Eurostan

[Scarlett]

LX1451 SJJ-ZRH
ERJ190-E2 Y
HB-AZG
On time

Time to start the journey home with a flight back into central Europe on Swiss’ regional carrier Helvetic.


Aircraft arriving at SJJ as viewed from the airport business lounge and its outside terrace (not open unfortunately).

These flights were a one way LX cash ticket SJJ-ZRH-GVA to connect up later in the afternoon with my return TK J ticket to get back to south east Asia.

Booking LX gave me *A benefits and some flight options for redundancy on the connection. If all went well the morning flight to ZRH would be followed by an after lunch connection to GVA and then five hours until the return part of my international ticket. I’ve used up all my bad luck for the next decade so that was all going to be fine.

SJJ is a small airport so getting checked in and through to the lounge was quite simple. Interestingly there are both a business lounge and a premium business lounge run by the airport. I went to the business lounge and had boarding pass scanned there, but even with a whY ticket, my *Gold status apparently meant taking the lift up to the premium lounge. It was comfortable and had a small but adequate selection of food for breakfast, although coffee and drinks were behind a staffed counter.

The flight was called for boarding and it was a through a bus gate. The same gate as when arriving.


This is the bus waiting at the gate. That’s the aircraft about 200m away, but we need a bus to get there because as we all know:


There was a bit of faff waiting for a second bus load of pax to arrive. Not sure why as there was hardly anyone left at the gate when I went through so not sure where they were all hiding.

Climb out. A view with no winglets/sharklets is unusual, although I guess you could argue these raked wingtips are they same kind of thing anyway.


No great views over Eastern Europe and only a short 1.5 hour flight then we were landing at flughafen ZRH.

Last point to note is that I had selected seats when booking the ticket but LX changed the seat on me twice in the week prior to the flight. Randomly, the first time I went and moved myself back to seat I had selected (row 9). The second time there was no real better option available than the row 14 I was ‘assigned’. No apparent reason why when on board. The same thing happened on the second leg but with obvious reasons which I’ll cover next post.

 

[Scarlett]

LX2806 - ZRH-GVA
Bombardier C-Series 300 - Y
HB-JCT
Half an hour late departing - on time arrival

I spent the hour transit in the Swiss lounge (A gates) as this flight was due to depart from the B gates and that seemed the closest lounge. Understated but a nice well catered lounge. This meant a 10 minute walk around to the gate at boarding time. Another bus departure gate but this one was necessary as the aircraft was a couple of minutes drive away.

For this flight Swiss had again sent me two emails advising that my selected seats when booking had changed. Both times I reselected another different seat from what they’d allocated me. I think I went from row 9 to 11 to 12. At check-in in SJJ I’d been allocated row 17 and told that was all I could have… hmm. On boarding it became obvious (well sort of) why. There were a cast of a million paxing crew! All in uniform. I counted three in business and then another about another 15 spread around the first six rows of economy! Not sure why they all have to be at the front of economy as after arriving at GVA they all stayed on board whilst other pax alighted.


Crew. Crew everywhere.

Maybe this should be a separate thread but, other than world domination, what is LH groups plan for all of its various member groups? As we were pushing back there were these two Edelweiss jets parked adjacent.



So does Edelweiss just cover low yield holiday markets? Sort of like a German JQ. And Air Dolomiti covers low yield markets from Italy like a QFLink as does LX for Switzerland, OS for Austria, SN for Brussels etc. Where will AZ fit in that picture? And what is this new LH City? Is that a Germany based QFLink equivalent? @Mattg is this something you could break down and explain in Australian terms?

Our flight time was advertised as being 25 minutes for this short domestic hop. Who knew that ZRH-GVA was shorter than CBR-SYD? The Swiss cities are about 50Km closer together than those Australian two.

Much like the QF A220, I found the legroom on this aircraft to be tight and I wouldn’t like to spend more than a short haul journey on it.

Into GVA, collected bags pretty quickly, then upstairs to find the TK check-in counters.

