Part1-Manchester to Bergamo on Astraeus

By: astraeus471 - 2nd September 2005 at 20:05

Here's my trip report of a flight I took on Wednesday August the 24th this year from Manchester to Bergamo, Italy. Enjoy!

Flight number: AEU/5W471
Route: Manchester (EGCC) to Bergamo Orio Al Serio (LIME)
Aircraft: Boeing 737-3Y0 G-STRB (flybe.com livery!)
http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=535888
http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=532223
Scheduled Departure Time: 15:55
Actual Departure Time: 16:15
Scheduled Arrival Time: 19:20
Actual Arrival Time: 19:00

Here we go,

My family and I set off from our home in yorkshire at 11:30 for the hour and a bit drive to Manchester Airport. There was no traffic at that time so we arrived at Manchester's premier parking at around 12:45. We parked the car and caught the bus to Terminal 2. We were the only people on the bus so we drove straight there. We were dropped off at arrivals so we took the escalator up to departures and found the check in desks for the flight, 15 and 16. We qued for about 5 mins and got checked in and we were allocated seats 03C,D,E,F. We had to go to the oversize bag check in as my dad had a fishing rod to be checked in.

We headed to security but as we had plent of time, around 3 hours! We looked in WHSmiths and bought a few mags and books as we had a discount voucher. At security there were no queues and we were straight through. My bag got searched as I had a compass in my pencil case but it had no points in it and my sister got searched as she had a metal belt.

Once in the departure lounge we decided to get lunch so my mum and sister went to the food court whilst me and my dad went to burger king! We got a nice table at the window with good views across the ramp area next to Terminal 2. I saw about 8 747's all on the ground! The most I'd seen at MAN!
There was a dragonair cargo, cathay pacific cargo, china airlines cargo, air atlanta europe, atlas air cargo, another air atlanta one and a couple of others. Other activity on the apron was the usual BY,FCA,XLA,MON,TCX charters with 757s, 767s, A320's.

We had about an hour until boarding so me and my dad walked the length of terminal 2 and my mum and sister went to look at the variety of differnet shops. At 15:00 we took some seats and waited for a gate to be allocated. At about 15:15 I saw G-STRB in flybes colours arrive and pull into gate 203. I think the Flybe colours look great bt still I would have preffered astraeus. We headed over to gate 203 and waited for boarding. At 15:40 boarding was commencing from rows 26 to 13. Then rows 12 to 1. We walked down the airbridge to the door and were greeted by 2 friendly looking cabin crew who showed us to our seats. I took 03F, a window seat at near the front of the plane. The seats had suprisingly a lot of legroom and my dad, who is 6ft2, thought it was very good. At 16:05 pushback was commenced, flaps 15 selected and the usual safety procedure. The pilot welcomed us whilst we were holding at 24L and said he'd been busy in the flight deck so that was why he was late speaking and apologised for the short delay. He was a really nice guy and made jokes and was very informative about the route.

At 16:15, 'RB lined up on 24L and the two CFM563B2s were spooled up the takeoff power and accelerated us down the runway providing 22000lbs of thrust. About half way down the runway 'RB gently lifted into the sky. We made acouple of left turns and at about 4000ft, flaps were retracted. Then at about 25000ft, the climbing rate was eased and seat belt signs were off. the captain came on again and said we would be heading up to 35000ft and the flight would only take 1 hour 45 mins as we had a 5mph tailwind. We would be cruising at Mach 0.80 or about 571mph. He said he would keep us up to date on where we were and our route would take us over belgium, luxembourg, germany and then through western austria, into switzerland where we would make our descent into Bergamo. The crew then came around with a bar service an then a meal was served. The meal was a cold spicy chicken quiche with pasta with a tomato source with a sidedish of cold chow mein noodles and a desert of strawberry and cream mouse thing. I only ate the noodles and my bread role as I didnt like the rest.

There was no entertainment on the flight but i didn't mind s it was only an hour an 3/4s. Out of the window it seemed all of central europe was covered in cloud so I couldn't see anything. The pilot came on again at about a halfway through the flight and said he apologised for the clouds and would tell us if we flew ovr anything interesting and that currently we were lying over Luxembourg which is a very boring country, and the only thing interesting was the new nudist place! Everyone laughed. After the meal was collected a duty free service commenced but as we were running out of time, if you wanted to buy something, you had to press the assistance button on the overhead panels.

After the duty free we started a quick descent over the alps with some amazing scenery of the snow capped mountains. We then flew over the city of lugano in switzerland and lake lugano. Then we flew over lake como where I would be staying for the next week! We flew to the right of Bergamo airport and made a wide left turn to align us with runway 28. At around 2000ft and about 6 miles to go, full flaps were set and the landing gear released. We began our landing flare over the start of the airport boundry and very smoothly landed ,without a bump. It was the smoothest landing I had every experienced! Speedbrakes were raised and a lot of reverse thrust used to slow us down. We taxied off and headed towards the gate. We landed at 19:00. 20 minutes early! After a quick taxi to the remote stand, we disembarked from the front exit and the back exit was being used aswell. We where then coached to the terminal to collect our bags. We qued for about 5 mins at passport control as there was only one desk for 150 of us! We waited 20 mins and got our bags. Bergamo was quite busy and some flights had to share a carousel.

Overall I loved the flight and would fly astraeus again!

Service: 7/10 :) (bad food, great crew!)
Timings: 10/10 :D
Comfort: 8/10 :)