Day trip from Brussels to Barcelona with Ryanair

[sn26567]

Fourth day trip of the year with Ryanair, again because of price lower than costs (actually € 40.98 + 2 x € 5 for seat reservations, which is useful if you want to secure a window).

Arrival at the airport 2 hours before the flight.

It's the only Ryanair flight on the board!

I had downloaded my boarding pass on the Ryanair App (which is still very, very slow and user-unfriendly), hence I proceeded immediately to Terminal A (10 min queue at the hand baggage control) where I had a leisurely breakfast for € 8.25 at the News Café. Still a long wait at Gate A33 for boarding to start.

Flight to Barcelona, gate A33

Flight: FR2917
Date : 25/02/2015
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 EI-ENL
From-To: Brussels - Barcelona (BRU-BCN)
Seat: booked 6A, actual 3A
Scheduled/Effective Time of Departure: 09:00/09:15 (GMT +1)
Scheduled/Effective Time of Arrival: 11:00/10:55 (GMT+1)
Scheduled/Effective Duration of the flight: 2 hrs 0 min/1 hr 40 min

At 08:30, boarding started, if I may say so. Passengers were released to the covered walkway and made to wait outside in the cold until the incoming flight from BCN flight would be ready.

Seriously, people waiting outside in the cold?

Eventually, everybody had boarded through the two doors, but in a rather disorderly manner.

Boarding... (watch the removal of the last pices of "hand" baggage)

As usually, I was among the last to embark (why hurry with an assigned seat and almost no luggage?). But when I wanted to take my seat, it was occupied. I called a steward: pax in my seat 6A had a boarding pass for 5A, which was itself taken by another passenger. The steward then invited me to take 3A which was still free, together with 3B. I ended up getting a better seat. If it had not been the case, I would have complained, because when you spend money to book a window seat, the least you can expect is that seat is reserved for you. The load factor was around 98%.

At the nearest gate, SN A320 OO-SNB

Take-off from 25R. Nice views in a clear sky.

Shortly after take-off: the Royal Palace and, in the uppr right corner, the church of Laeken

Shortly after take-off, the Heysel stadion

In a Barcelona-based crew, the purser was Karolina. The rest of the trip went event-less through a cloudy sky at FL330 until close to Barcelona, where the weather cleared up again.

Shortly before Barcelona, the city of Mataro

Itinerary BRU-BCN

Itin BRU-BCN.jpg (123.55 KiB) Viewed 1693 times

Landing on 25R (like in BRU ) and early arrival despite late departure: trumpets of glory! Disembarking through the single front door and a jet bridge.

At Gate 34 in Terminal 2 of Barcelona

This plane would leave only one hour later to Rome. This is the right turnover time for a plane with 189 passengers going through a jet bridge.

With a one hour turnover time, the same plane would leave for Rome

On the land side, I took a train to the city: a ticket of € 7.60 bought me a day-ticket valid on all public transportation of Barcelona, without a Diabolo rip-off.

Nice (and cheap) train to the City

------------------------------------

In the evening, I arrived at the airport at 18:30 with the same nice train and proceeded directly to the ticket and hand baggage control of terminal 2. I passed swiftly and went to a cafeteria to have supper: a dish of Jamon Iberico (Spanish cured ham) with a large pint of beer. Among the numerous shops in the hall, an officoal one of Barcelona FC

In the departure hall, an official shop of the Barça Football Club

Can you find RYR2939 to Brussels?

I then went to Gate 35, from where I could observe our incoming flight arriving on-time at 19:40.

Arrival of the incoming flight from Brussels: on-time at 19:40

That leaves a 35 minutes turnaround time, which will prove insufficient in this case. Twenty minutes to let everybody leave the plane and to clean it. Boarding started at 20:00...

Boarding...

... and most of the 189 passengers had to wait (in my case 15 minutes) in the jet bridge before being able to step on board. Wouldn't it be preferable to board by row numbers to accelerate the process? Anyway, it was only with 13 minutes delay that the aircraft could depart.

Flight: FR2939
Date : 25/02/2015
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 EI-ENS
From-To: Barcelona - Brussels (BCN-BRU)
Seat: 6F
Scheduled/Effective Time of Departure: 20:15/20:28 (GMT +1)
Scheduled/Effective Time of Arrival: 22:30/22:57 (GMT+1)
Scheduled/Effective Duration of the flight: 2 hrs 15 min/2 hrs 29 min

The load factor was 100%. The purser was Martin and the Brussels-based crew was all-male.

Take-off from 07R after a very long taxiing that showed us all the planes from both terminals. No further events until arrival with a landing on 25L and arrival at gate at 22:57 (27 minutes late and no trumpets of glory). The purser apologised for the delay caused "by the late arrival of the incoming aircraft", which was untrue: the incoming aircraft was just on-time. The delay was caused by the inefficient boarding procedure and by strong headwinds.

Itinerary BCN-BRU

Itin BNC-BRU.jpg (124.42 KiB) Viewed 1693 times

After disembarking (3 minutes after arriving at the position because we had to wait for buses), I could observe that we had the logo-jet of the Central Poland region.

And then, we had to take buses for only 200 m, from a usual Ryanair position to R03. We could have walked faster. I still don't understand why we took a bus...

[simulator]

@ sn26567

the reason you had to take a bus (even for only 200m) was simply because at the time of your arrival we had "low visibility" procedures in place at EBBR.
During low vis procedures no passengers are allowed on the tarmac, and bussing is required.

fyi

rgds

sim

[sn26567]

Thanks, simulator. Indeed, there was fog when we landed, but I didn't know that "low visibility procedure".