Review of Volotea flight from Rodez to Paris in Economy

Introduction

We're going back to basics for these next few flight reviews. No fancy long-haul premium cabins or First class lounges, we'll be trying Spanish Low-cost Carrier Volotea for the first time from my tiny hometown airport of Rodez-Aveyron. 

As Rodez is a rather small city, with about 60,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area, it hasn't historically had a significant amount of air service aside from a few regional jets to Paris and seasonal non-daily flights with Ryanair and a few others carriers over the years. Well, all that's changed with Volotea recently opening a small base in Rodez with service to a whopping 7 destinations! That's a big deal for a small town–and so far it looks to be working out as Volotea have introduced several new routes since establishing the base, including some international flights!

Being that the area is quite isolated in the foothills of the Massif Central mountains with no TGV service, these recent developments in air service are a lifeline for the region's economy. I may have emigrated to the U.S. years ago, but my native region in France has always been very important to me and I was thrilled to see air connections were growing.

With that said, let's contribute to the local economy and book some flights out of RDZ - Rodez-Aveyron airport!

Since we spend several months out of the year in France, we would have a few opportunities to fly Volotea. For this first trip, we booked a weekend in Paris as my 6-year-old son had wanted to see Versailles and go up the Eiffel Tower for the first time. I was about the same age my first time up, so it was a perfect idea. 

Volotea are interesting in that they have a subscription service where you can essentially buy yourself some benefits, similar to having Elite status, for €69.99/year.

When I looked into it, it seemed like it would be well worth the fee as I was planning on booking at least two family trips just this summer alone.

Megavolotea members receive discounts on flights, seats, baggage, priority boarding and other ancillaries, as well as unlimited free flight changes and free carry-on baggage which are big savings right there considering how high change fees are and that a carry-on costs €35-€65 per flight segment!

What makes it all the more worth the €69.99 is that the benefits are applicable for up to four travel companions in the same reservation.

This handy guide on the website convinced me and was actually not far off from reality.

For me, the membership paid for itself with just one trip as I saved about €100 just on the fare, and then saved even more between the 3 free 10 Kg carry-ons, priority boarding and seat discounts. 

Honestly, the €200 round-trip per person all-in was a good deal compared to what Air France Hop and, more recently, Amelia used to charge on the route. I'd never seen a round-trip below €350-400, even searching months ahead before Volotea came into town!

I've also been quite impressed with how nice looking and functional the Volotea website and iPhone apps have been! Granted, as a regular British Airways flyer, it's not difficult to impress me with ANY remotely decent app or web functionality 🤣

It's also great that Volotea have free streaming entertainment! Most full-service carriers in Europe can't say the same, much less Low-cost carriers. 

Routing

Reviews in this short series:

Pre-flight & Check-in

I can't tell you how refreshing it was not to have to drive 2 hours to fly out of Toulouse! That and we only got to the airport less than an hour and a half before departure. Being that it's so small and there's no lounge or anything, and we didn't have any bags to check in, there wasn't really any reason to arrive earlier. In fact it was too early–but being the nerd that I am, I really wanted to get there early enough to see the inbound plane land. 

As you can see, the terminal was pretty empty, so there's really was no point to arriving too early. Especially since there's nothing past security except for seats and a vending machine. 

I quite like the terminal. It's bright, airy and lofty for such a small airport. 

My native département of Aveyron is home to the highest number of villages to be officially classified among the most beautiful villages in France out of any department. No, neither Volotea nor the Aveyron tourism board are paying me (I wish 🤣), I'm just proud of my little corner of France. 

There was literally no one else in the queue for security at an hour prior to departure–this is very typical of my hometown. We have a reputation for showing up to everything at the last minute. 

There were only a handful of other early birds in the gate area. While the space looks deceivingly spacious, there's not nearly enough seating for every passenger on a full flight with 156 seats, as we'll see closer to departure. 

Bonjour Volotea! A base, in my little hometown! 

The inbound aircraft was arriving from Lille. 

EC-MTD, currently based in RDZ at the time of this writing, is a 20 year old ex-Frontier Airlines A319. Aircraft look to be rotated in and out about ever few months. 

There she is! Maybe I'm weird (I am) but I like this livery. It's different and I like anything that isn't pure Eurowhite. The tail reminds be of Bonne Maman jam covers–which is a delicious thing to be associated with, hah. Fun fact, Bonne Maman comes from nearby in the Lot département. 

I'd never flown anything but turboprops or regional jets out of RDZ to it was super cool to see a full-sized jet here! Yes, Ryanair have operated 737s here seasonally for years, but I'd never seen them personally. 

The plane parked facing away from the terminal, which I found odd at first, but then realised it was positioned for an easy power out. No need for a pushback tractor that way!

See what I mean? It got very crowded in that little gate lounge as we got closer to boarding time. 

Boarding

When Priority boarding was called, we managed to be among the first to get through the boarding gate. In typical LCC fashion, we were made to wait in a holding area until the aircraft was ready.

It was a beautiful day and the wait wasn't long so it wasn't unpleasant. 

Once the all clear was given, those with seats in rows 1-12 were instructed to use the forward ramp, while those with seats from row 13-26 were to use the rear stairs. 

