There’s my friend Liam departing after kindly dropping me off at Luton Airport and it’s always a delight being back here. Well, it isn’t, but travel is about being positive.
I decided to just stay at the airport overnight, it’s not worth the faffing about leaving the hotel early to get here. And, it’s a more thrifty option. Here’s the airside area shortly after it opened.
My usual visit to Big Smoke with my Priority Pass card and it’s not often that I’m here early enough for the breakfast menu. The £18 allowance doesn’t allow a huge amount of decadence here with prices ever rising.
The poached eggs on avocado with sourdough bread served alongside a pineapple juice was a suitable breakfast for 04:00. It’s half-term this week and the airport was very busy, with Big Smoke being at capacity for much of the time that I was there.
Orange juice, latte and granola at Nolito, where I merrily waited until I got an alert on my phone with the gate number.
Coffee acquired. I’m not sure why the Wizz Air app mentioned the gate number before it was announced, as it led to several customers arriving to see no gate information and then asking staff members for help. It’s handy to get extra time to arrive at the gate though.
With the gate now announced I managed to be the first to queue up, with boarding commencing nearly immediately. This was one of the flights where Wizz Air had mentioned that there might be €100 in Wizz Air credits for volunteering not to fly. I have little interest in this, it would deny me getting any UK261 compensation if they were planning to refuse me.
There’s the aircraft positively glimmering in the morning sun.
The turnaround on these flights is something to behold, we were boarding within fifteen minutes of these passengers disembarking.
Boarding the aircraft, which was registration HA-LWQ, an Airbus A320 which Wizz Air have had in their fleet since 2012 and that I don’t think I’ve been on before.
This is one of the older aircraft in the fleet and these are the old fashioned seats that I haven’t seen in some time. I was pleased that the seating Gods had allocated me an aisle seat as the flight was just about full.
The aircraft was clean, but it felt a little rickety in places, as is perhaps evident with those yellow pieces of tape indicating the damaged overhead lockers. As for the flight, it all seemed well managed, although I was asleep for most of it so all manner of havoc could have been happening and I wouldn’t have known. I hope that I didn’t miss out on any drama though….
And safely at Timișoara Airport, a little earlier than expected. It took only around twenty minutes to get through border control, there were few British people on board and they delayed matters slightly because of the EES.