Having safely arrived in Athens from Tirana, I had a wait of just over three hours for my next flight. As Albania isn’t in Schengen, that meant I’d have to reclear security in Athens ready for my flight at 14:10 to Bucharest.
Wizz Air flights depart from the Satellite Terminal, which feels around eight miles away and it’s a compact area which really struggles with the number of passengers using it. Fortunately, the lounge in this terminal is much quieter and was a peaceful place to wait for my next flight.
Their hot food selection might have gone entirely untouched as I didn’t see anyone have anything from there and it was swept away at lunchtime.
My more basic breakfast snack.I realised that I had gone for a beer at around 11:00 in the morning, but I think the rules of alcohol don’t apply at airports. Also, as I’d been up since around 03:00, it felt like lunchtime.
The lunchtime cold food came out and this was what I was hoping for, Greek salad, chicken wraps and dolmadakia.
Lovely.
There are some decent views of the runways and also the actual airport for those passengers flying with airlines who didn’t have to use the Satellite Terminal.
I had a very peaceful couple of hours here, before going back out into the rather more bustling gate area.
There was some strict enforcement of bag size at the gate which led to the normal complaints of “it’s ridiculous, it’s only just too big” from some passengers after they’d be charged £80 or something. Far be it for me to judge, but if the bag is too big, then it’s too big, but most people caught out tend to have bags which hardly fit through the aircraft door, let alone the bag sizer.
My aircraft awaits.
Unusually for Wizz Air, we boarded via an air bridge, which meant I had to make efforts to work out the aircraft’s registration which was HA-LXH, yet another aircraft that I haven’t been on. I should probably find a new hobby to be fair than working out which aircraft I’ve sat in.
The seating Gods had given me a window seat near to the rear, so I waited for about a month for passengers to work out where they were sitting and then faff about for three hours putting their bag in the overhead lockers. I very much like the Wizz Air crew, as they get passive aggressive annoyed at passengers faffing about, which reassures me as flights need a small amount of panic about an on-time departure.
And we’re off.
It was a peaceful flight, no-one annoyed me and the announcements were clear and appropriate from the pilots. The cabin crew were friendly and efficient, so this is yet another post of delight about Wizz Air. For £8.99, I was very pleased with this flight, but I’m conscious that I’m noting that quite a lot.
Safely in Bucharest Băneasa airport, which I’ll post about separately as I really enjoyed flying into this location for the first time, being more used to the larger Bucharest airport which is nearby.