Online works for eurowings, did that, Austrian fails and tells me to come to the counter

The fine gentleman was right, now all we need are staff

Ah understood. You could always pick them up in Düsseldorf, there the counters are staffed around the clock and maybe even in the lounge they could help.

Have a fun trip, looking forward to the report!

The app insisted I pick them up one hour before the departure of my earliest flight in Newcastle, but actually they couldn’t generate them at all so that’s a half an hour of my life completely wasted.

On the bright side although the boarding pass didn’t have any mention of fast track on it I thought I’d try my luck and straight through so that gave me five minutes back as standard security was pretty busy today, in fact the airport itself is completely packed.

no prizes for guessing what and where comes next.



The number of times I have sat at this bar and never noticed all the sockets under the bar counter!

Success number two with Eurowings and senator status, lounge access into the standard lounge, which is the same as you get with Lufthansa business class. This is interesting in two ways first with Eurowings the web site doesn’t specifically state Newcastle as a lounge location and again with the fast track nothing is on the boarding pass. the lady check-in had no idea whether the lounge and bolt and fast track security were included.

It’s food, Jim, but not as we know it!

Having completely skipped breakfast, I was feeling the need for a little bit of lunch. I think this is possibly the worst pasta I’ve seen this lounge turn out, it seems to be all tomato and nothing else. At least it will fill a hole until I get on board. I’ve had a look at the Eurowings but lyon board menu and there’s one dish there that I think I need to give a try to..



Thirty minutes to the gate, time to do justice to these goodies

Boarding commenced on time from gate 10… if you consider this boarding



Note the ajar door… there was much interest in this a few minutes ago from the crew… are we going to start off by going tech? We have been stood here now for 15 minutes….

We’ve pushed back ten minutes late and we are currently sat outside of the gate. I assume we’re waiting for a slot on the runway because we’re not in the naughty bin parking at the moment.

no great surprise that there’s plenty of legroom here at the exit row but the one surprise was that on this was supposedly completely full flight The middle seat has been left empty. I don’t know whether this is a state is benefit or not.





Next stop: Düsseldorf in a little over an hours time

In the end we were off the ground 20 minutes behind schedule. It didn’t take long for the seatbelt light to come off and there was a massive exodus to the toilet. I think a lot of the passengers have been indulging nicely in Newcastle Airport

The trolley service was quite unusual in that there were three of them running the trolleys one from the front one, from the back, and one down the middle. Here is a look at the menus.











This is my first time on Eurowings and so I had to give the food a try and I really couldn’t resist the currywurst. There was an offer in the menu to accompany that with some chips and a beer so of course why not? As I ordered the currwurst the crew member serving me said that would be about 20 minutes for the chips so I might be eating them on descent - that will be a first.

Whilst waiting for the snack to arrive, I was paging through the Wings in-flight magazine and I was really surprised to see how extensive the Eurowings network is




The crewmember wasn’t wrong about eating on descent, no sooner had my food arrived than there was a double ding and seatbelt lights came on. To the crews credit, they didn’t harass me at all to finish the food.





For chips in the air these were pretty decent, they were crispy and fluffy. The curry turkey sausage was okay, the curry sauce actually had some bite to it. I thought it was a bit bland when I started, but once I’ve finished eating I realised there was a decently tingly aftertaste. I’d order that one again. The only negative in the whole on board catering was the beer which was warm and so I couldn’t really tell you whether it was good or bad.

Whatever delay we picked up in Newcastle, we managed to catch up on in the air and it looks like we’re gonna have a nicely on time arrival in Düsseldorf. My impressions from my first flight on Eurowings? Actually I thought it was enjoyable flying. With the exit row, the empty seat beside me, fast track lounge access, and group 1 boarding, all in all I couldn’t tell you the difference between this and BA apart from Eurowings have better food on the BoB trolley! I suspect it might be a slightly different experience if I didn’t have the senator status. The crew were friendly and smiling and the service was efficient. 8/10 (warm beers is a crime, I’m being a little generous )
On the ground exactly on time and a short taxi to the gate. And everyone is up before the seatbelt light is off <sigh>

I find the Business lounge in VIE better than SEN lounge, at least as far as Schengen is concerned. Vienna Lounge wins if you have the time to make use of it. Good thing about VIE is you typically have time to pop in even on short connections, seeing as a lot of times you'll be dropped by bus at the base of the terminal. If you deplane in higher numbers though.. .yeah. no.

