Hi all and welcome to my (as live as possible, semi JapesUK-style) TR of my current business trip to Zilina in Slovakia. I was debating whether to post or not but seeing that I’m stuck in 17A with nothing better to do, as my upgrade didn’t clear, I thought I’d post a few words and pictures of my trip so far.

Background: I do most of my work for a client in Zilina in Slovakia. They kindly invite me down there twice a year for their Christmas party and the summer sports day. This is always a great excuse to travel, meet up with colleagues and help me to retain Star Gold with Aegean. This year, I’m getting my 4 sectors in nice and early and these flights will get me almost half way to requalification. In December, I requalified in one single trip but that was very intense so I’m hoping to take it a little calmer this year. That said, my 4 flights are an adventure to
say the least.

The route: when I booked a few weeks ago, my original plan fell apart very quickly. The BER-ATH flight was totally sold out in Y and J was around €800 so not an option for my client. Getting creative, I looked at other departure options but the only
ones with suitably timed departures not involving leaving home at the crack of dawn were FRA and MUC. Now FRA is obviously way closer to Berlin but the connection in ATH was only an hour from Schengen to non-Schengen which is way too risky for such a tightly timed trip. MUC offered 1 hour 50 minutes in ATH so that’s what I took. From ATH, I’m going to LCA and back, arriving there at 01:20 in the morning and leaving again at 05:00. Immigration are going to love me. My status year only reset last Saturday so I had to wait until then to request my Gold upgrades using Aegean’s new online system. ATH-LCA-ATH confirmed immediately and ATH-VIE cleared just before OLCI opened. MUC-ATH was more annoying but I’ll describe that below. I have already reported my experience on the A3 forum too.

I’ll leave the intro there and carry on, including pics, in the next post.