Review of Transavia flight from Alicante to Rotterdam in Economy

Who are Transavia?

Transavia is a budget and holiday airline from the Netherlands which started life in 1966. Whilst its main base is at Amsterdam Schiphol, it also has smaller bases at the other two major airports in the Netherlands; Rotterdam the Hague and Eindhoven Airport.

Transavia has over the decades flown various jet airliners including the Sud Aviation Carravelle, Boeing 757-200, Boeing 707-300, Airbus A300/A310 and five variants of the Boeing 737 family: 737-200, 737-300, 737-400, 737-700 & 737-800. The Boeing 737-Next Generation models being the backbone of the fleet for almost 20 years.

However in the early 2020s, the Air France-KLM Group decided to make a huge order of Airbus A320-neo family aircraft to help renew the fleets of KLM and Transavia and the airline has introduced the Airbus A321neo as the new backbone of its fleet. But with 37x Boeing 737-800 still flying for Transavia, these workhorse aircraft will still be flying for a few more years!

Whilst Transavia was an independent airline for almost 30 years, in the early 1990s it was bought by KLM, later becoming part of the Air France-KLM Group, which also saw a French subsidiary launch out of Paris Orly to compliment Air France's operations. If you have a Flying Blue account with Air France or KLM, you can earn Tier Points & Award Miles on Transavia flights!

Due to Transavia's business model, I'd never flown the airline from my native UK as the airline has never consistently served here, but when I was putting a trip around Spain together, I opted to fly home via Rotterdam just to finally tick off Transavia and also bag a flight on BA Cityflyer into London City- for me this was a big win!

So how was Transavia? Let's dive into the Flight Report!

Getting to Alicante Airport

My morning started out at a nice hotel in the city centre of Alicante, a place called Hotel Leuka. The decor is a little "stuck in the 1970s" but it was a great place to rest up for one night in Alicante, so if you get a good price on it- I highly recommend it! Breakfast was included in my stay, so I grabbed a few bits on the continental offering before heading out to get a bus to Alicante Airport.

Luckily for me, my hotel was just a four minute walk down the road from a Metro train station with a bus stop which was on the route for the Alicante Airport bus (Route C-6), so I grabbed that for a 20 minute bus ride over to the Airport. The service runs every 15 minutes, but earlier and later in the day the service might reduce.

The bus dropped us off at the departures level at Alicante Airport, it was basically straight into the departures hall and off to find the gates & security check point. Pretty much a straight forward commute and I found it quite easy. 

Getting through security took a good 15-20 minutes, which wasn't bad going given that it was busy at Alicante Airport. Most of the European flights from outside Spain/Portugal were coming in between 09:30am and 12pm, so it was getting busy with people heading back on flights into the UK, Benelux, Germany, Nordics and France before midday, as you can see from the departure board- it was a busy day at the start of Spring.

In the middle of the Airport I found a scale model of the Airport and some brief plots of the Airport's history. I had thought of going to the Airport's Lounge the previous day as I had a priority pass- but as I had breakfast in my hotel stay and got to the airport about 90 minutes before my flight was due to go, it didn't seem like a good spend of £24… I opted to go to the Gate once it was called, kind of nice not having to factor in going through a non-Schengen passport check!

Flying with Transavia- HV5054 (ALC-RTM)

Gate C-40 was announced as my Gate, but whilst I was waiting, a Transavia Airbus A321neo parked on the gate, not a Boeing 737-800… I checked flight radar and saw the A321neo was the Amsterdam Schiphol flight- we were going to be taking a bus gate over to a remote stand, given it was a lovely day in Alicante- I wasn't complaining, even though some of the Dutch tourists seemed a bit let down.

I was on the second of three bus rides that took place for our flight. It was a little slow as the flight was reasonably full that morning, but I was excited to get some good photos of the aircraft once we pulled up to it. This was exciting for me ticking off two airports I'd not flown to/from before this trip as well as adding a new route and airline! 

Our ride today was going to be Transavia Holland operated Boeing 737-800(WL) PH-HZO, this Boeing 737 was delivered in April 2017 brand new to Transavia from Boeing. It has spent its life flying for Transavia barring a few short term leases out to Aloha Airlines, Aeromexico & Sun Country Airlines, this is one of the older Boeing 737s now in the Transavia fleet making it 18 years old at the time of flying it.

It was nice walking into the cabin of the Transavia 737 and seeing bright green seats taking up the aircraft! Made a change from a very dull combination of Blue, Black or Grey which dominates most European airlines. Though I do wish Aer Lingus would feature green seats, take a page from Transavia! Eventually I made my way to my spot for the next 2 hours- that being Seat 21A, just behind the left wing. The legroom was good enough and I found the seat back pocket was filled with a magazine, café brochure and safety card!

We had to wait on the third bus of passengers before we were cleared to leave, whilst waiting I spotted a Ryanair Boeing 737 and Vueling Airbus A320 taxiing out for take off. One benefit of our remote stand was that we'd have a short taxi over to the Runway once we were cleared to depart.