 

[VPS]

That is the annoying part about travelling alone that you go through amazing scenery and can't take photos. I did suggest that someone needs to invent a camera mounted to the roof (in a weatherproof dome) and then it opens up like a flower and the camera pops up when you tell your app and then you can use your app to swivel it and take a photo.

Who knows one day it may come true. Loving this TR btw

 

[Scarlett]

TK1920 - GVA-IST
A321-200neo - J
TC-LTH
On time

GVA is a small airport but is very busy much of the time. This was again the case today. By the time I’d collected bags and made my way to check in there was still about 80 minutes before check-in would actually open, so I found a comfy chair (behind Starbucks in the food court area) and filled in my online OneIndonesia declaration, for the transit on the way home.

Maybe for the WCMO thread, but this does:

Yes, it’s still two minutes until check in officially opens, but you’re sitting there, ready, and just chatting and ignoring the maybe 30 people waiting in line. Why not just start?

Two boarding passes were eventually received and I headed up to (again) the Swiss lounge. The lounge is airside but prior to going through outbound immigration, so I allowed for that when heading to the gate. No boarding calls in the lounge, which was quite small for a lounge at an airlines home port (maybe they share ZRH and GVA as home ports?).

The allocated gate was actually one of the first after immigration so only took a couple of minutes to get there. Plenty of people lined up again ready but no boarding occurring so I kept wandering about. GVA has these interesting small satellite terminal-ettes that are round and only have (I think) four gates around them. I’m pretty certain we flew Ezyjet into GVA many years ago and used them for arrival or departure. I recall you just walk under the apron to get to them as they are quite close.


Behind my TK jet you can see one of them.

A little further along there was an AFF airlines jet.


After boarding and taxi we were just lined up on the runway and I spied this evil machine:

A pox on your house IB (Air Nostrum). I looked it up on FR24 from the inflight wifi and it was 40 minutes late departing. My IB-related PTSD flashback for those wondering what this most recent gibberish is about. (image post mis-connection in MAD)


Turning to more pleasant thoughts, Geneva is a lovely place. One of my favourites and I don’t even ski so that whole part of Rhone-Alpes south of Geneva is lost on me.


Mont Blanc just hidden by clouds as the last rays of the sun are hitting the surrounding mountains.


As we continued a little further south and around the alps you could just make out the southern side of the mountain. There was even had a twin flyover to celebrate the viewing.


Next the Alps served up a couple of classic examples of lenticular clouds, formed by standing waves of air being uplifted when passing over the ranges.


Finally, before the light completely faded, we passed over Milan. It was actually seeing MXP and the lakes that indicated where we were without needing to look at a map.


Didn’t need light for this one, but the GVA-IST route took us almost over SJJ where I’d started the day 12 hours earlier.


Landing at IST was smooth, then off the aircraft at a lower numbered gate meant a slight reduction in distance necessary to walk to the international connections security. This was now my fifth transit through in the space of a couple of weeks so headed to the TK Lounge Business almost on auto-pilot. (match fit )

 

[Scarlett]

TK56 - IST-CGK
A350-900 - J
TC-LHF
On time

I had, in theory, about two hours in the lounge before the flight would be boarding so I went to the concierge and asked about a shower. Was told it would be a 1.5 - 2 hour wait and given a beeper so they could call me when a shower was available. I had some snacks, a hot chocolate and probably updated this TR. The flight was due to depart at 0155, so from past experience I knew boarding would be indicated on the boards about an hour before that. At 0045 I went back to the concierge to check how much longer the wait might be and expected to be returning the pager. Told I was next in the queue I waited there whilst she checked the cleaning status and then allocated my shower number. It was a very quick shower (and brushing of teeth) but I felt much better for having it. Heading back out to the desk the board was showing boarding, so it was off to the end of the D pier about a 15 minute walk away. At the gate, no boarding!

Don’t use my experience to dilly-dally and miss your flight, but I reckon IST always puts up ‘boarding’ on the displays early, simply because of the size of the airport and they want pax to get to the gate area in time.

Eventually boarded and into 4K which is an adjacent to the window, window-seat, rather than the aisle-adjacent window-seat, if you know what I mean. PDB orders were taken and served, hot towels and menus distributed and then the guy dressed in the chef uniform came around to take orders. I ordered the lemon and rosemary lamb rack but as they offer dine on demand, noted I was going to go to sleep first so would have it later.

