Intro
On the Thursday prior to this flight, I was notified by operations that they will require me to position to Timisoara again to return to the line I was doing about two weeks ago. Given that it was the start of the holiday season in the Netherlands I feared that it would be difficult for operations to find any reasonable priced itinerary.
As Lufthansa was offering the cheapest price (520 EUROS incl. luggage), it was of course the preferred choice of operations, however that flight was scheduled to depart at 8 AM and I told operations that I was unable to catch that flight by public transport and that they would require to book me a hotel in Amsterdam, so as a suggestion I asked them to book me the KLM flight with a stopover in Bucharest for 600 EUROS as that would turn out to be cheaper if you included the hotel in the Lufthansa ticket.
At first they were a tad hesitant to book it before realizing that there would be no cheaper option and the itinerary was as followed:
Flight routing
- 1
- 2RO609 - Economy - Bucharest → Timisoara - ATR 72-600
Bucharest Otopeni Airport
As I arrived from Amsterdam with just a minor delay, I had about five hours to kill for my onward flight. As Bucharest does not offer any lounge access with Priority Pass, I decided to find a free spot to sit down, however it was impossible to find one in the main terminal. As it was getting quite uncomfortable, I made my way to my gate, which was more like a busterminal than an airport, yet had plenty of free seating and was much quieter.
However signage to this gate area is a bit awkward as it feels like you are moving to security again.
There isn't a lot of things to do around gate 50 to 57 with just a single cafe and a few duty free, however there was plenty of seating available and it was definitely a bit more pleasant than the main terminal.
Found myself a seat with about four hours to kill.
Yet our flight was already on display.
Flight
After killing the painful five hours, boarding was called about 15 minutes past our scheduled boarding time and were shipped in no time by a single bus. YR-ATJ, a 4.5 year old ATR 72-600, was going to bring us over to Timisoara and is named after George Valentin Bibescu. George Valentin Bibescu was one of the first Romanian Aviation Pioneers and used to be the president of the Fédération aéronautique internationale (FAI) for approximately 11 years between 1930 and 1941.
One of the flight attendants greeted us in the back and I made my way to my original seat 9F, which was occupied by another passenger who did his best to not move out of the seat. In the end I noticed that the cabin wasn't as nearly as full as previously told and made my way to seat 6F. I must admit that I was quite surprised that TAROM decided to install a J class section in their ATR fleet with them being 100% full, while Y class had a load of approximately 65%.
Legroom as seen below was quite generous for an ATR.
Though padding of the seat was non-existent, however did cause no issue at all for the duration of this specific flight.
Individual air vents were available with a reading light and a call-a-flight attendant button.
The cabin of our flight was spotlessly clean and showed no sign of any wear and tear.
A wonderful view from my seat so long the propellor stays attached to the engine that is :).
Another surprise was about to happen when the pilots decided to reverse their engines to get out of their parkingstand and to move immediately to our active runway with a delay of approximately 20 minutes. While this procedure is possible, airlines and airports do prefer to not use them to save expenses or for safety reasons (with pilots being unable to see anything behind them like obstacles or whatever).
It took another five minutes to become airborne from Runway 08R for an easterly departure and took quite a while before our flight was allowed to make an 180 degrees turn to head west.
The table folds out like this and wasn't particularly large, however as previously said sufficient for a flight like this.
The literature of TAROM contained of TAROM's magazine, a Buy-on-Board menu, safety card and a disposal bag.
Given that TAROM had a Buy-on-Board menu on board, I expected them to come around by asking whether we would like to buy something, however this was not the case and they just came by to provide us with some complimentary water.
Not much went on for the remainder of the flight and it didn't take long for us to be descending into Timisoara.
A very smooth landing with a short taxi to our parking stand, however arrived about 20 minutes past our scheduled arrival time and they didn't make up any of the time en-route.
Disembarkation followed soon after giving us another great view of the aircraft that brought us over to Timisoara.
Timisoara Airport
TAROM has probably the parking stand in Timisoara right in front of the arrival hall.
The arrival hall consits of a few belts to claim your luggage and a duty free shop to buy any duty free good before exiting the terminal.
It took about five to ten more minutes for our luggage to appear on belt.
As my luggage was one of the first to be on the belt, I booked myself an UBER to my hotel to start my next rotation for three weeks.
Ooh nice, it's been a while since I've seen a TAROM flight!
The AT76 cabin looks really nice and modern...I'd almost expect to see USB ports in a cabin like that (but of course that's so rare on an ATR).
I imagine they thought the flight was too short. I've seen Iberia roll out the BOB on 45 min flights before, though, so it's definitely possible.
Thanks for sharing!
The airline is actually pretty decent, though Bucharest as a hub is a huge let down. In terms of BoB, it is really up to airlines to be frank. I've seen EasyJet doing a BoB service of a planned 1 hour flight, while in fact the flights total air time wasn't more than 25 minutes. London Southend-Amsterdam for example.