Once boarding was completed, we were basically given the all clear to go, as we taxied over the crew did their safety demonstration and their final checks before we got to the runway. Whilst we waited for our turn to be allowed on the runway, I spotted the aircraft ahead of us, a Eurowings A321neo, rocketing out of Alicante. 

We lined up on Runway 10 and began rolling out for take off, just as we passed the Terminal we boarded the bus gate we started to rotate and leave the ground. Within a minute of lifting off the Runway we flew over the town of Urbanova, which I saw from the left-side of the Boeing 737, it gave some great views as we flew out over the Mediterranean Sea, I could also see the main city of Alicante in the distance, where I had come from that morning.

We made a series of left turns to head North-East back towards mainland Spain, France and eventually the Netherlands. Most of this flight would be over land except for a few minutes over the Mediterranean Sea on take off and the North Sea on arrival. It was a lovely day in Alicante, so there was some amazing views to be had.

Once we'd taken off, I had a look through the seat back contents in more detail. The sickbag looked quite appealing and not a straight up white bag like a lot of airline's are going for. I also dived into both the inflight magazine and the inflight café. The Transavia route map for the Dutch based operation is quite extensive, you could in 2x flights basically fly from Iceland to Dubai… though I'm not sure about a 6 hour flight in a Transavia A321neo or Boeing 737-800 from the Netherlands to the UAE…

The Dutch Transavia had also started a Rotterdam the Hague service to London Stansted, which I was excited by! The French subsidiary currently links Paris Orly to Edinburgh, basically that is the extent of Transavia in the UK for 2025.

Overall we had a smooth flight, our route towards the Netherlands took us over Catalonia and Andorra, before entering French airspace we then flew a route taking us over various towns & cities including Toulouse, Montauban, Limoges, Tours, Orleans before flying around Paris airspace, passing over Beauvais and Lille before passing the Belgian boarding and flying over Ghent before we began our arrival into Rotterdam!

I ordered some lunch off the inflight menu so I could feature some stuff for the article and my Flight Review video, for 11EUR (£9.60p) I got a Hot Drink + Sweet Snack as well as Beef Sausage Roll. For the hot drink I went with coffee and for the sweet snack I opted for a Dutch classic known as "Gevulde Koek" which is basically an Almond Cake, they are very tasty!

The crew did a Duty Free trolley run a while later. As it was my first flight on Transavia and I didn't have a model in my collection yet, I opted to buy a Transavia Boeing 737-800 model aircraft!

I had to visit the latrine during the flight, when I went in it was pretty clean and in good nick despite having been used quite a bit during the flight by the other passengers. Pretty standard for a Boeing 737 built in the mid-2000s… the Airbus A321neo loos won't be as spacious!

The flight passed quite quickly and we started descending into Rotterdam the Hague, no major waits unlike its neighbour Amsterdam Schiphol, our flight path once we flew over Belgium took us briefly over the Zealand Islands before giving us a straight in approach into Rotterdam!

The great Alicante weather had followed us over to Rotterdam and it allowed for some amazing views of the cities and towns as we neared our destination, it was nice seeing the massive Windmills helping power the industrial complex we flew over.

We landed into Rotterdam the Hague Airport, arriving on Runway 06. We departed the runway and began the quick taxi to the main apron for the airliners at the Airport. We passed the general aviation hangars as well as restaurant which has amazing runway views!

We pulled up on stand, only remote stands at Rotterdam, which is ideal for most the flights in and out by Transavia and various charter airlines in the summer. I held back for most the other passengers to leave so I could get some last cabin shots, as I didn't know when my next Transavia flight would be and I didn't know if it would be on the Boeing 737-800 before they retire, however it seems that Rotterdam will keep seeing Boeing 737-800 from Transavia for a while yet!

Leaving the aircraft I got some nice final shots, it was a short walk to the entrance to the Airport, coming in from within another EU country, it would mean arriving into what is effectively a domestic arrivals hall. Looking back I saw my plane joined by three other Transavia Boeing 737s.

Walking into the Arrivals hall, I went straight to the exit, I didn't have to wait for bags like most of the passengers that were on my flight. I had a few hours in Rotterdam Airport, I would be heading home to the UK that evening on another flight from this airport- that'll be out soon!

It was quite nice visiting Rotterdam Airport and knowing everything was a short walk around and not having to walk a good mile like you need to do sometimes at Schiphol Airport! The departure board was very quiet for the day, but I went to get a few photos of my Boeing 737 and some of the others from the Panorama Terrace at Rotterdam the Hauge- Yes the famous Schiphol observation deck shares its name with the one at Rotterdam!

Overall it was a good flight on Transavia, a nice change to flying KLM or even easyJet or Ryanair! Best bit about Transavia is you can get Tier Points and Award Miles if you have a KLM (or Air France) Flying Blue account, you don't get much- but it's a nice touch which you don't get on Vueling when you fly with British Airways Club account! I'll be happy to fly again with Transavia, so watch this space if I do another "Euro Tour"!