After takeoff I got changed into pjs (that I had brought along - TK don’t offer them) whilst one of the crew made up the bed. Then it was ear plugs in and eye mask on and I reckon I was asleep in a matter of minutes. On waking I turn my display back on and note only 1hr:40min to landing… hmm, I guess that was eight hours sleep. I won’t be having any dinner as the crew are now offering the breakfast service. Orange juice, some Turkish mezze, then poached eggs and spinach it was. Finished off with a really ordinary coffee.

So no images from this flight. The J full flat bed did its job!

The one point to note was that after finishing the breakfast and having that cleared away I really needed to go to the toilet, but tropical south east Asia (overhead peninsula Malaysia) in the afternoon (we were due to land at 1700 local in Jakarta) generally means storms and there was a little turbulence. The seat belt sign was on and so I’d waited a little but approaching emergency point I made a dash for the loos. Maybe the first time I’ve ever experienced it like this, but the crew were very insistent that I go back and sit down. I actually ended up going from the forward loo to those at the back of the J cabin because I didn’t want to argue with the crew up front. Those crew were also, no you can’t go to the toilet, but I guess I conveyed the urgency as well as saying that I take full responsibility for my decision that eventually they let me use one.

Should I have done that? My body was at ‘no more waiting stage’ so at that moment I was going to the toilet unless they restrained me! And I fully know that I can’t see the wx radar, nor what was ahead of our flight path, but the turbulence was pretty mild at the time. As it was the turbulence subsided and the seatbelt sign was turned off as I was finishing up.

It was a smooth landing at CGK and then we taxied around past the Sheraton property. This is the reason I imagine that hotel has to be demolished in the future:


It’s an unfinished taxiway that will go through the Sheraton to the right of the image. Also in that pic are the Ibis Styles and new Fairfield hotel so for those overnighting in CGK in the future, yes they are pretty close.

I was first through the e-gate immigration using the prepaid eVOA and then the standard wait at the baggage carousel. They were actually pretty efficient and had first bags out after about 20 minutes.
Then it was show the QR code from the OneIndonesia customs declaration and through there quickly as well. Welcome back to the big durian for a night.

 

[Scarlett]

At CGK I’d booked the night at the on airport hotel Grand Anara at T3 (main international terminal). There is already an Anara hotel T3 and AUD stayed there last year. I recall the Anara being involved with the Plaza Premium lounge when it first opened but not sure what the relationship is between the two brands. The Anara hotel is physically adjacent to the PP lounge although the lounge is airside and hotel landside.

Grand Anara is a new hotel and has been built almost as a mirror image of the Anara. Where Anara is at the international departures end of T3, Grand Anara is at the domestic end of the terminal. Note that the generic ‘airport hotel’ signs within T3 still direct to the Anara.

To get to Grand Anara it easiest to walk to the domestic end of the terminal (the north easterly end) and get to level 2 (the middle level of the terminal), then cross a short walkway to a small guest waiting area and the hotel entrance is on the left.

Both Anara hotels are fine, but with generally smallish rooms. As they’re physically at T3 expect to pay about 50% more than the nearby off airport hotels. I is Styles and FM7 hotels are fine and clean 3* hotels for about AUD70 per night. The Fairfield by Marriott about $100-120, and the both Anara’s ~$150 depending on when booked.

Grand Anara room:






There is a small gym on site which was fine for a walk on the treadmill for an hour late in the evening (still adjusting body clock from Europe time).

 

[RooFlyer]

That is the annoying part about travelling alone that you go through amazing scenery and can't take photos. I did suggest that someone needs to invent a camera mounted to the roof (in a weatherproof dome) and then it opens up like a flower and the camera pops up when you tell your app and then you can use your app to swivel it and take a photo.

Who knows one day it may come true. Loving this TR btw

I have a picture - God knows where - of a car in front of me with its sunroof open and the driver had one arm up through it with what looked like a GoPro. Driving with one hand. I backed off a bit.