Departing Heathrow (OS452 LHR-VIE) 2017.06.22

Returning from England back home. First leg: to Vienna and a short stop..

22 June 2017
OS452 (0905-1225) LHR-VIE
OE-LBA Airbus A321

I arrive at the airport with a time margin to get through all the controls. A quick walk around the general area of T2 and I head to the security check. The queue moves quickly and in no time I am on the other side. I must admit I really like how T2 is constructed with the gates having a double entry for each "flight", with all the clear markings and information. Exact gate shown around 1h before departure (when the inbound flight arrives) so gate changes are rather rare. My plane arrives from Vienna slightly delayed, our first delay is shown to be 13 minutes. But 13 minutes past departure time boarding is still in progress... It is important to me as I have a 35 minute (scheduled time) change in Vienna, so every minute counts. After all we pushback with a delay of 35 minutes, so my entire stop just disappeared. The taxi process to the northern runway is long and involves many stops. Heavy traffic, what can you do. With some hopes still left at the back of my head I sit back, relax and enjoy the flight. The A321 inside doesn't differ form the A320, luckily the seat next to me is vacant giving me some more comfort on board. When we get closer to Vienna I start browsing the inflight magazine searching for rerouting options as I am nearly sure that I won't make my flight. During the approach the purser informs that some connections will unfortunately not make it, and says which. After all we get to our gate 7 minutes before my planned departure, when I get to the terminal the flight to Warsaw isn't even on the screens anymore. Bad luck. So I head to the transfer desk where after a couple of minutes I get a new boarding pass for the next flight to Warsaw (4 hours later), which after all ended up to be the fastest way anyway. After my asking I also get a 12€ worth of voucher for food and drinks and some of the restaurants.
Summing up the flight: the inflight experience was standard, same as the A320. The crew was friendly and Heathrow was Heathrow :D The Austrian ground staff in Vienna was very professional, for what I thank them. There is nothing I could say went bad in Vienna.

Austrian A320 family experience (OS461 VIE-LHR) 2017.06.20

On my way to England. Heathrow via Vienna. Leg 2: bound for London

20 June 2017
OS461 (1250-1420) VIE-LHR
OE-LBW Airbus A320

After a smooth inbound flight I have just enough time to walk around the shops, the skylink terminal (which must be one of my favorite terminals), take some pictures and board without any hassle. The flight was delayed due to a slot restriction. It didn't really make any difference for me as I had a long stop at Heathrow before the onward journey. I was lucky to have a free seat next to me as the flight was rather full. The service during the flight was basic. Austrian offers WiFi connection in 3 different plans depending on what you would like to do during the flight. You may test it during the flight for a limited time and I must say it works pretty fine. The plane (despite being not the newest of frames) is clean and looks younger than it really is. The legspace is alright but the Recaro seats feel hard. All in all rather a typical flight from A to B, the seats are known from the OS EJet, the LH short-haul fleet, the SN short-haul fleet and the LX short-haul fleet. In other words, the entire LH group has these seats. I ain't a fan of them to be honest.
While we approach London I hoped for a landing from the east with superb views on London downtown. Unluckily, we did hold in one of the stacks and later on proceeded for the approach from the west. After touchdown we taxi around the airport to get to our gate.