Regarding Leberkase, if one fails in DUS, one can count on Leberkase-Pepi between gates F06 and F08 in Vienna.

Regarding Kosice, I shall be travelling there tomorrow. Overland, though, so I won't be reaching until Sunday afternoon. Might pop in for a picnic in the park or something, as a random cameo

Passport control was really quick and I was in the lounge within 5
minutes of leaving the plane. There were no issues in accessing the senator lounge in fact the lady at the desk printed the next two boarding passes for me so I didn’t even have to worry about that. The lounge is pretty much empty at the moment although of course there’s one guy who’s spouting off on what is clearly a business call. I just wish I understood what he was saying










A reasonable spread, all looks very familiar









Butter chicken and beer, a perfect pairing



I’ve an hour to hang around here, it must be beer o’clock

Off to the gate and the plane is only just emptying out. I did find this, looks like Düsseldorf shares BAs IT systems

We started boarding about quarter to the hour. It took quite a while for the arriving passengers to disembark. The only problem was, the gate was hot hot hot ! It’s quite a relief to be sat here with the air blowing.

Seat 12A and plenty of room as you might expect.




A quick look at the safety card or should I say safety cards?






and the rather extensive flight menu well, lots of pages just not very many things on each page











I’m going to leave the Austrian network photo taken from the flight menu of all places. There is an in flight shopping magazine as well, which is where I would’ve expected to find it



There might have been quite a long delay in starting boarding but we just had the announcement that everyone’s on board at exactly 8 pm which is our departure time, although to be honest it doesn’t look like we’re going anywhere any time soon.

it’s not a full load on board this fight far from it and 12B/C are both empty thankfully.

just had the pilots announcement that we have a 10 minute delay, or should I say a further 10 minute delay due to congestion around Vienna so that’s cutting down my transit time to under 40 minutes unless we can make up some time in the air?

Oh well, it wouldn’t be one of my trips without a bit of drama somewhere along the way!

Nextstop: Vienna, eventually

Don't worry about it too much, 40 minutes is plenty. Chances are that the KSC flight will be held for more connections anyway. I've been taking a 35 minute (scheduled) connection from AMS for years and I have yet to miss it.

After quite a bit of hanging around both on the taxi and at the end of the runway we were eventually off the ground 25 minutes late. It looks like there might be a lot of slack in the timetable, flighty is still saying that we should be arriving on time? Fingers crossed.

The buy on board service started fairly quickly once the seatbelt sign was off and all of the team ran a pair of trollers down the cabin one after the other. The first trolley was buy on board in the second trolley was just offering water. I went for a coffee and a Jack Daniels, and thought that I’d give the marble cake a try. The cake is much larger than I expected, it comes in a two pack. One was enough and so theres a second for snacks later.



Once they finish serving the entire cabin one of the ladies came back again, offering chocolates to everyone. The chap on the left is a fine looking fellow, but I have to say the chap on the right bit of a hard life




Chocolate shell and a gooey centre, very tasty.



Towards the end of the flight the flight lead announced that we will be arriving at a remote stand! He also gave the gates for everyone with connections so at least I know where I need to go. Whether I make it is whole different question.

At 21:10 there was an announcement that “we’re flying pretty quickly“ no .... Sherlock! This was actually his intro into the ‘everyone pack your stuff away’ announcement although the seatbelt light hasn’t come on yet. In fact, it was fully 10 more minutes before the pilots ‘cabin crew prepare for landing’ announcement which accompanied the seatbelt might be illuminated.

All that worry for nothing, in the end with managed to land exactly on time. Now let’s see how long it takes us to get the bus across into the terminal.

And…. Delayed



And right next to F06



Closed

In fact the entire pier is closed, nary a bite to eat or a beer to drink.