I love ground boarding for views like this!

This was exciting to me as it had been over a decade since I'd flown out of RDZ! 

Cabin crew warmly greeted passengers as they entered the aircraft. I was impressed with how fresh and modern the cabin looked despite the aircraft's age. The seats themselves are about 8 years old, but still looking new. 

Being among the first on board, we had no issues finding space for our carry-ons in the overhead locker above our seats in row 6. There were a lot let less full-sized rolling suitcases than we see in the U.S., likely because of the extra cost. Also note that Volotea have a rather restrictive carry-on size limit, similar to Ryanair at 55 (height) x 40 (width) x 20 (depth) cm. This is smaller than typical size in the U.S. but luckily I already had a smaller bag measuring exactly 55X40X20 cm in France from previous Ryanair flights. 

Whoa, I was pleasantly surprised by the legroom and comfort of the seats! I was expecting sardine can cosiness sitting on medieval torture devices… but nope! These Acro seats were much more comfortable than the Geven seats on my previous LCC experience with VivaAerobus in Mexico.

The seat pitch is officially 29 inches, but the Acro slimline seat design carves out a lot of extra space at knee level and it feels more like 30-31" pitch!

Being able to cross your legs at 29" pitch is madness…it shouldn't be possible. A sign of a very good seat design. I'm 5'10" (1m78) for reference, and not particularly flexible 🤣

There's a QR code on the seatback leading to a digital buy-on-board menu and the In-flight entertainment portal. 

You have to connect to the VOLOTEA Wi-Fi network. There is no actual Wi-Fi connected to the internet, it's a closed network for the streaming entertainment. 

Here's a look at the buy-on-board menu. Prices are decent, and I got an even better deal by pre-ordering a drink+meal combo in the app. 

The Flight

With boarding from both the forward and aft doors. the process was quick and we were ready to go for an early departure–unfortunately due to a member of the cabin crew becoming ill on the inbound flight, a replacement had to be called out. Luckily, as RDZ is now a base, there were crew available so they were already on their way. 

As we were waiting to depart, I found that the seatback could serve as a tablet holder, which was great, especially as Volotea have free streaming entertainment. 

There's no seatback pocket to save space and give extra knee space, but there is a net that can be used to hold larger items. 

The delay was only about 10 minutes and the aircraft was powered out of the stand. The flight deck crew announced that they expected an on time arrival into Paris despite the short departure delay. 

There are no taxiways parallel to the runway in RDZ so we taxied on the runway to the end of RWY 31 and turned around for takeoff. 

Climbing over the beautiful Aveyron countryside and the Marcillac valley wine region. 

Let's check out the streaming entertainment, which is available from gate-to-gate.

In addition to free video content, there is also a flight map and some destination suggestions

The map is pretty decent for a streaming IFE platform, and there's even a 3D mode. 

There's a nice amount of content to watch, especially considering that this is a low-cost carrier–I've flown LCCs before that charge for IFE.

There are movies, TV series, documentaries, games, music, news, and children's programming. 

As mentioned earlier, we'd pre-ordered meals for this flight. I wouldn't normally order food for a 1h flight, but the flight was around dinner time and I figured if we'd already eaten on the plane we could head straight to the hotel and relax after landing. 

Friendly cabin crew confirmed our pre-ordered meals before they began the in-flight service. They asked us to chose from the two options of hot meals available and later confirmed our meals were in the oven when they passed by with the beverage cart. 

Unfortunately, since it's such a short flight, by the time the meals were ready there was less than a half hour of flying time left as we were already over the centre of the country. 

Pre-ordering food can save a few Euros over ordering on board. There are 3 pre-order options: Drink only, Snack+Drink, and Meal+Drink

You don't actually select the exact type of snack or meal ahead of time, that's done on board based on what's available. 

On this flight, we had the option of Butter Chicken with Basmati Rice and Penne Pasta in Tomato Sauce. I went for the Butter Chicken, which was pretty tasty with a good level of spice. 

We had to eat quickly as we began our descent just north of Orléans. 

It was funny seeing Saint-Arnoult toll plaza on the A10 motorway as we were landing–we'd often gotten stuck in major back-ups there when driving up to Paris in the past. It was nice to fly right past!

I have no idea what this chateau or hotel is, but it looks super fancy. 

As the crew had said, we ended up landing on time despite the slight delay on departure. 

We parked at Orly Terminal 1 next to some fellow Spanish Airbuses. 

Unlike in RDZ, we had a proper jet bridge here in Orly. 

No need to go to the Louvre or Musée d'Orsay when there are so many masterpieces to be seen right at the terminal in Orly 😉

We followed signs for the "VTC" pick-up area (rideshare apps in English), which was a bit confusing as there are two locations in the terminal. Note that there is a Paris Metro line (14) that goes into the city from the airport, which can be a good and economical option depending on where you're going in the city. 

As it was past 8PM, there was no traffic so it was a quick 25 minute ride from the airport to the Sofitel Paris Le Baltimore near the Trocadéro. 

We drove right past the great Iron Lady on the way.

A beautiful hotel in the Parisian Haussmannien architecture.