holocker

Looking at flights from Barcelona to Tel Aviv in November. Timing wise best options are a nonstop on Norwegian or a 1 stop on Aegean. Having not flown either is one recommended over the other or should one be avoided. There is also an Air France flight but timing not as good with a longer layover. El AL nonstop timing is too late.

lhrpete

Norwegian is low cost, Aegean is full service.

Take your pick.

UKtravelbear

price comes into this.

Also how long does the extra stop add to your trip? Also what happens if your 1ft flight is late and you miss the onward?

East_and_West

In addition to what @lhrpete and @UKtravelbear wrote, the hard product shouldn't be very different. Aegean operate a previous generation (ceo) A320-family birds, while Norwegian operate B738s. A3 is a *A member so, unlike DY, you will rack up some *A miles on your FFP account (provided that the fare bucket is a mileage-earning one). A3's soft product is also considerably better than that of DY, since they are a full-service airline. They usually offer a small meal and free drinks even on Y, while DY is exclusively BoB.

DY on the other hand offers free Wi-Fi onboard. Not that you should expect to stream the latest HBO series or watch videos on youtube, but you should be able to do some browsing, and send/receive emails and chat messages. Note though that since their 737-Max are grounded, and summer is a peak season in Europe, you are very likely to fly a wet leased aircraft rather than a DY metal one, so this may not be very relevant after all.

In the end IMHO it boils down to price and layover time, as @UKtravelbear pointed out...

alanw

You might also want to consider Vueling on this route, 4X/week in October, they have a nonstop redeye and an afternoon flight that connects in FCO.

holocker

Veuling only has their redeye getting in at 4:10 am on that date so trying to avoid that. El Al also has a red eye around that time that is non stop. The stop with Aegean adds about 1.5 hours. Pricing is pretty close on the Aegean vs Norweigian.

craigthemif

By the time you add on the cost of seat selection, on-board food, checked luggage, etc. Norwegian will end up costing far more.

I'd fly Aegean one-stop 10 times out of 10...

tmac100

AND from past experience AF (and France airports) is/are always under the "headlock" of a strike in France. My travelling companion was stuck in Toulouse for 3 days because of a Paris strike. Similarly my sons were stuck in Paris because of some AF labour dispute. But then, YMMV 🙄

This sumner we travel by SNCF and maybe on bikes - with much of our time on bicycles...

GUWonder

East_and_West

Is this something new? I fly them quite regularly, and the only such service I 've seen is a decent but rather uninteresting Wi-Fi based IFE system that pax can access through the Aegean app on their smartphones and tablets. No proper Wi-Fi, free or paid. But I may have missed that. And true, DY does offer USB charging ports in many aircraft, unlike A3. Yet, especially during summertime, it's very likely that the flight will not be operated by DY. Their fleet has always been stretched to its limits in July, August, and September, even before they had to ground their MAX fleet.

It is also true that in both carriers checking in bags and selecting seats is charged extra. Moreover if OP is taller than average it would advised to avoid rear seats in both A3 and DY since the pitch is very tight.

Personally I would fly A3 over DY any time, on any given route, provided that prices were comparable. Yet in this case, I have to agree with @GUWonder, Since routing is not the same, I would go for the direct one. The only thing that would give me second thoughts (but most likely not change my mind) would be a sufficient amount of accrued *A miles

Dover2Golf

Do you mean Aegean Stream?