Review of SATENA flight from Bogota to Tumaco in Economy

Hello everyone and welcome to another Flight Report. This time I will be talking about the experience I had a few months ago on a Domestic flight in Colombia. So after a few days in Bogotá it was time to head out to the city of Tumaco, in the Pacific region and very close to the border with Ecuador. The airport is very small and the airport only have 2 domestic routes: Bogotá, with a daily flight covered by Satena, and Cali, with some good 3-4 flights a day covered by Avianca, Easyfly and the same Satena. 

By the way, here's the complete journey:

The direct flight from Bogotá is departing early in the morning. It was the best option for me instead of making a stopover in Cali, so early in the morning I took a taxi to the airport. By the time, the domestic terminal was still closed, so I went to the Intenrational one. And as you can imagine, at this time in the morning, Bogotá was without traffic. Despite so, the airport was quite full. Colombia have many domestic flights and 6AM is a busy departure time for many flights. So there were many people. 
Anyway, I checked my bag (for free on all their fares), and despite having more kg than allowed, no one compleained. That's a great thing of this airline.  

After the security check, I went throuhgt the gate, where there were already a few people awaiting. 

During june 2021, COVID was very high in Colombia with more than 700 daily deaths, so you could find many alert signs all around the airport. 

Closer to boarding

Soon enough, it was time to boarding. The occupation was quite full (as always on this leg) but luckily i had nobody next to me. Here's a picture of our flight getting ready. The weather outside was rainy and cold, which is normal in Bogotá. Sorry about the blurry picture :(

Once we were ready we were pushbacked and engines started on time. On board, there was one FA who kindly explaned the security options only in spanish. This is very normal in Satena, as their routes are mainly taken by colombian passengers, but they're flying to a very few touristic destinations. 

A very few pics while taxiing to the runway under the rain. 

Bye bye Bogotá! See you in a month 

I'm a big fan of El Dorado airport. Heavy traffic at this very first hour of the day. 

Right tourn heading to the south-west while overflying the southern part of the colombian capital, just before passing through the clouds. 

A few more pictures while climbing. If I'm not wrong this is el Páramo del Sumapaz. 

No inflight service at all today. Because of colombian legislation, it is not allowed to serve food or drinks on theire domestic flights (I don't know if it applies to their longer flights to San Andrés Islands). So the crew didn't appear during the flight. The cabin by itself was clean and it looked modern. Legroom was ok for the ATR.

Overflying Cali. Unfortunately it was covered by clouds. 

After Cali we fin the last chain of mountains, la Cordillera Occidental. The landscapes were simply amazing. This is Cauca. 

And the last part of the flight was already over the jungle of the Pacific region. 

And we already started our descent into Tumaco Airport

Many rivers are crossing this area, coming from the mountains and ending in the Pacific Ocean. The biggest one is Patia. 

Approaching Tumaco over the bay. Flaps were deployed. 

On finals, over la Playa del Morro. 

And already over Tumaco. As you can apreciate, there's a big diference with Bogotá. 

And touchdown after 1 hour and 40 minutes in the air. Tumaco airport is very small and it's used mainly by military airplanes, so most of the planes are from the Colombian army or the USAF. 

We disembarked row by row, just following the COVID rules and a short walk takes you to the terminal were I picked up my bag. This is the only belt of the airport. Despite there are covid measures, the main alert messages here were because of the Malaria. This is a high risk area in Colombia. Anyway, as the terminal was custodied by the army I didn't want to take many pictures. 

That's all guys, I hope you enjoyed reading it. See you soon with more flights!