Review of Norwegian flight from Amsterdam to Stockholm in Economy

Hey all,

After spending a full week at home after my holidays, I received on the friday prior to the flight a notification from operations that I am required to position myself on sunday to Stockholm Arlanda to start my shift on the following day from Stockholm Arlanda.

Upon confirming this information, they suggested me to book me on a SAS flight departing Amsterdam around noon. This option I respectfully declined as I did have some appointments I didn't want to cancel if not necessary and asked whether they were willing to book me on the last flight out to Stockholm with Norwegian, which was the cheapest and most convenient flight for me. They confirmed that they will book this and about an hour later I received the itinerary of Norwegian with a price tag of about 290 EUR for a ''One-way fare including hold luggage and seat selection''.

On the day of travel I decided to leave home around 6.30 PM in order to catch the train that would bring me to Amsterdam's airport about two hours prior to my flight and luckily the train wasn't that busy this time.

While most airliners that do depart to Schengen destinations do tend to have their check-in counters in Terminal 1 or 1A, Norwegian and a few other low cost operators decided to use Terminal 3, which can become very unfavourable if airliners do not use the ''M'' Pier (M'' Pier is H'' Pier for Non Schengen destinations and is mostly used by EasyJet or Ryanair). For Norwegian, Terminal 3 doesn't make sense as one will need to backtrack the entire path to either enter security in Terminal 2 or 1.

Decided to grab myself a boarding pass from one of the self-service kiosk as I prefer to have a paper format with me as a back-up in case my phone battery is drained. Before receiving my boarding pass however, Norwegian was trying to sell me priority boarding which I opted out of as I did not need any overhead space.

Norwegian was using ''Row 27'' in Terminal three which consisted mostly of automatic drop off counters which had just a few passengers using them, so no wait.

As there was no wait for me to drop off my luggage, I went straight to one of the kiosks to drop off my luggage. This system is quite chuncky, but actually quite handy and easy to use as the system explains you easily what to do and forces you to confirm that you've done it. Just mind you that the bag label does not stick out of the machine as sensors will detect that something is not according to the proportions necessary to drop your luggage off.

Luggage was dropped off and now it was time for us to backtrack all the way to terminal two to enter the security for the Schengen departures as Norwegian is not departing from the 'M' gates like they used to do in the past. Managed to bypass the majority of the travellers by joining the fast track due to my Privium Membership and it took me about five minutes to clear security or so.

Once clear of security, I made it straight to the Privium ExpressLounge the beginning of the d-pier, which you can only enter if you obtain this specific membership or to buy a ''40 EUR'' voucher, which can give you access about three hours prior to your scheduled departure.

The lounge itself is definitely better than the Aspire Lounge (No. 26), which you can enter through multiple memberships or airlines, but isn't all that impressive either as you probably know from the past reports I have made about the lounge.

Food and drink selections are somewhat limited. Food options vary depending on the day and time of day, but today they had some vegetarian wraps, Some meat and brie sandwiches and an White Aspargus soup on offer next to a few pastries, snacks and olives.

The drinks are the same as always with coffee, tea, water, fizzy drinks, wine, beer and a few spirit options.

While the food and drink selection is limited, I usually prefer to choose this lounge over any other for Schengen departures as the lounge tend to be more quiet as most of the travellers here are business travellers and they do have an age limit to enter, however today was different as the lounge was completely packed with me grabbing the last free seat in the aft of the lounge.

As the lounge was closing at 9 pm and we were friendly informed to grab our bags and leave the lounge, I decided to slowly stroll myself through the D-Pier to one of the most distant gates in the pier as our flight would depart from there.

The moment I reached our flight's gate, the aircraft that was going to bring us over was also just arriving from Stockholm Arlanda.

SE-RTG is the bird that was going to bring us over to Sweden. This 2.1 year old (at time of flying) Boeing 737 Max 8 was newly delivered to Norwegian Air Sweden in May 2023 and is named after ''Sam Eyde'', which was a Norwegian Engineer and Industrialist and co-founder of both Norsk Hydro and Elkem.

While most of my flights I have taken were on a Boeing 737-800, it will be the first time ever that I'll be on a Max 8. It will also be the first time that I'll be flying Norwegian.

By now boarding was delayed due to the late arrival of the aircraft and were stuck in a gate area that is way too small for the amount of passengers. Tons of people were actually sweating too as it was a hot day and Schiphol didn't turn on the airconditioning today making the terminal way too hot at any location in the terminal….

About fifteen minutes behind the scheduled boarding time, boarding was called by intercom as apparently the tv screen were broken too or failed to show the correct signage and was done via zones. At least the ground attendants were actually verifying whether you were in the correct zone or not.

Lovely fuselage shot!

Upon embarking the aircraft, we were kindly greeted by two flight attendants and I made my way to my seat 07A. The seat itself doesn't look overly comfortable, but I guess it will be fine for a two-hour flight.

While the seat design isn't overly comfortable, this design does give you a bit more legroom. It's still not impressive, though survivable as my knees are not poking into the seat in front of me.

The view from my seat isn't too shabby though.

A view of the cabin.

Pushback was eventually about 15 minutes past our scheduled departure time.

And with a very short taxi ride of less than five minutes we were rolling down runway 24 to turn into northeasterly direction the long way round.

While still climbing to cruise level, I did decide to inspect the table which wasn't all too bad, however had some weird green markings right below the cupholder.

and the literature in the seat pocket contained a Buy-on-Board menu, safety card, a sickbag and a special deals card.

The buy on board menu wasn't all that impressive with choice and pricing with a very limited choice for any hot food.

Decided to order an Himkok Oslo Mule.

Sipping my drink with a sunset that somehow remained an sunset throughout almost the entire flight.

About 90 minutes into the flight we were starting our approach into Stockholm Arlanda and it always surprises me in summer that it is never really fully dark, even though we are approaching midnight.

Parking next to an A320 of SAS  on probably the best spot in this terminal as it was right in front of the exit to baggage claim.

Gate E1 was the first and closest gate to baggage claim and our belt was also scheduled to be the first belt you came across. Our aircraft was actually right behind those walls and it still took them over thirty minutes to deliver our bags…. Not very impressive to be fact as the majority of passengers didn't check in any luggage.

Tons of people waiting as you can see :).

In the end I collected my luggage and went to the busstop between terminal 2-3 to catch the shuttle bus to the Radisson Blu Arlandia Hotel around 1 am.

Thanks for stopping by.