Review of easyJet flight from Prague to Milan in Economy

Hello everyone and welcome to my second Flight report!
In August I decided to take my dad somewhere for a one-day spotting trip with me. I considered many options where to go and in the end decided for Milan´s Malpensa airport. By searching the internet I knew it was not going to be a perfect location for plane spotting, but it´s easy to reach with a reasonable traffic also consisting of few heavies. I also found a good return fare of 55EUR through the Easyjet website and immediately went for it. Other possibilities were CSA and Austrian but their prices were twice as high compared to Easyjet.
Also Ryanair flies from my home town Brno to Bergamo from where you can get to Milan pretty easily. But this time we wanted to go to Malpensa due to more interesting traffic and possibility of returning on same day, which was impossible with Ryanair.
I checked us in around 10 days before departure day. This proved to be a good decision because one day before departure, Easyjet´s online systems went completelly down and it was impossible to reserve a flight or check in online. This lead to huge queues at the airports and it caused delays and also some flight cancellations. That made me worried a bit, but everything was fixed some 12 hours prior to our departure.
Flying Easyjet to MXP meant we had to get to PRG first. We opted for train as usual to get there.
Weather in Czech republic was pretty far from perfect last weeks - always cloudy with some rain and temperatures not getting over 12°C. Fortunately forecast said weather was going to be nice at Milan, sunny with temperatures around 20°C. What a nice change from the weather here.
We arrived at the airport well in advance to have some time to watch movements from the observation terrace. Unfortunately it started to rain a lot when we got there meaning we had to back off until the rain stops. Dad bought a coffee and after few minutes rain was over allowing us to return for spotting.
QS B737s

OK A320

AF A320

KL F70

This plane, OK-MEH took me home from AYT last year. She was in old CSA livery yet that time

SN RJ100 arrived from BRU

In PRG there are these banners telling you how to distinguish between concrete aircrafts. We don´t need it, right? :-)

View of gates C. Note the smoke which city of Kladno produces

Then it was just about time to go to security. An hour before it was almost empty there but when it was our time there were queues already. Fortunately it didn´t take too long and we were airside.
OS Dash 8 being boarded. Some two minutes earlier man ran past us. I suspect it was a man being anounced as only remaining one to reach gate C13 for flight to VIE. A minute later he ran past us in opossite direction, heading to C13. I´m not very sure if he managed to make it.

OK ATRs

Gate area

LT ERJ175

40 minutes to departure we found out D6 is our departure gate. There was already an unpleasant queue when we got there..

Our gate area

This bag tester caught few people with their bags being too big to what is allowed by U2. This of course started argues between staff and pax. I still don´t understand why people buy cheap fly tickets and are unable to obey the rules of airlines … Am I the only?

Our aircraft for this leg G-EZBU hiding at the last gate

Boarding started over 20 minutes late, but no-one informed us we´re going to be delayed. I overheard two staff members discussion, one asking the other Is the plane here already?. The second one answered yes, it´s here for 20 minutes already. That sounded a bit funny to me, as I saw the plane arriving gate only some 3 minutes ago.

First I thought everyone will board through the bridge but when we reached to our plane, we were turned to go down to apron and board through the rear stairs, as was everyone else sitting in rows 15-26

Up the stairs

AF A319

DY 738

Flight EZY 2582
Date: 16/10/2013
Departure airport: PRG - Prague Vaclav Havel
Arrival airport: MXP - Milan Malpensa
Airline: Easyjet
Aircraft: Airbus A319-111, G-EZBU, 6,5 years in service
Seat: 17F
STD: 12:30
STA: 13:55
Leaving gate: 13:15
Arriving gate: 14:35
My:
18th flight overall
3rd on Airbus A319
1st on Easyjet
1st on G-EZBU

When onboard, I settled down in my seat 17F with my dad taking 17E. Seat was comfortable except of legroom. No recline also.
Flight was almost full, I found only 1 seat vacant

Legroom first felt horrible, but after some time I quite got used to it and it was ok for an hour long flight

There was nothing much to see from window as our gate was at the eastern end of airport

After pushback. We started taxiing late and by the time we reached RWY 24 we were over 40 minutes delayed

B2 B737

S7 A320

SU A320

Take off video

There was relatively strong crosswind and when we began our take off roll we could feel that pilots were steering from left to right quite hard.

Climbing. We initially flew into some clouds but some 5 minutes after departure Seat belt sign went off.

Cabin after take off

BoB service began some 15 minutes after departure. I went only for a beer. It costed 4EUR and I was not particularly impressed with it..
There were some more drink and snack options to buy in Boutique and Bistro magazine, but nothing what I had find a necessity to me.
Cabin crew then also offered tickets for buses to Milan, which can be helpful when going on to the city.
IFE consisted only of Traveller magazine. As I had a window seat, my IFE was only looking through the window. Weather down there was cloudy, so not very much to see for first 20 minutes.

Weather began improving when approaching the Alps and I started believe in good weather at Milan

Beautiful Alps, love that sight

Flying over Lecco, already descending

Now over Milan suburbs, note Malpensa airport above the wing

Finishing right turn to line-up for landing 35L

Landing video

Flying Easyjet to Malpensa means you are going to Terminal 2 now being served only by Easyjet. It´s located in the north part of the airport right between 35L and 35R runways.
Brother, U2 A319

Parking at the gate. Poor guy with the stairs there. Seemed those stairs were far heavier to what he could be able to move

Disembarking, good-bye with cabin crew who were nice and polite during the flight

When going down the stairs, this mighty Emirates 777 departed MXP

Bye bye G-EZBU, you did a good job out there

U2 A319 with Alps as background

We then proceeded towards T2 arrival hall which was quite a walk for this small terminal. About T2 there is nothing much to say. It´s really low cost terminal, but for this kind of flights and those money I think it´s just ok.
Since that we had some 5 hours to move around the airport and watch aircrafts departing 35L. Maybe I would attach some shots to report of returning flight, which I plan to make within a week.
Thank you for reading and once again, your comments are most welcomed!
Cheers, Michael