Review of Aegean Airlines flight from Kerkyra Island to Athens in Economy

Intro

Hey there,

before you start, welcome to my first ever flight report. I really do like this page and the reports published, but I noticed that especialy when it comes to greek domestic flights theres still room for improvement.
So I signed up and here we are. ;-)

In January this year I planed to spend a few weeks on Corfu Island. But what was planned as a slightly longer trip was shortend to rughly two weeks in mid december, as all my flights got canceld due to runway renovation at CFU. Fortunately though the closure was split in two periodes with a window of roughly two weeks in the middle. And I resheduled my trip including a day trip to Athens on which you will be joning me now. 

CFU Airport - Off Season

So good morning from a very calm CFU Airport. Off Season there are only a few greek domestic flights mainly to Athens, but also a flight to Thessaloniki and an Island Hopper to Zakynthos via PVK and EFL.

After entering the departuer hall, you are immediately in front of the security controll. Passenger demand was so low that the airport security was repositioned right next to the check-in desks and most part of the terminalbuilding were closed to public.

I had my mobile boarding pass and a fully charged phone so I went directly into the security control. After sercurity there was a very interesting interpretation of "exit-through-shop" and I was in the also quite calm gate area of CFU.

This is the older terminal section, which I think is (partialy) used for non-schengen flights during the summer but it is used for all departures off-season. Besides the duty free shop, there is also one coffee shop open, all other shops and restaurants are closed. But no worries CFU has pretty good apron views, so you will not get board ;).

Due to the runway renovation CFU could not be served by A320-Aircrafts, so for Aegean this meaned that flights were operated by Olympic Airways and their ATR-Aircrafts. To compansaid the lower capacity, there were up to two additional A3-flights per day to Athens.

My travelday was the second day of the completed-closure-break and the day before one of Olypmics ATR went AOG at CFU. Right next to it, an ATR from SkyExpress, Aegeans main competitor, was preparing for a flight to Athens aswell.

A few minutes later SX-OBM arrived from Athens and deboarding starts:

Eventhough deboarding was done by bus, once everyone got off the aircraft we can thankfully walk to the aircraft.

The flight

 With Aegean boarding is organized in groups. On the ATR72 group 1 consinsts of all passengers in row 1 to 10 and group 2 of those in row 11 to 20. At that time no priority boarding was offered on ATR72 operated flights and my Seat was 18A, so I waited at the gate to board among the last passengers and get some nice views of the aircarft.

On the downside, if you board last, the cabin is usualy already quite cramped, so please excuse the rather mediocre shot.

Although the weather seemed quite nice at CFU this flight was probably the bumpiest right I ever had.

After take-off we flew along the north western coastline of mainland greece, always acompanied by some light turbulances. But coming closer to Athens the clouds got sicker and sicker and once the ATR started decending into the clouds we got a pretty shaky approuch into Athens.  

ATH Airport

Finaly on the ground in Athens we got bussed to a low level B Gate in the main terminal. By the way, the seat belt sign was never switched off so the in-flight-service was canceld. But I will give you some impressions of Aegeans domestic economy service on my right back to CFU.

After walking through the baggage claime area …

… I went to the train + metro station to continue my journey into the center of Athens.

So thank you for joining and until next time :).