, I don't know?) I could find for places that interested me, and landed a day trip to BCN for about £90, and a day trip to SVG the next day for about £130. Both were superb, with 12 and 9 hours in each destination respectively, though my Barcelona trip was shortened by about an hour due to some technical sign-off issue with the left wing, and being right between night and day shifts for the engineers. No hassle, prefer that the wing stay attached to the plane and miss an hour rather than any horrific alternative, but I would have preferred to have stayed in the lounge rather than sit on the plane – a real shame as this was the only flight of the weekend where I was in ET.

Anyhow, although cheapo fare initially, 48 hours after booking, I managed to POUG the return leg of BCN at £79, and both legs of SVG for £64 each. For SVG the whole return ticket was therefore around £250 in CE. This could be a good route to POUG on, as in CE on the 0830 Sunday outbound there were perhaps 4 pax, and on the 2030 Sunday evening inbound there were precisely 2, which made it nice despite the very short flight. The incoming flight on Sunday evening (arrives at about 2000ish) seems fully booked out for ages, probably oil industry people spending the weekend elsewhere, but for leisure passengers travelling in reverse it’s a great cheapo destination. Whether this is random or not I don't know, all I am saying is perhaps check it out as an option if you are at a loose end, as it would still be a very nice trip even in economy. Was it worth the extra £130, which basically translated into a nicer breakfast, a bit of extra care, and a couple of bottles of unremarkable Champagne on the way back? Sensible hat on, no way. With my What the Hell hat on, with the extra 60 TPs, absolutely. Note that there is no lounge in Stavanger of any description (nor any fast-track – the whole place is highly egalitarian!) and prices for food and drink are eye-watering, so my advice for a day trip would be to hit M&S at T5 before you leave. Remote stand on the way back but the other CE passenger and I had a bus all to ourselves (in fact I think that they stopped the ET passengers going down the steps until our bus had gone), which deposited us at T5A right next to the border controls, which was way quicker that having a gate arrival in B or C.

Sorry, a bit long-winded, all I wanted to say was that SVG (Sola airport) ET to CE was £64 per leg, and given the empty CE cabin, could be a route to keep an eye on if you’re in need of a cheeky, easy, and relatively cheap European TP day-trip. I booked it about 3 weeks out – as far as I can recall, at the point of booking CE was about >£600 return. If I look at something similar today, ET is approx £170 with CE coming in at £670. Never in a million years would I buy that CE fare. BTW, 30 minute airport bus to town centre was £15 return, and I went on a superb and deeply pleasant Fjord cruise under blue skies for about £45 – nicest “do nothing” day I’ve had in ages and ages. I spent virtually no money on anything else whilst there, and whilst not cruising Fjords and drinking water from waterfalls, I explored the very picturesque old wooden town, and narrowly missed out on visiting a Canning Museum, opting instead to sit on a bench in the sunshine.

S