A month in Europe: 12 airlines, 10 countries

[Mattg]

I recently began a month of travel around Europe! I'll be taking in the sights of some old favourite cities, such as London and Berlin. But I'll also be visiting a number of new desintations, like Edinburgh and Budapest.

I love trying new things, espceially when it comes to travel. So as usual I've decided to mix things up a bit. This trip will feature everything from Business class flying to ultra low-cost carrier economy.

I'm taking a bit of an unconventional routing to get to Europe. I'll admit that I've been met with a few blank stares when trying to explain it to some of my friends. But there is some method to my madness.

Instead of buying a simple return ticket to Europe, I've actually booked four separate one-way tickets from Australia-Asia, Asia-Europe and so on. Two of those four long-haul sectors are in Business class, while the other two were very cheap economy tickets on low-cost airlines.

I've decided to stopover in Asia in both directions for two reasons. Firstly, I prefer to break up what is otherwise a very long trip from Australia to Europe. But secondly, it allows me to travel Business class for half the trip without paying anywhere near the price of a Business class ticket to Europe. In fact, by taking advantage of some great deals on all four sectors, the total cost was barely more than a Qantas economy ticket. And I haven't even used frequent flyer points to pay for this trip. I'll explain further as I get into the trip report.

Over the next month I'll be flying a dozen different airlines to 10 countries. Settle in and enjoy the ride!

 

[snabbu]

Sounds fun! Bring it on.

 

[stoneman]

Ooohhh sounds interesting, I'm in !!

 

[JohnM]

BP scanned.

 

[OATEK]

Happy to ride with you again Mattg.

 

[RooFlyer]

A month of travel! (Sighs enviously .... )

 

[scottz95]

Subscribed... looking forward to hearing about this. 1 month of travel vicariously sounds amazing right now.

 

[ellen10]

I'm signed up. Looking forward to it.

 

[LadyC]

Sounds great - look forward to reading more.

 

[love_the_life]

I'm tagging along for the ride - looking forward to reading about some of my favourite places and some new ones as well.

 

[NoobFlyer]

Very much looking forward to another Mattg TR. I have loved reading your past reports and the perspective they provide from someone in a similar age bracket.

 

[GarrettM]

Will follow this report with great interest.

 

[Mattg]

The trip began with a flight to Malaysia on Air Asia X. This was one of the cheap economy legs, so nothing that exciting I'm afraid.

D7215 Melbourne - Kuala Lumpur
Airbus A330-300
Departure time: 10:35 (Actual: 10:50)
Arrival time: 15:50 (Actual: 16:20)



I must admit that my expectations for this flight were very low, but in the end it was pleasant.

I paid ~$30 extra to sit in Air Asia's "quiet zone". This is a mini-cabin at the front of economy of around 8 rows. Children under 10 are not allowed to sit there. On my flight the quiet zone was quite empty, and in fact there were no children of any age there. I'm glad I paid the extra money to sit there as the rest of economy seemed quite full, and the quiet zone did live up to its name to make for a rather peaceful flight.

I was very thankful to have a block of three seats by the window to myself. Air Asia use a very tight 3-3-3 (9 across) seating configuration on their A330s. This leaves very narrow seats and aisles. As far as I'm aware, there is only one other airline using 9-abreast seating on an A330 (Cebu Pacific) - even Jetstar used 8-abreast! The legroom was at least acceptable, but there is no way I would have wanted to be stuck in a middle seat on an overnight sector on that aircraft!



The plane did seem a little old and worn, but it was at least clean.

There was no seat-back IFE, only iPads for rent. I didn't bother.

We departed a little late at set out initially towards Adelaide, giving some nice views en-route:



And later over the outback:

 

[Mattg]

The first meal was served an hour out of Melbourne. I'd pre-ordered the chicken rice, which was delicious.



5 hours later a second meal service commenced. I bought the nasi lemak which was again very tasty.



I was actually quite impressed by the on-board menu. The meals were tasty and although you had to pay extra for them, they were not expensive. The only catch is that you have to spend at least 30 ringgits to pay by credit card - which is more than their most expensive meal.

We landed about half an hour late but I wasn't in a hurry so it didn't really matter. Overall it was a pleasant enough flight, but I would only fly them again over other airlines if the price difference was large. And I would not choose to fly Air Asia in economy on an overnight flight. The service was friendly and they got me to where I needed to go, but the seating on that A330 was really very tight.

 

[Mattg]

Kuala Lumpur

I spent one night at my favourite little hotel in Kuala Lumpur. This was the view from my hotel the next morning:



I love the Malaysian street food so was sure to sample plenty of it.

 

[Mattg]

I was picking up the next long-haul leg of my trip from Singapore. I'd allowed myself a day to get there, so the following afternoon I jumped on another flight for the 1 hour trip south.

Again, I just used a low-cost airline for this trip. I used a Jetstar Price Beat to get a ticket to Singapore for around $20.

3K686 Kuala Lumpur - Singapore
Airbus A320
Departure time: 14:35
Arrival time: 15:45

Jetstar uses klia2, KL's low-cost terminal.



The flight was entirely uneventful. It ran on-time, the FAs were friendly... No complaints from me.

When landing in Singapore there were certainly a lot of ships on the harbour:

 

[Mattg]

Singapore

With my next leg departing the following morning, I had just one evening in the lion city. More than enough time to do some sightseeing and go out for dinner with a couple of friends! It was a nice evening.




The Newton Hawker centre, where we had a tasty meal:

 

[Pushka]

BP scanned.

You bet.

 

[Mattg]

From Singapore, my next leg was to London! I managed to get a great deal on Business class with Sri Lankan Airlines, so thought I would give them a go. The 200 QF status credits I'll earn will also be enough to get me over the line for QF Gold status for the next year.

In Singapore, Sri Lankan sends Business customers to the dnata lounge in terminal 3. It was a fairly small lounge, and not comparable to the likes of the Singapore Qantas Lounge. But as the other oneworld lounges were either closed and/or in different terminals, I was happy enough with this one for an hour or so.



There was a moderate selection of hot food and beverages in the lounge.



The first leg was a ~3.5 hour flight to Colombo. In Colombo I had a connection time of just under 2 hours before boarding the next leg to London Heathrow.

Leg 1: UL307 Singapore - Colombo
Airbus A320
Departure time: 09:45
Arrival time: 11:05



The Business class seats on the A320 were just recliner seats in a 2-2 configuration. But one thing I did notice was that the legroom was excellent, and the seats also reclined a long way. I even managed an hour or so of comfortable sleep in my seat when fully reclined. For that reason I would actually say that these seats are better than what Qantas & Virgin have on their Boeing 737 aircraft.

 

[Mattg]

Pre-departure drinks were offered, hot towels handed out and meal orders taken. There were four meal choices:



I chose the butter chicken masala, which was delicious:



The service was very friendly and drink refills plentiful. The champagne on board was a Piper-Heidsieck.

My only criticism would have to be the in-flight entertainment. Each passenger had their own personal fold-out screen, but the touch screen was not very responsive and I found the range of movies, TV shows and music to be somewhat limited. Plus, the system didn't always work properly! At one point I selected a song, and a completely different song started playing.



We arrived in Colombo at a stand-off bay. But the Business class passengers were allowed to disembark first. We got our own bus, and were taken straight to the terminal as soon as the last Business passenger had disembarked. This made the whole thing fast and much more pleasant.

I'm going to have to leave it here for the moment as I have another flight to catch! Up next: The Sri Lankan Business lounge and my flight to London.